my palm. When I released them, red crescent moons marked my new skin.
Jesse emerged from the bedroom carrying a candle spilling wax into a holder, closing the door behind him. He didn’t look sleepy, like I’d woken him up. He looked tired, though. There were lines bracketing his mouth. His hair hung long and limp.
“I’ve been out,” I said.
“I know.”
“I listened to your friends. The stars.”
“I know.”
“I want you to finish the story now, Jesse. I want to know what happened to the Elemental after Death came to her in the desert. What was their ending?”
He walked to the chair that’d had the blanket and folded himself into it slowly, one limb at a time, as if he had to consider how it would happen. He was wearing a regular shirt and trousers and even shoes. Surely I hadn’t actually woken him?
“Where did I stop?” he asked absently.
“When she—the unraveling.”
“Oh, yes. Death had come and done his work. But in her dying moments, even as she unraveled, the goddess reached up and dragged what stars she could from the sky down to earth and sent them into the seeds of men. So that a few humans, a very few, would be born with fragments of her power and theirs. It was a gift of gold and death.”
“Death? That’s a gift?”
He gazed up at me.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Do you mean to say—are you telling me that your powers are linked to your death? Is that your sacrifice?”
“Power begets power. It requires it, too.”
“For God’s sake.” I stomped over and threw myself at his feet, just like one of the eighth-years with Mrs. Westcliffe. “Would you please stop talking like that? Would you please tell me in plain words what I want to know?”
Jesse leaned forward and touched the fingers of one hand to my bare upper arm.
“Everyone dies, Lora. I don’t mind knowing how my own death is going to come about.”
“That’s—that’s—” I groped for the right words and could only come up with ones I’d blurted to him before. “That’s completely unfair!”
“Aye,” he said, softly.
“You’ve got to stop, then! Stop making gold. Stop doing anything like that that brings you nearer to dying.”
Despite the lines of exhaustion, his lips smiled. “Breathing? Existing? Being who I am?”
I buried my face against his knees, then wrapped my arms around his legs to pin him in place. I realized then that the blanket I wore was one of the fleece ones that had been in the carriage on the very first night we’d met. It was his, not the school’s. All along it had been his, and he must have put it in there for me.
Because, even then, Jesse Holms had known what I needed.
His fingers began a glide up my arm, across my shoulder. Down my back. He drew figure eights upon me, five-pointed stars, our initials entwined.
“When will it happen?” I asked, to his knees.
“Well, not tomorrow, in any case. Or the next day, or the next. I’ve years in me yet, dragon-girl. Don’t fret.”
We stayed like that, he in the chair, me on the floor, with his hand tracing those clever, soothing patterns along my skin, until the sky began to pale and the morning larks began to stir in the woods and break into their own versions of heavenly songs.
Chapter 24
“The Duke of Idylling has invited you to go yachting with him and his son.”
“Yachting?” I knew I was gaping at Mrs. Westcliffe, but I couldn’t help it. The last thing I’d expected was for Armand to try to reach me by way of his father. I wasn’t even entirely certain what yachting was.
I guessed my expression made that clear. “Yes, Miss Jones,” said the headmistress testily. “Yachting. It means to go out to sea on a yacht. For pleasure.”
It was a bright and balmy Friday afternoon, and I was trapped in her office. Blue sky, blue as cornflowers, shone through the tall windows around us. One of them had been opened; bridal lace surged and fell with a lazy breeze, and everything smelled of cut grass.
All the other students were off enjoying the hours of freedom that stretched from now until Monday morning, but I had been summoned here and directed to one of those fat, sinking wing chairs to contend with a person whose mood seemed far more suited for a wintry day than this one.
“How kind of him,” I said. It seemed a benign enough response.
“The trip is scheduled for Sunday. I suppose, just