Shana Abe Quotes

I didn't think students were allowed below the main floor. I knew the kitchens were there, as were most of the servants' quarters; the professors and Mrs. Westcliffe had their own aboveground wing on the other side of the castle. No one had ever specifically told me not to go below stairs, however-probably because a true Iverson girl would never, ever dream of mingling with the help.
I could always say I'd gotten lost. The pillars of the world would hardly collapse. The sky would not shatter. I was barely a hairbreadth away from being the help myself.

The shelf number for the book would be inked in beside it, but each shelf contained about fifty books, so you had to hang there on the ladder and read every spine of every one until you came across yours.
Let it be said that nothing was ever accomplished in haste at Iverson.

How good to see you, Miss Jones."
That debonair tone, the friendly press of his hand upon mine. It was such a contrast to our final moments in the cottage that I couldn't help but smirk.
"Thank you for having me," I replied, loudly enough for the duke to hear.
"But I haven't," said Armand under his breath. "So far."
I tugged back my hand. "Ever the gentleman, aren't you?"
"I try. Come aboard, waif. Come and experience a gentleman's world.

I love you. At your best and your worst, I love you. Paris or Darkfrith. Here, there, and everywhere, I love you.

There is a fierce joy to letting loose, to cutting yourself free from all the countless mundane threads of restraint that fix like you in your place, that tighten so gradually day by day that you do not even realize how bowed you are until you're quit of them.

Stop," Jesse said.
I stared up at him, almost panting with fear.
"Stop, beloved," he said more gently, and took up my clenched fist with both hands. "I've upset you, and I shouldn't have. I don't want you to dread yourself. I don't want you to dread what is to come. Like I said, you're exceptional, so there may be nothing to worry about at all. But whatever happens, whatever you face, I'll face it with you. Do you hear?"
"How can you say it? It nearly happened on the roof today. You can't know-"
"I will be with you. We're together now, and the universe knows I won't let you make your sacrifice alone. Dragon protects star. Star adores dragon. An age-old axiom. Simple as that."
I looked down at our hands, both of his curled over mine. I unclenched my fist. Blood from the thorn smeared my skin.
"The universe," I muttered. "The same universe that has produced the Kaiser and bedbugs and Chloe Pemington. How reassuring."
With the same absolute concentration he might have shown for turning flowers into gold, Jesse Holms smoothed out my fingers between his, wiping away the blood. He turned my hand over and lifted it to his lips. His next words fell soft as velvet into the heart of my palm.
"Those nights, in the sweetest dark, we shared our dreams. That's you answer. I was stitched into yours, and you were stitched into mind, and that was real, I promise you." I felt his lips curve into a smile. The unbelievably sensual, ticklish scuff of his w

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But Holms had proven stalwart and valiant. When Miss Jones had shown up to discover them in the castle hallway, because she'd heard a suspicious noise and had feared for her schoolchums' safety, they' d had to bring her along. She'd wanted to run straight to the headmistress, of course, but Armand had persuaded her not to. How he regretted that decision now!
The duke had fired his guns at them all. They'd retreated, thought to go to the automobile to fetch a doctor and the sheriff, but they'd stumbled the wrong way and fallen down the slope to the beach instead. All three of them. And there, noble Jesse had died.
Fact. Fiction. Likely because so much of it had happened, and because Armand's red-eyed, stoic distress seemed so genuine, the adults around us had accepted it as truth.
Mostly.
I think if I hadn't been discovered wearing only Armand's coat as I knelt next to Jesse's body, Mrs. Westcliffe might have found the whole thing easier to swallow.
Yet the official version ruled the day. And here we all were basking in it, breathing fresh sea air, warmed by the generous spring sun. Burying a hero. A far, far greater hero than anyone standing around me at his funeral would ever suspect.
Somewhere in deep-blue briny waters, a U-boat rested, filled with live torpedoes and solid-gold men.
I thought I better understood Rue's letters now. I understood her warning about the pain that would come with my Gifts.
I understood my sacrifice.

Im going to kiss you, Eleanore" he said quietly, still looking at her. "Not now. Later." His eyes cut back to mine. "I thought it fair to tell you first." I stilled. "If you think you can do so without me biting your lip, feel free to try." His gaze shone wicked blue. "I dont mind if you bite." "Biting your lip off, I should have said." "Ah,Lets see how it goes, shall we?

I'm spending until dawn with you," I said firmly. "Don't bother to argue."
"God forbid," said Jesse, solemn.
I pushed past him into the cottage. He'd been waiting up for me, I could tell. There was a book spread facedown upon the table, a pair of lamps lit beside it.
"I thought you said you were resting tonight.
"Aye. I was. But then it occurred to me that the bed wasn't nearly so comfortable without you. So I got up and hoped."
I crossed my arms over my chest and dug my toes into the soft nap of the rug. The cottage had been built within a protective circle of birches; even during the heat of the day, it was never very warm.
"You hoped for me?" I asked, uncertain.
Jesse came close, put his arms around me, and buried his face in my hair. "As always. As ever."
"And I came," I whispered, closing my eyes, breathing him. The ache behind my forehead began to unbind.
"And you came," he agreed.
And he summoned the magic that was all his own, beyond stars and starfire. A magic of mortal lips and hands, of bristly new whiskers scraping my chin, of melting kisses that made the whiskers unimportant.
Our bodies entwined, or hearts. Our lives.
I think that was the night a very quiet, very powerful part of me began to comprehend how it was going to be. I think the part of me that was magic, that had broken away from the practical earth to slip along Jesse's celestial family of stars, to allow them to bind me in their spell…

I am wed now. My husband is Zane. I'm sorry.

She was too compelling to look at directly. Bright like the sun, bright and terrible. Only one other being could look upon her, and that was Death. And so…they became lovers."
He said the word like a caress, like velvet again, and my face began to heat.
"Together they forged great and hellish things," Jesse murmured. "Lightning and waterfalls that churned into clouds off the tip of the world. Chasms so winding deep that daylight never traced their endings. They dreamed through golden days and silvered nights. All the other creatures envied or adored them, because Death and the Elemental were destruction and creation joined as One. In the natural order of things, they should not have been stronger joined. And yet they were."
He shifted, coming closer to me. A hand settled lightly atop my chest, directly over my heart. At our feet the seawater splashed a little, as if disturbed by something rolling over in the dark, distant deep.
"Centuries passed, and mankind began to devour the earth, even the wildest places. They had tools to invent and wars to fight and grubby, short lives. Nothing about them dwelled in the magic of the ancient spirits. So although Death, the Great Hunter, prospered as he sieved through their villages, the Elemental, strong as she once was, thinned into a web of gossamer. Human lives simply tore her apart."
His hand was so warm. Warmer than I, warmer than the air, and still just barely touching me. The light behind my lids never lif

I love you. Even more than gold and dreams, I love you. It seems insane you haven't realize it. You were the one who first informed me of it.

Are the family lists complete yet?" he asked George.
"Aye, my lord. We've gathered the names of every possible successful runner for the last forty years. Not many men, I'll tell you that. Six at most, and all were thought to be very much dead. Four apparently lost to fire-you remember the blaze that leveled the tavern in '33-one to drowning, and one bloke to, ah, wolves."
Kit raised his brows. "Wolves?"
"That's what his son said. Stirling Jacobs was his name. Liked to hunt at dawn. Liked a challenge. Known to venture out beyond our boundaries. Bones were found, possibly his. That's all."
"How old would this man be now?"
"Let's see...nearing eighty, I'd say."
Kit gazed at him over the mess of china and papers.
"Your instructions were to consider everyone." George shifted in the chair, uneasy. "And I've bloody well considered everyone."

-Kit & George

Lia: "You've changed your mind about wanting to marry me. You're afraid I'll burn down your home. Embarrass you in front of all the other city brutes."
Zane: "I'm afraid," he said gently, "that you will burn down my heart.

You said I was pretty, before."
"Did I?" A new laugh escaped him, mirthless. "How unoriginal. I must be the master of understatement. I think you're goddamned radiant, and you know it. Sometimes I think if I look at you too long I'll go blind, like a lunatic staring straight into the sun. No," he said in a savage undertone, and let the gown fall back to the floor. "You're not pretty.

I want you in the sky, and against the earth. I want to kiss you again, I want to touch you, I want to feel you in my arms and I want to hear you gasping my name when I'm inside you. I want all that, and I want it badly. Every time I look at you, I want it.
-Kit to Rue

You're naught but a human man. You couldn't possibly understand."
He lifted a brow, still smiling. "Liar."
"Cutpurse."
"Runaway."
"Swindler!
"Coward," he said softly, and she jerked back.
"Bastard!"
"Undoubtedly true." He made a short bow.

Nothing helped tea. It simply was what it was, which was boiling hot and flavorless.

Why do you want to know?"
The shrug again. "Just wondering."
"Really. You've skipped your lawn tennis or duck hunting or whiskey drinking or whatever else people of your sort do all day, only to come all the way out to the island to ask me about the piano piece. Because you were just wondering." I pushed away from the door. "Coming here to kiss me would have been more believable."
"Well, it was second on my list."
"I'm not intimidated by you," I said, blunt. "If you're hoping I'll turn out to be some pathetic, blubbering little rag-girl who begs you not to ruin her, you're in for a surprise."
"That's good." Lord Armand met my eyes. "I like surprises."
We gazed at each other, he on the bed and me by the door, neither of us giving quarter. It seemed to me that the room was growing even more dim, that time was repeating the same ploy it had pulled in Jesse's cottage, drawing out long and slow. The storm outside railed against the castle walls, drowning the air within. It layered darkness through Armand's eyes, the once-vivid blue now deep as the ocean at night.
Beyond my window the rain fell and fell, fat clouds weeping as if they'd never stop.
"Nice bracelet," Armand said softly. "Did you steal it?"
I shook my head. "You gave it to me."
"Did I?"
"As far as everyone else if concerned, yes. You did."
"Hmm. And what do I get in return for agreeing to be your…benefactor?"
"The answer to your question."
"No kiss?"

She did what she could for him. She kissed him in return. She lost her breath and both her hearts, and finally Turned to smoke and back.

I don't know how these matters are supposed to go," she said finally, in the dark. "I was raised amid mountains and the Milky Way. But it seems to me that if a lady tells a gentleman she is in love with him, even if she's actually just a serf, he ought to either reciprocate the emotion or else leave the room."
"Oh? Is there not a third option? Perhaps, say, a thorough ravishment instead?"
"That is hardly gentlemanly. And I don't think you should call me Princess any longer, either. I'll be a countess, I suppose."
"No, beloved. Remember? A king."
"I'll settle for queen.

Whether you like it or not, we are your blood."
"Half my blood."
"Aye," agreed the marquess, sober. "Although 'twould seem you've gotten the better half by far. All beauty, none of the beast."
She blinked at that, crossed her arms.
"How charming! Had you planned that for long?"
"Only since this morning." He shrugged, unabashed. "I'll do better in London."
"Please, don't bother."
"I'm afraid I cant help myself. I'm charming by nature.

Don't allow yourself to waste that chance. Don't succumb to any…distractions."
I could only imagine my expression. Miss Swanston lowered her candy-red lashes and glanced back at Armand.
"Oh," I said, swallowing. "No. Definitely not."
"Forgive me. He seems quite taken with you."
The bite of roll lodged in my throat; I coughed. "He isn't, I assure you."
"Eleanore, it grieves me to correct you, but he is staring at you even now. He hasn't been able to tear his eyes from you since we arrived."
I couldn't tell her the truth. I couldn't say anything like, Armand doesn't count. Armand's not even in the game. I'm in love with a boy made of stars, and we're going to live together ever after on gold and smoke and moonlight, and that's my happy future, no matter what any of you think.
I scowled down at my plate. "He's simply…"
"Yes?" she prompted, very mild.
I searched for the right word. "I don't know what he is," I admitted finally, frustrated. "Bored, I suppose."
"Yes," she said again, just as mild. "I'm glad you've realized it, too."
"But I'm not dense. He's nobility. I know-I know what I am. I know what to avoid."
"Good," Miss Swanston said once more, and gave me her wistful smile.

It wasn't an itch. It was a sickness. It was poison blazing through him, thinking of her all the time, watching her, touching her, wanting and wanting and wanting until his mind went black.

What is what?" asked Armand. "I don't hear anything."
I hadn't taken my eyes from Jesse. "There's more than one. Two at least, right?"
"Two," he said. "I hear two."
Armand stood. "Two what?"
I sent him a look. "Zeppelins. Headed this way."
He stared at us, silent. And really, what could he say? Sorry my father doomed us all? Nice knowing you?
"All right, all right." I chafed my hands nervously up and down my sides, rumpling the shirt. "I can-I can fly up there. Turn to dragon. Claw them open, make them crash." Instinctively, I turned to Jesse, almost plaintive. "Can't I?"
He took up my and. I swear I saw the stars brighten around him, a sparkling, silvered nimbus. "Perhaps."
"Well, I have to. That's all there is to it. I have to."
"No," burst out Armand. "They have guns! Bombs! They'll fill you with holes before you can blink!"
"Not if I'm smoke."
"Smoke can't tear apart a dirigible!

Lia whispered, "I don't snore."
And the thief angled his gaze warm to hers, offering his lazy smile. "Aye, love, but if you did, I'd still treasure every one.

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When her gaze met his, her irises were luminous, pooling bright silvery purple, a definitely inhuman glow.
He'd awoken the beast in her.
Good.
"What are you?" she whispered.
Jesse took a step back to clear his head, to free himself from the tendrils of her sorcery. It'd be easier for both of them if he could think straight.
Right. He needed to focus. He'd waited his lifetime for this moment, but, even so, the words came with difficulty.
It was never painless to bare a soul.
"I am both less than you and more," he said. "An alchemist, an amalgamation of two opposite realms. I'm the fabric of the stars.

They fire lots of bullets very, very quickly. Quicker than anything else."
I looked up and around the bedroom, the mismatched furniture, the weirdly firm light. "Why? What could you hunt with those? What could they have to do with anything?"
"I don't know," he replied. "That's what's so unnerving."
I rubbed a hand to my forehead, feeling an ache beginning to build behind my skull. "Armand."
His eyes went to mine.
I had to say this carefully; I had no wish to add to his despair, but I couldn't let it go. "Do you think…do you suppose it's possible that your father might…mean to do you any harm?"
But I'd actually made him smile. A real one, too, even if it came acerbic and thin. "With a pair of Vickers? Not unless he means to mount them in the hallway and spry me with bullets when I'm not paying attention. Seems like rather a spot of work for him. Surely even an unwelcome heir is better than none."
I returned his smile as I pulled away my hand. "I think we need to teach you how to Turn to smoke, just in case. It's a handy thing to be able to vanish in a hurry."
His smile widened, but there was no humor left to it. "Handy." He fell back against the blankets of the bed, his eyes gone shiny and hard. "If I could vanish into smoke, Eleanore, I'd leave this place and never return. That's a promise."
"Just like Rue," I said softly.

You do speak." It came out as an accusation.
"When there's someone around worth speaking to.

I want to love, and be loved.

The duke's son and the pauper girl. I suppose as a couple we were the most interesting thing in view.
I took the champagne glass from Armand and finished what he hadn't. As Sophia had said, it wasn't swill.
So much for my manners.
"Why am I here?" I asked curtly, handing back the empty flute.
"Because I invited you."
I dropped my voice. "Did you find out anything about Rue?"
"Is that why you came?"
"No, I came because I simply can't get enough of people looking down their noses at me. The girls at school are getting frightfully lax about it."
"Are they? How remiss of them. We're taught from the cradle how to look down our noses, you know, we rich sons of bitches. Perhaps Westcliffe's curriculum is a tad too liberal these days."
"Why, yes, my lord," I said very audibly. "I would enjoy seeing the rest of the boat."
"The yacht."
"That, yes.

He felt beyond himself. He felt for the first time in his adult life a shadow of fear in his heart
fear for her, for what he actually wanted from her
and for himself, for what he might do.

I guess you'll have to be a sodding duke now," I tried-clumsy, tasteless, and he only winced.
"Sorry." I covered his hand with mine. "That was dumb."
"No, you're right. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been stewing about it. Me and Reggie both. I think it's safe to say that this isn't remotely what either of us wanted."
"I'm sure you'll do swimmingly."
"Bugger that," he said, tired. "And bugger Aubrey, too. I wish I could say that to his face, even if he did go down a hero in a dogfight. Tell him what an ass he is for dying. For leaving me here like this."
"I know."
His hand twisted around until it covered mine.

I think the word despair is much too small to encompass the magnitude of all it defines. For me, right then, despair meant that everything within me-my organs, my spirit, my hope-plunged down into a place of utter density, of blackness so heavy and bleak I had no idea how to lift any of it up again.
I can't do this. I'm just Lora Jones. I can't even remember how to tell a shrimp fork from an oyster fork. I can barely find middle C. I can't save Jesse and Armand and the castle. I can't defeat them all.
But I had to. We were going to die unless I did.

I need to keep sharp. But when you're this damned close to me, all I think about is you. I think about your mouth, and I think about your breasts, and I think about your pink tongue and your legs wrapped around me. I think about touching you and you touching me
and then I look at you and you're giving me that look
yes, that one, just there, as if you want me to kiss you
please stop
He exhaled on a hiss, tipping his head back against the wood and pressing two fingers to the bridge of his nose.

All that effort," he mused, "merely to avoid me. How gratifying.

Whats it like, to be in love? The servants speak of it when they think I can't hear. I only wonder."
Lia turned around and tossed the cushion back to the chaise lounge. She found she didn't have an answer to Mari's question. She couldn't say what she'd heard her sisters always say, It's thrilling, or It's bliss, or He makes me so happy. She raised her head and swallowed the strangeness in her throat, walking to the fireplace, to the pianoforte, pressing a finger against the honey-buffed wood.
"It is," she said at last, "the most terrible feeling in the entire world."
And she meant it.
"Yes," the girl agreed, examining her face. "I think it must be.

It wasn't only you, Lord Langford. It was this place, these people. This life. I want nothing to do with it."
"It's a bit late for that, Rue. Whether you like it or not, we are your blood."
"Half my blood."
"Aye," agreed the marquess, sober. "Although 'twould seem you've gotten the better half by far. All beauty, none of the beast."
She blinked at that, and crossed her arms.
"How charming! Had you planned that for long?"
"Only since this morning." He shrugged, unabashed. "I'll do better in London."
"Please, don't bother."
"I'm afraid I can't help myself. I'm charming by nature." And he looked back at her now in utter and wicked innocence, snaring her in a world of sharp, splendid green.
-Rue & Kit

Armand towed me up and Jesse hustled me away. I staggered against him, looking past his shoulder just in time to see my nightgown dance over the rim of the roof, a twirling, empty ballerina blowing away to the stars.
"That was stupid," I said loudly.
"Too right it was." None of Armand's fury had left him.
"No, I mean you. Both of you. Following me like that. You could have been killed!"
"We were doing well enough until you-did that! Went to smoke like that."
"He couldn't shoot smoke!"
"He could have shot the half-wit on top of him!"
"But he didn't!" I swallowed, a lump of something sick rising in my throat. "I didn't kill him, did I?"
Armand seemed to shrink a little. He looked back at the duke and shook his head. "No. I think you knocked him out. He's breathing."
"Has anyone a coat?" I asked, and found myself crumpling down to the roof, a leisurely sort of collapse. Armand grabbed me by the arm again and I managed to remain seated instead of prone.
"Dragon-girl." Jesse was stripping off his shirt. "Bravest girl. I keep telling you to eat more.

rape or seduction, he'd take either

I've wanted you from the moment I first saw you in the museum. Before that. I wanted every part of you from the first time I felt you, your presence. I want you in the sky, and against the earth. I want to kiss you again, I want to touch you, I want to feel you in my arms and I want to hear you gasping my name when I'm inside you. I want all that, and I want it badly. Every time I look at you, I want it. So you're going to have to become used to that, Rue. It won't change.
(Christoff to Rue)

He mouthed the words to her that she could not see, and that she could not hear. It was all he dared tonight, strangers in a castle, strangers to this land, their future a great black question mark and an ending he could not foresee. He bent his lips to her ear and said without breathe:
Lia-heart. Little dragon. I love you too.

There's a word for this in English," he mused, still soft. "I can't recall it. I've made you a ... a fallen women. Yes?"
"Yes," I agreed, still smiling. "Thank you ever so much."
"It's been entirely my pleasure," he said in Romanian, and I turned my face into his sleeve and began to laugh.

But how…how am I a dragon? How are you a starman?"
"I don't think of myself as a starman, exactly," he said soberly, though I sensed he wanted to smile. His hand released mine, the bridge broken; he moved to hang the lantern on a shiny new hook dug into the wall behind us. "I was born here, on earth. Not even far from here, in fact. Just over in Devon. My parents died young, when I was only five. Hastings is my great-uncle and he took me in, and I've lived here ever since. But I've always known what I am, as far back as I can remember. I've always been able to do the things I do. The stars have always spoken to me."
"And you…speak back to them?"
"Yes," he said simply.
"But not to people."
"No. Just to Hastings, and to you."
A shiver took me; I crossed my arms over my chest. "What do the stars say?"
"All manner of things. Amazing things. Secret things. Things great and small, things profound and insignificant. They told me that, throughout time, there've been only a scattering of people like me, folk of both flesh and star. That even the whisper of their magic in my blood could annihilate me if I didn't learn to control it. That I'd crisp to ash without control. Or, worse, crisp someone else." His smile broke through. "And they told me about you. That you were born and would come to me when the time was right."
"Did you summon me here?" The muted echo of my voice rebounded against the firefly walls: here-here-here. "To Iverson, I mean?"<

I would have done anything. Don't you know that?"
"No."
"Then you haven't been paying close attention. I love you. Even more than gold and dreams, I love you. It seems insane you haven't realized it. You were the one who first informed me of it."
"I broke your leg," she said

Trust you? Rue
trust you? You counterfeited your own death rather than wed me. You told me you'd rather die than stay in Darkfrith. I can't
I don't know how to fix that. I don't know how to mend it. Tell me." He took a step toward her. "Tell me, and I'll do it.

Under the spell of the mighty Carpathians, with the breath of her creation blowing over her heart, Amalia's Gift splintered. She was given two futures: one dark, one bright, the same mortal lover pulling her two-handed into each.
Every step she took lured her closer to the dark.

The marquess lifted his palm to her, a man held in wind-tousled grace, waiting; still as the eye of a tempest was still, inexorable force only momentarily at bay. The heels of his shoes rested at the very, very edge of the rooftop. If the wind changed, if he lost his balance-
Beyond him were only trees and sky, the dark-misted storm sweeping emerald hills up to heaven.
"You are mad," Rue said again, but she found herself moving toward him. His fingers closed over hers; he raised her hand to his mouth and held it there, warming her skin with his.
"I prefer the word dashing.'
She huffed a breath, almost a laugh.
"Oh, and one more thing." Above their locked fingers he granted her a new smile, this one slow and blazingly sensual. "Little brown-haired girl ... I did notice you."
He Turned to smoke.
-Rue & Kit

There are things in this world," she said steadily, still holding Zane's eyes, "that defy easy words. There are things in this world worth protecting, fragile things, secret things. Things that would do great harm should they ever be handled carelessly."
"Rue." The marquess loomed just beyond her.
"Things like magic." She touched a finger to Zane's cheek, a shock of warmth. "Things like love."

-Rue, Zane, & Kit

Bundled in my shawl and uniform, I might have been partaking in any one of Mrs. Westcliffe's permitted after-supper al fresco activities, like:
Strolling to the edge of the rose garden to admire the sunset.
Strolling to the edge of the orchard to admire the sunset.
Strolling to the edge of the bridge to admire the sunset.
At England's foremost educational opportunity for young women, strolling to the brink of things was allowed. Leaving the green-plunging beyond brinks-was not.

I won't trouble you long," said Maricara. "No doubt you have all manner of pressing plans to consider. Spies to engage. Betrayals to enact. That sort of thing."
"Only on Sundays," Kim replied. "It's Tuesday. We're discussing stealing sweetmeats from small children today.

My dowry is thirty-five. A year."
His brows climbed. "You're joking."
"I would never joke about money with a notorious thief. Just imagine, in a mere two years you're at a profit."
"How I adore a woman who does mathematics in her head."
"I can forge signatures as well."
"Splendid. Exactly the bride I've been hoping for.

I'll start in the air," I said, far more steadily than I thought I could, considering. I knelt to tie the shirt around his thigh, cinching it tight above the wound; he stiffened but let me finish the knot. "The air first, the airship, and then-then I'll dive."
"You can't swim," broke in Armand. "You told me that you can't."
"Maybe I can now. If I'm a dragon."
"Don't be an idiot! If you can't swim, you can't swim, Eleanore! You'll drown out there, and what the bloody hell do you think you're going to do anyway to a U-boat? Bite it open?"
I stood again. "Yes! If I must! I don't hear you coming up with a better-"
"You'll die out there!"
"Or we'll all die here!"
"We're going to find another way!"
"You two work on that. I'm off." I fixed them both with one last, vehement look, the Turn rising inside me.
Remember this. Remember them, this moment, this heartbreak, these two boys. Remember that they loved you.
Armand had reached for my shoulders. "I forbid-Eleanore, please, no-"
"No," echoed Jesse, speaking at last. "You're not going after the submarine, Lora. You won't need to."
Armand and I paused together, glancing down at him. I stood practically on tiptoe, so ready to become my other self.
Jesse climbed clumsily to his feet. When he swayed, we both lunged to catch him.
"Armand will take me to the shore. I'll handle the U-boat."
"How?" demanded Armand at once.
But I understood. I could read him so wel

Hullo," he said sleepily, rubbing a hand along his jaw.
He's here in my room, right in the middle of the afternoon. Great God, there's a boy in my bed in my room-
I came to life. "Get out!"
He yawned, a lazy yawn, a yawn that clearly indicated he had no intention of leaving. In the moody gray light his body seemed a mere suggestion against the covers, his hair a shaded smudge against the paler lines of his collar and face.
"But I've been waiting for you for over an hour up here, and bloody boring it's been, too. I've never known a girl who didn't keep even mildly wicked reading material hidden somewhere in her bedchamber. I've had to pass the time watching the spiders crawl across your ceiling."
Voices floated up from downstairs, a maids' conversation about rags and soapy water sounding horribly loud, and horribly close.
I shut the door as gently as I could and pressed my back against it, my mind racing. No lock, no bolt, no key, no way to keep them out if they decided to come up…
Armand shifted a bit, rearranging the pillows behind his shoulders.
I wet my lips. "If this is about the kiss-"
"No." He gave a slight shrug. "I mean, it wasn't meant to be. But if you'd like-"
"You can't be in here!"
"And yet, Eleanor, here I am. You know, I remember this room from when I used to live in the castle as a boy. It was a storage chamber, I believe. All the shabby, cast-off things tossed up here where no one had to look at them." He

I didn't ask you to catch me!"
"You're so delightful when you're irrational. Of course I'm going to catch you." He slid a hand behind her nape and kissed her again. "It's what I do.

Something inside his chest unlocked
wildly, slowly, a peculiar sort of melting. He was lost. He was the thorn and the thistle, blown upon her breeze. He felt, strangely enough, staring into her yes, like he was going to weep.

You snore."
"I don't!"
"Only a little. Very ladylike snores. I found them charming.

"I don't!" "I don't!"