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The building had many windows, but the moth took the Fairy to the one from where the cries were coming. And there was the infant. Wrapped in layers of pale blue cloth and white lace, he was barely visible in the arms of the young nun. But the tiny hand grabbing the black habit was the pale color of red moonstone.
Though dawn was still hours away, the Dark One had Chithira stop the carriage. She didn’t want to feel what she was feeling. Relief, as though she’d recovered a piece of herself.
She stepped down from the carriage. The countryside around her was very different from the wooded riverbank she’d just seen through the moth. Lotharaine? No. The convents there looked different.
She was still holding the moth between her hands. What should she do? She’d kept that child alive. She owed him her protection, even if what she felt for him scared her.
She let the moth fly.
She told it to find Kami’en and to show him the images she’d just seen. He loved the child. He loved him so much. He would find him.
The night was lit brightly by the two moons. They both hung in the sky so large they looked as though they might descend to earth at any moment. Donnersmarck was looking up at them. He’s getting stronger, his eyes said when they met hers. Please! Protect me! She should’ve also protected the child that lived only through her. Instead, she’d sat in a glass cage and bemoaned her lost love.
Should she tell Donnersmarck that nothing he’d learned as a soldier was going to help him in this fight with the stag, nothing he knew about himself or this world? He probably sensed it. His fear looked so alien on his face, as alien as what was stirring inside him.
She went to his horse, took the reins, and looked up at him.
“What exactly are you afraid of?” she asked. “That he’ll make you forget who you are? And? Look at your memories. Most of them are of pain, struggle, fear. He won’t take your joy or your love or your strength. He won’t let you forget to eat, sleep, or breathe. True, he knows nothing of yesterday or tomorrow, but might that not be a good thing? You’ll see, he knows much more about the now.”
Donnersmarck didn’t understand what she was saying, but soon he would.
“Stay with him,” she said to Chithira. The dead, she’d learned, knew much more about this world than the living.
Donnersmarck peered after her as she stepped into the night.
If she wanted to find the strength they all needed of her, she would have to be alone. The wide countryside around her seemed to know nothing of time. It made her feel young again. And the Dark Fairy let herself grow until she could feel the clouds in her hair. For far too long she’d made herself small, made herself fit into their world.
There art Others
The Goyl was hiding behind an advertising column on the other side of the street. Jacob had told Fox that Hentzau was having them followed, but this Goyl was new. His skin was pale yellow citrine.
Fox hadn’t asked Jacob how he’d lost the Goyl who’d been tailing him—they each had their very different methods—but while she was waiting for the guards to open the gate, Sylvain suddenly stood behind her.
“I’m coming with you,” he whispered, “because of that one.”
He pointed not very inconspicuously at the Goyl. Nothing Sylvain did was inconspicuous, even when he tried to be. Fox was touched that he’d gotten it into his head to protect her, but she had no idea how to deal with such attention. She wasn’t used to someone looking out for her. Jacob rarely did it because he knew she could very well take care of herself, and he knew how it irritated her when someone doubted that.
“Sylvain,” she said, “I am grown up. I don’t need a father.” The father I needed is long dead.
Sylvain sheepishly rubbed his perpetually unshaved chin. The dark stubble sprouting barely an hour after he’d scraped his skin, the curly hair, and even the bushy eyebrows—he really did look like a faun with his soft lips and brown eyes. Even his ears were a little pointy at the top, not to mention his insatiable appetite for good food and any kind of alcohol. Sylvain was such a strange mix of strength and vulnerability, of grown-up man and naughty boy. Sometimes Fox thought all the men she knew had the dreams and wishes of nine-year-old boys—at least all the men she liked.
“I apologize. It’s the red hair.” The sinister look he shot across the street was probably meant for the Goyl. “Reminds me of my daughter. One of them. I have three. Tabarnak—I’ve told you, non?” His eyes followed a taxi, as though he wanted it to drive him away from his memories. Sylvain had something on his mind, that much was very clear.
The guard gave her an irritated look when she stopped in the middle of the open gate.
“Is there something else, Sylvain?”
He studied the knuckles of his right hand. “I don’t know how to say... You and Jacob, you know about all these magic treasures. Do you know, maybe, of a magic something that brings back love?”
He was trying really hard to sound nonchalant, but Fox heard the yearning through his words, of many sad days filled with longing. She would’ve loved to answer yes, but she knew of no such magic.
“You should ask Chanute,” she said. “He knows more about magic than me and Jacob combined.”
But Sylvain shook his head. “Non!” he muttered. “That would be too embarrassing. Albert would make fun of me.”
“Nonsense! When it comes to love, Albert Chanute is much more sentimental than you think. He’ll probably go off to find something for you right away. Ask him!”
Sylvain looked dubious as he glanced up at the window of Chanute’s bedroom. He was still standing there when the guard closed the gate behind Fox. “A magic something that brings back love.” As she crossed the street, Fox wondered about the love Sylvain had lost. And how it must be not to feel it anymore. She’d felt the same love for so long now...
