Daughter of Smoke and Bone(55)

“I’ll be right back,” she said, and stepped into the hall and then the tiny bathroom. Separated from him, she experienced a sharp fear that she would return to find him gone. She relieved herself, wondering if seraphim were above such mundane needs—though judging from the duskiness of his jaw, Akiva was not above the need for a razor—then splashed water on her face and brushed her teeth. She ran a brush through her hair, and every moment she lingered, her anxiety grew that when she returned she would find just an empty room, balcony door standing open and the whole universe of sky above, giving no hint which way he’d gone.

But he was still there. His wings were glamoured gone again, his swords strapped in place at his back, innocuous in their decorative leather sheaths.

“Um,” she said, “bathroom’s in there, if, uh…”

He nodded and went past her, awkward as he tried to wedge his invisible wings into the tiny space and get the door closed.

Karou hurriedly changed into clean clothes, then went to the window. It was still dark out. The clock said five. She was starving, and knew from her previous morning’s foraging that there was nothing even remotely edible in the kitchen. When Akiva emerged, she asked, “Are you hungry?”

“As if I might die of it.”

“Come on, then.” She picked up her coat and keys and started toward the door, then paused and changed direction. She went out onto the balcony instead, climbed up onto the balustrade, glanced back over her shoulder at Akiva, and stepped right off.

Six stories to the street, she landed light as hopscotch, unable to suppress a smile. Akiva was right beside her, unsmiling as ever. She couldn’t quite imagine him smiling; he was so somber, but wasn’t there something in the way he looked at her? There, in that sidelong glance: a hint of wonder? She recalled the things he’d said in the night, and now, seeing flickers of feeling interrupt the sad gravity of his face, it shot a pang through her heart. What had his life been like, given over so young to war? War. It was an abstraction to her. She couldn’t conceptualize its reality, not even the edges of its reality, but the way Akiva had been—dead-eyed—and the way he looked at her now, it made her feel as if he was coming back from the dead for her, and that seemed a tremendous thing, and an intimate one. The next time their eyes met, she had to look away.

She took him to her corner bakery. It wasn’t open yet, but the baker sold them hot loaves through the window—honey-lavender, fresh from the oven and still steaming in their crinkly brown bags—and then Karou did what anyone would do if they could fly and found themselves out on the streets of Prague at dawn with loaves of hot bread to eat.

She flew, gesturing to Akiva to follow, up into the sky and over the river, to perch on the high, cold cupola of the cathedral bell tower, and watch the sun rise.





Akiva kept close behind her, watching the snap of her hair, its long tendrils taking on the damp of dawn. Karou had been wrong to suppose her flying didn’t surprise him. It was only that he had learned over many years to crush down all feeling, all reaction. Or he thought he had. In the presence of this girl, it seemed, nothing was certain.

There was a neatness in the way she sliced through the air. It was magic—not glamoured wings, but simply the will to fly made manifest. A wish, he supposed, from Brimstone’s own supply. Brimstone. The thought of the sorcerer came on like an ink splash, a black thought against the brightness of Karou.

How could something as light as Karou’s graceful flight come from the evil of Brimstone’s magic?

They flew above casual observation, over the river and veering in the direction of the castle, where they circled down toward the cathedral at its heart. It was a Gothic beast, carved and weathered like some tortured cliff battered by ages of storms. Karou alighted upon the cupola of the bell tower. It was not a kind perch. The wind scoured past, full of ice and ill will, and Karou had to gather her hair in her hands and hold it off her face. She produced a pencil—the same one she had brandished at him?—knotted her hair, and shoved the pencil through it; an all-purpose implement. Blue wisps escaped the arrangement and danced across her brow, blowing over her eyes and catching on her lips, which were smiling with uncomplicated, childlike delight. “We’re on the cathedral,” she said to him.

He nodded.

“No. We’re on the cathedral,” she said again, and he thought he was missing something, some nuance lost in language, but then he realized: She was just amazed. Amazed to be perching atop the cathedral, high on the hill above Prague with everything below her. She hugged her arms around the warm bread and stood looking out, and on her face was a naked awe more potent than Akiva could ever recall feeling, even when flying was new. It was likely he had never felt any such thing. His own early flights weren’t occasion for awe or joy—only discipline. But he wanted to be part of the moment that was making her face shine like that, so he moved to her side and looked out.

It was a remarkable sight, the sky beginning to flush pale at the roots, all the towers bathed in a soft glow, the streets of the city still shadowed and aglitter with fireflies of lamplight and the weaving, winking beams of headlights.

“You haven’t come up here before?” he asked.

She turned to him. “Oh, yes, I bring all the boys up here.”

“And if they don’t meet with approval,” he said, “you can always push them off.”