Chapter 18 #2
So Celia forced herself to shrug. “It’s not that big of a deal. You’ve already seized it once. And Mr. Pratt had a tug at it yesterday too.” She patted her utility belt. “I have enough imaginings to cut myself free if you can’t release me.”
Ezra glanced over his shoulder. Other travelers were taking tea in the dining car, admiring the sunrise while attendants bustled up and down the aisle with trays of bread, butter, and eggs. “Is there someplace more private we can go?”
She shrugged again. “I doubt anyone else in this car is Enlightened. No one noticed my pyrotechnic circus.”
The scholar’s expression stayed pleading. “There’s too many other shadows here…”
Celia doubted that would make much of a difference—a waiter might double back, causing gentlemen to wait extra long for their eggs—but the fear on her companion’s face was clear.
It spoke of something worse. Do you really want to lock yourself in a room with him?
Alone? Do you think you can dance with such shadows and stop when you want?
You think the darkness holds freedom? Oh, Celia, my dear, will you ever learn?
The ache of that last question, asked in her father’s silenced voice, caused Celia to reach across the table and reclaim her lighter. “I believe there’s an unoccupied compartment across from mine. We can use that.”
More sunrise spilled through the window as Celia raised the vacant cabin’s shade. Dust motes glittered and her shadow inked the upholstery as she came to sit beside Ezra. He watched her silhouette warily. As if she was the one who might suddenly strike.
“All right.” Nerves sizzled beneath Celia’s words.
Ezra seemed to hear them. “Are you certain?”
“Yes,” she said, before anything else could leave her mouth. “Take my shadow, Ezra.”
A long breath cycled through his lips. The train rocked and the bench’s velvet fabric prickled against Celia’s wrist. Her hand was nowhere near the scholar’s glowing fist—yet the prickling sensation seemed to grow.
Warm. Then warmer. She felt a tug, then watched in amazement as her shadow started to bend along the seat, joining itself to the edges of Ezra’s own body.
The fit was seamless: her darkness against his skin.
Even though he was wearing his rumpled safari suit, she could feel the urgent cut of muscles.
So perfectly sculpted. She recalled every exposed inch she’d seen in the Cotswolds bedroom.
Then, it had made her blush, but now, the burn went even deeper.
It hadn’t felt like this with Hugo Pratt.
Or anyone else, for that matter.
Ezra exhaled and the shadow between them unspooled, back into the slant of sunlight that sparkled past the shades. Celia managed a sharp breath of her own.
The scholar caught it, eyes going wide. “Are you all right? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No,” she said haltingly. “No, it doesn’t hurt…”
It was more than a little like the lighter’s fire—not just the tickle of flames on your knuckles, but the connection that crackled just a bit further, when you decided to shape it.
Was the want all hers? Celia could still feel it, now that her shadow was back in place.
She could see something past the green in Ezra’s gaze too.
“We can stop. Just say the word—”
“The only thing I want you to stop is second-guessing yourself,” she broke in. “Let’s try again. Hold me longer, this time.”
He blushed at this.
Celia felt heat rising in her too. It had been a very long time since she’d felt this close to someone… if close was what you would call her shadow curving back into his.
They melted into one.
She felt Ezra’s edges, just as she was sure he felt hers, and it went well beyond their physical bodies—she suddenly understood what it was to sit for hours in the quiet of a library, or to watch that last sliver of home drown in a blue horizon, or to call out for your mother when she disappeared behind a pile of red stones, or to call out for her again in an empty flat, or to cry out for your son as a crocodile rose out of the Nile—
All of this vanished as Ezra pushed away, bodily moving toward the compartment door while their shadows split back into place.
“Why did you stop?” Celia asked accusingly.
“You—you screamed.”
Had she?
Celia sat very still on the cushion, considering what had just happened. “I don’t think it was me—I—” She hesitated. “Did you feel anything?”
Hair spilled across his temples as he nodded.
“I felt… you. That sounds strange, I know, but I’m not sure how else to express it.
I felt what it was like to stow away inside that steamer trunk.
And how happy you were when your father took you to Carnaval des Merveilles.
And how awful it was to lose him. And how scared you are of losing anything else… ”
Celia swallowed.
Dark magic. That’s what Papa had called shadow-stringing.
Yet it didn’t feel that way with Ezra. It was terrifying, yes, but only because sharing shades of her soul with someone else was so damn intimate…
only because now when she looked at Ezra Bright, she could see the scholar and the soldier and the six-year-old child who tossed pinecones at his brother.
And the way he was looking back at her now?
Celia shivered.
It was not altogether unpleasant.
She could see, quite easily, how dangerous this power would be in the wrong hands.
But Ezra’s hands weren’t wrong.