Page 18 of Dragon Kissed

“This is Veronica Sokolov.” His eyes moved across the hall — to Caelen, to Lirien, to two figures Nica only now registered standing deeper in the shadows of the great room, very still, oriented toward her, still and intent, unwilling to be seen. “She is under the protection of this house.”

He said it as simply as he’d said everything else. And she did not understand why the sentence made her heart race — a weight that was not about her, or not only about her, that seemed to settle on every person in the room except her. Caelen’s chin lifted. Lirien’s hands tightened once around Nica’s. Deeper in the room, one of the still figures bowed its head, and somewhere below the floor, beneath the crash of the sea, Nica felt rather than heard a low answering vibration, as if the house itself had registered the words and agreed to them.

I imagined that part.

Lirien didn’t so much release her hand as transfer her — seamless, practiced, as though she had steered frightened people across this threshold for longer than seemed possible — into the warmth of the entry hall. Stone and old beams darkened with age. A fire in a hearth large enough to stand inside, throwing heat and the resin-sweet smell of burning cedar across the room. Rugs underfoot worn soft as moss. Cliff-face windows throwing ocean light across walls hung with art plainly gathered over a very long time rather than arranged to impress. And in an alcove, glimmering under its own small light, a Russian icon.

Nica stopped. Her feet had crossed the hall before her brain approved the decision.

The Mother of God looked out from beneath a darkened layer of varnish, one hand raised. Twelfth century. Thirteenth at the latest. Novgorod school, and not a reproduction. She leaned close without touching. The gold leaf had been repaired at least twice, and along the lower border, half hidden by the frame, ranthree Cyrillic characters in forms no living church had used in centuries.

“Do you know it?” Demetri asked behind her. Always behind her. Always watching. She could feel the weight of that attention on her back like a hand between her shoulder blades, and her body warmed under it in a way that had nothing to do with the fire.

“It’s not in any public catalog I’ve ever seen.”

“It would not be.”

“Where did you get it?”

His gaze moved to the icon. “Russia. North of Moscow. A long time ago.”

“You’re terrible at this.”

“At what?”

“Answering an ordinary question like an ordinary person.”

From somewhere behind them Caelen made a small sound — a cough, possibly. Demetri looked at the icon and said nothing, and Nica bent again to the lower border, to the old letters nearly swallowed by the frame, and read the part of the family name the gilt hadn’t hidden.

“Vas—” She stopped. Straightened. “Vasiliev.”

The silence that followed had a texture to it.

“Family piece,” she said. It was not quite a question.

“Yes.”

“How old?”

“Very.”

She looked at him — at the flat, controlled composure she was beginning to be able to tell apart from genuine calm — and decided, for tonight, to let it go.

“Come,” Lirien said gently. “Your rooms are upstairs. You’ll want to see the locks before anything else, and then you’ll want to eat, whatever you tell us to the contrary.”

Rooms. Plural. Of course.

Nica followed her up a broad staircase of stone and dark iron while Demetri and Caelen spoke quietly below. She caught only two words —outer wards— before Caelen lowered his voice. The second-floor gallery curved around the entry hall, tall windows facing nothing but fog and dark. The house should have creaked; old houses always creaked. This one made no sound at all beyond the distant fire and the sea, as though it were holding its breath, or listening.

Lirien stopped before a set of double doors. “These are yours.”

Nica stepped inside and nearly turned around. A sitting room in pale blues and warm cream, a low fire behind glass, French doors to a private balcony, and beyond an archway a bedroom with a bed large enough to qualify as real estate. Her bag had already arrived, set on a bench at the foot of it. She looked behind her; the driver hadn’t followed them up.

“How did?—”

“Staff stairs,” Lirien said.

“Right.”