The first time, he stammered an invitation over a bouquet of orange roses and Esme's voice was almost a whisper when she said, "All right," her eyes fixed on the flower petals. She met him the next morning with her coat buttoned to her chin and they made their way up Birdcage Walk with their hands shoved deep in their pockets, noses red from the cold. They paused a moment to watch the red-coated soldiers strut at Horse Guards Parade.
"I used to want to be one," admitted Tom. "I even practiced marching like them. I didn't know they were real soldiers who go to war. I just liked the caps."
"They kill bears to make those," said Esme.
"I know," he replied, adding quickly, "I don't want to be one anymore."
Turning from the soldiers, they made their way into the park. Tom produced some bread from his pocket and they fed the ducks and watched the famous pelicans cruise through the green waters of the lake like a fleet of small ships. They walked side by side and faced ahead, from time to time daring to dart quick glances at each other. Esme noticed the good line of Tom's jaw, and Tom marveled at the sweet small perfection of Esme's face, and their furtive glances kept meeting in the middle. They blushed over and over and shoved their fists deeper into their pockets.
"Thank you for coming," said Tom when they arrived back at Esme's door, and Esme tilted her head back to look up at him -- she was only as tall as his shoulder -- and she gave him a smile, a tiny flash of joy, that promised more such walks were to come.
The ducks at St. James's Park were no starvelings to start, but over the next weeks and months they grew a little fatter and learned to recognize the red-haired girl and the fair-haired boy who came walking shoulder to shoulder on Sundays with their pockets full of bread. The ducks probably didn't notice, but after a few weeks Esme and Tom were able to meet glances without looking away (though they did not cease to blush), and gradually, to sit facing each other on a favorite bench and talk, even when a pelican named Vaclav decided to nestle between them and sleep.
Tom always brought Esme a flower. They were hothouse roses at first, and when spring came around, daffodils, and in summer, dahlia blossoms so big she had to hold them with both hands. She was gazing down at one such on a Sunday in July, sitting on their usual bench. The blossom was white with a delicate blush of pink in its center, and she asked, "What's it called?"
Tom's cheeks went red. The dahlia's name was "Crazy Love," and when he'd picked it out that morning in the shop, he'd known Esme would ask its name -- she loved flower names -- and he'd imagined himself telling it to her. It would be, he had thought, a way to say the word "love" to her. But now that the moment had come, his mouth went dry. He mumbled something.
Not understanding, Esme looked at him and saw his red cheeks, his anxious eyes. "What?" she asked softly.
He swallowed, and his voice cracked as he repeated, "It's called Crazy Love," but he did manage to meet Esme's eyes for just an instant on the word "love."
She looked quickly back down at the blossom's blushing center, and she felt as if that small word was opening her like a bud, like the sun had touched her and she was unfurling her petals to better draw its warmth. She smiled, flushed. Tom saw and, seized by a sudden surge of perfect boldness, he leaned in.
In a dark layer of Esme's memory there was a kiss. Vividly she recalled Mihai in the snow, na**d and fanged. That kiss had conjured ancient passions a god had tried to erase, and Esme remembered the pressure of it and even knew the flavor of that black river. But it belonged to someone else. Tom's kiss, by contrast, wasn't passionate.
Esme didn't even have time to close her eyes and tilt her face up to meet it, and it landed crooked and only half on her lips. It was clumsy and it ended quickly. And it was hers.
Tom sat back and stared down at his hands, mortified by his own daring.
Esme's heart thudded a few fast beats and then she reached out tentatively and slipped her fingers into his. They held hands all the way back up Birdcage Walk and without discussing it, they took a circuitous path home so they might keep their fingers entwined as long as possible, and then they lingered at Esme's door, reluctant to let go.
Over time Tom's kisses learned their way to Esme's lips, but they stayed gentle and he still blushed every time he saw her. Whether he might be the soul mate with whom she would share her centuries remained to be seen. They were only children, as Mab had never been allowed to be, and it was sweet. Esme was happy, but there was always a sense, like a phantom pain, that she had lost some piece of herself. During quiet moments, sometimes, the loss overwhelmed her as surely as a mother's empty, aching arms.
She turned fifteen, and still Mahzarin did not come.
Mihai became like a ghost. He sat for hours on rooftops and church spires, traveling through visions of an ancient time. Fog swam round his still shape and sometimes rain sluiced down his hair. Birds ignored him and went about their own rooftop lives, sometimes even perching on him for minutes before he realized it and shook them off.
And then came an evening in winter when the sky was starless black and as cold as Druj flesh. He was resting against a stone steeple with his chin on his chest when he felt the riffling draft of wings and then a weight settled on his knee. He jerked his leg to dislodge it, but it only hovered and beat its wings and settled on him again. Mihai lifted his head to look. His eyes widened. It was no pigeon or crow perched on him. It was an eagle, its vast wings half spread, its talons thick as fingers, and its eyes blue and pale as ice. Around its feathered neck hung a moonstone amulet and, tied to that, the last remnant of the persimmon-red braid the Druj Queen had cut from Mab years ago.
Everything in Mihai tensed and clenched and froze, his heartbeat, his breath, his sore and dwindling hope. He just stared at the eagle, and it stared back. A moment passed like that before Mihai's mind unfroze and began to spin. The eagle fanned its wings once more and then folded them.
It was waiting.
It had been more than five hundred years since Mihai had whispered another Druj back to human cithra, but he remembered the words. They caught in his throat as the enormity of the moment choked him. The Queen of the Druj did not shift cithra. Ever. She did not leave her fate and flesh to the whims and whispers of others. This cithra was an offering.
Mihai took a ragged breath and readied himself to voice the ancient words. He lifted his arms. They trembled. Even after all these centuries, his arms remembered the curve of Mahzarin's body, the weight and the warmth of her, and when she shimmered forth from the feathers of her eagle cithra, he would be there to catch her.