Read Online The Deepest Night by Shana Abe - Free Book Online Page A

all accounts … quite interesting. I have your schedule here, your train tickets and such. You are to depart the day after graduation. A fortuitous bit of timing, I think! I suggest you begin packing soon. It’s never wise to leave matters to the last minute, is it?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “I shall be candid with you, Miss Jones. It may not be practical to plan for your return to Iverson next fall. The war has forced many unfortunate changes upon us. Shipping you all the way back from Callander a few months from now might not be in anyone’s best interest.”
    “But it will, of course, be up to the duke to decide my fate?”
    “Er—of course. The scholarship is entirely in His Grace’s control. In his current state, however …”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “You are a sensible girl, Eleanore. I will not encourage you to cling to false hopes; they will not serve you well.”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “We understand each other. Excellent. I know I may count on you to make the most of your final days here at Iverson, the better to shape your years to come.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Good afternoon, then.”
    “Good afternoon, ma’am.”
    That night before dinner I visited the library. It was mostly deserted, only a trio of ninth-years at a table poring over a fashion magazine stuffed with drawings of coy, smiling debutantes in viciously expensive gowns.
    I sent them a look; they returned it. None of us spoke, and they all went back to cooing over the gowns.
    I had no interest in magazines, at least not in any of the ones Mrs. Westcliffe deemed suitable for proper young ladies. I’d come for a book I’d noticed in passing not long ago, one of the few books here that wasn’t about housekeeping or sewing or the care of husbands: Charts of the Principal Cities of the World, Including Railroad and Telegraph Lines.
    It was large and heavy, with a jolly thick layer of dust along the top. I hefted it from the shelf and dropped it onto the nearest table, earning me another look from the trio, which I ignored.
    I flipped through the pages. Buenos Aires, La Paz, Havana, New York. Cairo, Dakar, Cape Town, Riyadh, Angora, Budapest … Rome, Paris. London. Glasgow.
    I squinted at the Glasgow page, which was indeed cobwebbed with lines representing every railroad and telegraph line imaginable. I turned to the previous page, which showed the city as a dot in the big, flat map that was Scotland.
    Callander was inked in there, a speck on the page. It wasn’t even in southern Scotland, as the headmistress had claimed. From what I could tell, it was much nearer to the middle. Far from Wessex. Far from the impeccable Iverson School for Girls and the eligible youngest son of a duke.
    I studied it a while longer, trying to measure the distance with my fingers, but all I could figure was that it was hundreds of miles north of where I was sitting.
    Hundreds.
    I rifled through the pages again until I found Prussia (principal cities: Berlin, Königsberg). I didn’t know exactly where Aubrey’s medieval prison-ruin would be, but honestly, it hardly mattered. Prussia was huge and impossibly remote. Past England and the Channel, past all of France and Belgium, too. It made the distance to Callander look like a jaunt to a neighbor’s house.
    I slapped the book shut, sending motes of dust aloft and forcing the trio to coo even louder over the absolutely dreamy smocking on a plaid taffeta dinner frock.
    You’re waiting for the moment I Turn into something more than just smoke. You’re waiting for Lora the dragon.
    Lora-of-the-moon, Jesse used to call me.
    It’s not yet. But soon.

Chapter 7
    To my great astonishment, the graduation ceremony was to take place out-of-doors, upon the wide, open green of Iverson’s front lawn. It was a picturesque enough setting, with the cerulean sky and trimmed grass, the rose gardens framing it all in pathways of flouncy bright blooms. Even the animal-shaped hedges looked nearly benign. But out-of-doors