Iron Codex 2 - The Nightmare Garden by Caitlin Kittredge Page A

room. I took the uniform the Erlkin had left for me and stripped out of my filthy skirt and sweater, all the way down to nothing. I took my underthings into the water closet and ran hot water into the basin, washing them and leaving them on the towel bar to dry. While they dripped I stepped into the copper stall and let the trickle from the pipe above wash the grime off my skin.
    The Erlkin didn’t skimp on amenities for their guests, and I wrapped a fluffy Turkish towel around myself and a smaller one around my damp hair in an effort to keep it from blowing up like a thundercloud.
    I looked out the porthole again, but there was nothing now except night, a row of running lights on the hull streaming away from me like fireflies in the blackness.
    When the hatch rattled again, I shrieked and spun, pulling the towel up to my chin. “Who’s there!” I demanded, casting around for something to throw or prod the intruder with.
    “Whoa, princess,” Dean said, ducking through the hatch and shutting it. “Shhh. Nobody knows I’m here.”
    “Dean,” I breathed in relief. Dean took in the scene, and me. Wrapped in a towel.
    “Oh,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
    “Do you knock?” I demanded, tightening my grip on the towel.
    A slow smile grew on Dean’s face. “Don’t make a habit of it.” He cleared his throat, making a visible effort to keep his eyes fastened on my face. “This isn’t exactly going to convince me to start, you know.”
    “You’re terrible,” I said, trying to collect the clothes the Erlkin had left for me and slide into the water closet, while at the same time hiding the warmth his stare brought to my cheeks.
    Dean smiled wider. “Isn’t that why you like me so much?”
    “Right now I’m not sure I like you at all,” I teased, shutting the door but for a crack, so Dean and I could still talk.
    “You sure riled my mother,” he said, his shadow falling across the opening. I unfolded the clothes—brown pants with a wealth of pockets and a plain white high-collared shirt and dust-colored uniform jacket. They were patched and smelled of a cedar chest, but they fit when I slipped them on, and they were clean. By my standards lately, bliss.
    “I don’t think she liked me very much,” I said, opening the door again. “Or at all.” I met his eyes. “Did you say something to her about Conrad and me? Is she going to let us go? I’m not angry, if you did. I understand she’s your mother, but I need to know.” Needed to know that Dean was as loyal as I’d always thought, and that he wasn’t the reason I was locked up in Windhaven with Shard looking for an excuse to jettison me out a hatch.
    Dean was a good liar. He had eyes the color of silvery thunderheads, changeable and unpredictable and impossible to truly fathom. But he’d never lied to me. Not when it mattered.
    “Course I didn’t, princess,” he said easily. “My mother is just sneaky that way—I could never put anything past her either. She’s also calculating, and she’s not dumb. She’ll realize you’re not a Fae spy and your brother isn’t a criminal. She’s our best tracker and the captain of Windhaven—she answers to the Wytch King only. She and a few other generals are just under him in terms of who bosses around the rest of the Erlkin. Everything will be all right once she gets her nose back into joint.”
    He couldn’t even look at me when he said it. Well, I supposed there was a first time for everything—first kiss, first touch against bare skin, first lie. At least I could hope the part about him not ratting us out was true. I thought it probably was—Dean hadn’t seemed overly fond of his mother when we’d talked about her, and I certainly didn’t tell my mother everything. Or anything, because it didn’t matter to Nerissa in her madness anyway.
    When I didn’t reply at once, Dean put his index finger under my chin and raised my face to his. “Hey. You believe me, don’t you,