by Shana Abe
He knew they were unrelated by blood, except perhaps through some distant kinship probably all the members of the English tribe shared. But guiding her now into the cool, marbled vestibule of his castle, Alexandru imagined he glimpsed in Lia a distinct resemblance to the woman he'd left sleeping upstairs: the blaze of her eyes, the stiff column of her spine. It was nothing of color or size but entirely of attitude. Lady Amalia seemed prepared for battle, at least mentally.
It set a knot between his shoulders, one he couldn't shake off.
And it wasn't merely that, her straight back and her wary resistance to his smiles. She had music with her—issuing from that valise she carried, which she'd refused to hand over to him or any of the footmen—strange, dulcet music that both soothed and alarmed him on some deep, primal level, because he was very much afraid he knew what it might be.
Poison. A Draumr had ever been to his kind was poison in one form or another, and even though he knew it was broken and its power diminished, there was no question he felt it. Stronger, sweeter, more alluring than any of the other stones.
Aware of the servants stationed about, aware of the nobles trickling down the sweep of the main stairs on their way to breaking their fasts, Radu and Lucia and all the rest, staring, staring, Alexandru kept the cadence of his footfalls unrushed and exact. He led Amalia past the gradually bunching cluster of Zaharen aristocrats at the base of the stairs to the closest parlor, the East Room, and closed the door behind them. He was careful to do that, to keep his hand on the knob, to stand against the wood so she could pass, to listen for the soft tick of the latch to tell him it was all the way shut.
It took more willpower than he liked to simply lift his hand then and offer her a chair.
He wanted to snatch the bag from her.
He wanted to rip it open, and close his fist on the source of that sweet song. He wanted to gobble it up.
Instead, Prince Alexandru waited for the Lady Amalia to take her seat, and then calmly, cordially, took his own in the leather armchair opposite.
The parlor was referenced by its wide bank of windows, which faced the courtyard and the rising sun; the walls and floors were streaked with light.
"You hear it," Lia said in English, not a question. She sat very prim at the edge of the cushion, her ankles crossed, her bare toes pressed into the rug.
He nodded.
"Good. I wanted you to. Where is Honor?"
"In our room. It's still early, you know. She likes to sleep."
"When will she be down?"
"I don't know." He managed another peaceful smile. "When she is."
Lady Amalia regarded him silently for a moment, a steely look entirely at odds with her charming, mussed appearance. Through the panes beyond her he could see a trio of groomsmen and a scullery maid encircling the remains of one of the broken fountains.
He felt as if the light was congealing around him, thickening solid as jelly. It was growing so thick he could hardly move it from his nose into his lungs. A sense of weight settled atop him, atop the restriction in his chest.
It was cold, pure dread.
"I have a letter for you," she said. "Two of them, actually."
He said nothing. She held him in that hard gaze for a moment more, then opened the valise. The sweet poison song of Draumr swelled.
He was leaning forward in his chair before he realized it. He was rising to his feet. "Do not approach me, Your Grace," said Amalia, without looking up.
He stopped, again without meaning to. With a very great effort, he dug his fingernails into the meat of his palms, and that woke him some.
He sank back to the chair.
Amalia stood, crossed to him. The sheet of paper in her hand fell open in folds.
"I mean you no harm," she said. "I hope you believe that. But what I'm about to do is ... unprecedented. You are to read these two letters, Alexandra You're to start with this one."
He took it from her, shook it out and lifted it to the sun.
It was from the English tribe. It was written in the form of a formal proclamation, dated over eight months past. The language was stilted, the script embellished with tails and curls so dramatic they seemed to swallow up the actual words.
But the message itself was stark enough.
Proposal for the Unification of the Drkkon Tribes, he read.
One Alpha, two lands. Rule by proxy. Reasonable rights and privileges of the prince retained, all primary laws of Darkfrith to be upheld. Shared expenses. One rule.
One Alpha. Not two.
"Where did you get this?" he asked slowly, still reading. "I never received this."
"No, you wouldn't have. Apparently, they decided not to send it to you. Perhaps they realized the wording wasn't quite genial enough for what they really intended."
"Subjugation." He labored through a breath of the thick jelly light. "They mean to rule Zaharen Yce."
"Not just the castle." She sounded nearly sympathetic. "Everyone. Everything. Every last drop of blood in this land. Especially yours."
He was not surprised. He told himself there could be no surprise in this news, that in fact, the only actual astonishing part of it was that they had taken so long to reach this step in the deliberate, long-distance chess game they'd been playing with him since he was a boy. Stratagems and strategies, all the devious skills he'd learned in his short few years of rule, all for naught. He'd danced and sidestepped and tried to ever remain at least a move ahead of them but now, in the end, their patience was done. It was all going to come down to simple brute force.
Check, Sandu thought, detached, and opened his fingers. The proposal fell, a flat feather drifting, settling upon the rug between his feet.
It had landed upright. The true words of it glared up at him, bold slashes:Give Us a Fight, Then, Boy. Let Us Destroy You.
"Where did you get it?" he asked once more.
"From Rez."
His lashes lifted.
"Not the one you know. An older Rez. A different woman. I'd like to wait to show you the other letter, though. Until Honor is here."
The arched connecting door to the next chamber swung open, the flat china painted panels a sudden glare in a shaft of sun. "Honor's not coming."
They both turned their heads. Rez glided forward into the jelly-sun room, her eyes swift to his, then focused back on Lia. She seemed to have no trouble walking, not as he did, and the jelly was beginning to affect his vision as well; impressions of her came to him in quick, brilliant relief: December curls pinned up, a scintillating frock of robin's-egg blue. Pale cheeks, pale neck, pale chest. The puckered gauze that ended her sleeves matched the open petticoat of her skirts.
Her gaze, holding their deep rivers of emotion.
Apprehension, he thought now, so attuned to her. She was worried to see Amalia, even though her face was as smooth as a mask.
"I'm sorry to hear it," Lady Amalia was saying.
"Don't be. Rez is a far happier person than Honor was." She paused. "I'm happier, Lia."
"For now."
"Is that Draumr ? There in that valise?" "Yes."
"I thought you said you'd lost it."
Lia shrugged, watching Rez circle warily around her. "I lied."
Rez reached him, took his hand. Perhaps the dread had sunken into her as well; her skin felt like ice, chilling his bones.
"You won't separate us," she said. "If you came here to try, it's fruitless. Despite the diamond, there's nothing you can say or do. I swear to you, I won't go back."
Lady Lia smiled, a poignant smile, and with it Alexandru abruptly remembered the first moment he'd laid eyes on her, here in this very room, back when he'd been just a child and she a young stranger to his land, come to save the life of the human man she'd loved. How he'd been introduced to her but was too bashful to lift his gaze, until she'd knelt before him and took his hand, pressed a kiss to the back of it, something no one,no one , had ever done before. How the boy Sandu had looked up, astonished, and been struck dum
b by just the smiling shape of her lips and the perfect lie of shadows on her face.
"No filla," Amalia said gently, older, but perfect and shadowed still. "That's not what I want. There was never any going back."
She had the prince show Honor the letter from her people, signed by Lia's brother and all the members of the Darkfrith Council, those gnarled, frightened old men. It shamed her that they would resort to this, shamed but did not amaze her. Lia'd always known the rulers of her tribe would place their own survival above all. A measure of bloodshed had never stopped them before.
It was her fault, some of it or maybe even all of it, and so she had to do what she could to mend these two families. Had she never come here with Zane so long ago, had she never fled the shire as a girl, had she never stumbled upon Zaharen Yce and written that very first letter to her parents, breaking the news of this unanticipated and undomesticated clan of dragons....
Perhaps it would have mattered. Perhaps not. It seemed unlikely the two groups could have continued to exist for much longer in utter ignorance of each other. The world was a shrinking place.
Honor held the proclamation between her fingertips, pinkies extended, as if the page might fold over and bite her. She had that drowsy, cat-eyed look she sometimes wore first thing in the morning, indicative of a long Weave or a restless night.
Or not precisely restless, Lia amended to herself, her gaze shifting to the prince standing beside her, his arm curved about her shoulders.
It had been many years since Amalia had been around males of her own species. She'd never flown with the dragons of her shire; her Gift had come too late for that. She recalled being enamored of the village boys as a maiden, their shining skin and brilliant eyes. The way they'd work the fields in their shirtsleeves, plowing, sowing, reaping, sweat darkening the cloth just enough to cling, to show off the unbearably sensual concurrence of muscle and bone.
The same boys at her mother's social balls, dancing with their eerie grace, everyone fair, everyone gleaming, and the scent of lust in the air a near tangible mist.
Young or old, it seemed that drakon males seethed with the instinct to seduce, not merely sexually but intellectually, emotionally; without even trying, they could hit every pitch-perfect note. Unsuspecting females tumbled like skittles in their paths.
Poor Honor, because this male would be no different. Ebony hair, which didn't happen in her tribe, but the same sinuous elegance, the same instinctive sensuality that lured the eye and kept it there, appreciating every last detail.
The same lust too, she thought. Prince Alexandru and her daughter clung to each other like wool in winter static. If they pulled apart, Lia was sure she'd see sparks.
Useless to ask if they were already lovers. She knew that they were, but even if she hadn't, she would have guessed by the intimacy of their postures, how they leaned into each other, how even shaken, he hovered over her, and even drowsy, she accepted it.
Honor, the timorous child who'd never relaxed enough to fully welcome physical touch, not even a buss on the cheek.
Oh, Lia thought, watching them, aching,let this be true. Let what they have be real and true.
Honor looked so vulnerable. She wore no paint, and her hair had been pinned into an uneven pile that tumbled down her back, and the style of the gown she wore was both too old for her and too young. A wedge of lace from her shift showed past the edge of her bodice, as if she'd had no maids to help her dress.
When she lifted her eyes to Lia's again, some of the sleep had vanished from her gaze. "What does it mean?" she asked. "Wait," said Lia. "There's more."
Then she gave them both the second letter, the one that sealed their fates.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lia,
You don't know me. My name is Rez. I used to be Honor Carlisle.
My Natural Time now is well ahead of yours. I'm older than you, than I ever knew you to be. I live in what you would call the former Colonies.
I'm trapped. My life has dwindled to a pinprick. I survive in individual moments. I eat, I sleep. Every third day I walk to the village market to wander the stalls and the chitter-chatter colonists stare at me, five hundred forty-seven steps there. Five hundred forty-seven steps back. I count the alien insects that creep across my floor. I sleep.
I sleep.
Even awake, I'm so tired I don't have the power to lift the carving knife I keep ready on the kitchen table, right there in front of me, such a friendly shape. I can't even lift it to finish this misery. Everything is gray and mud.
I cannot remember the precise day my life ended. I've tried so hard my head aches and my entire body trembles, but my mind is in tatters. So much about those years elude me now. But in the sum spring of 1792 1791 the English are going to attack Zaharen Yce. They are going to kill everyone.
It's been decades since the assault on the castle, and as I've said, my life has dwindled. Details drift away from me. I'll tell you, though, I'll tell you what I remember most are the screams. Even as I pen this, I still hear them how they
The weight of my daughter in my arms just before she was torn from me. Her head beneath my chin. Her hands around my neck.
I had a daughter.
I Wove away that day. I did not mean to I swear to God I never meant to i would never have but it happened and i couldn't stop
They're all dead. I cannot Weave back. Every time I try, I'm thrown here again. The best I may hope is to Weave sometime near you before it happens and post this letter. I'm enclosing something else, a declaration I stole from Darkfrith, the one time I was able to Weave there before they stopped me. I found it in the desk of the Alpha. I don't know when that was, but I know I never saw it before that day.
My tatty mind keeps thinking. I think and think, and the one phrase that never leaves me, that remains my constant miserable companion is this:sanf inimicus. And by the stars, Lia, sometimes that phrase seems more like deliverance .
The things in my head, Mama. The hobgoblin, nattering things. Please. If you ever loved me at all, I beg you to please save my family.
—Rez
Last Princess of the Zaharen
"Would you like to know how it's going to happen?"
Lia's voice floated with casual nonchalance through the parlor, which seemed very hot to me. I did not know why the room had to be so hot; it was nearing winter, and the sunbeams slanting in held at best a tone of ambered coolness. Motes of dust danced through them, spinning their own small jigs.
I'd already read Rez's hobgoblin letter. Read it, absorbed it, let the horror of it pass into Alexandru's hands.
"How what will happen?" I asked, unable quite to tear my gaze from the motes. It seemed to me they were dancing to the unearthly poem of Draumr, keeping time with its funeral dirge.
"The manner in which they try to kill you," she said. "Your English parents, I mean. Would you like to know? It's in the late afternoon. It's summer in Darkfrith, and lilies are in bloom. There'll be a measure of laudanum in your tea. Your mother will hand you the cup. You're going to drink it. You speak of missing them—of your prince—and I believe you were even attempting to tell them about your daughter—"
"Our daughter," Sandu whispered, less than a sound, a scant parting of the air.
"—but the laudanum is potent, and you fall asleep first. They plan to behead you, which you may recall is our traditional method of handling drakon enemies. Your mother will cry, your father won't let her watch. They both agreed to it, though."
I wrenched my gaze back to Lia. The cooling sun put fire in her hair.
"I remember that," I said. A pulse of fright reached me, breaking past the numbed horror of the letter. "I remember Sandu telling me in the meadow ... how I'd go to them, to tell them we were engaged ..."
"In an effort," she continued steadily, "to soothe your mother's sensibilities, they plan to use an ax instead of the Alpha's teeth. It's really all very civilized."
"But Hive." I jerked a hand toward the letter Sandu still
held.
"Yes. You Weave away, even after falling asleep. You Weave back here, I assume. But the English know about you now, that you're aligned with the Zaharen. After you go to Darkfrith, they know, and they know also that you're sanf . The proposal for unifying the tribes is merely a ruse, one they decide they no longer need. They come here to destroy you."
I'mnot —"
"But you will be,"bit out my second mother, a sentence so sharp it stilled even the motes. I faced Sandu, desperate. "What does it say? Can you Read it?"
His eyes scanned the page again, gray and unfathomable. The funeral song of Draumr groaned between us, slinking and slithering around us, and it was all I could do not to go to him to pull him close. I'd gone hollow inside. I needed to feel him, his heat. His life.
"Nothing," he said at last. He looked up at me. "It says nothing else. I think it must be the entire truth."
"It can't be," I burst out. "Thatcan't be our future! That can't be me!"
I didn't have to go to him; the prince came to me. He cradled me in his arms and pressed my cheek to his chest. I was breathing too quickly. The room began to blur.
The end, your end, the end, moaned Draumr .
"That is not going to be your future," agreed Lia, and with that single statement Draumr suspended, an abrupt, waiting hush.
"Come stand before me, both of you," she said.
Like it had never desired to be anything else, the shattered diamond song swelled back to life, wrapped around Lia's command so that we had no choice but to obey it, because now it was lovely and long and persuasive.
She looked us over with a sigh. "I've had too much a hand in this, I think. I never meant to muddle things so. It happened. I knew you were destined to be with Alexandru, that it would enrage the English, and thought to circumvent it. I knew about the cathedral, Honor, and let it be, because it was in Spain still, and I thought, well, at least she's staying here. But perhaps, in attempting to avoid the future I dreamed, I've only caused it to happen. Had I left you in Darkfrith, had I let you grow up there, or been killed there—" She broke off, biting her lip. "Maybe none of this would have occurred. I honestly don't know." A hand lifted to her forehead; she seemed tired suddenly, thin and waifish. "The future has always been dark to me."