by Shana Abe
The other drákon’s hand never faltered. “No, my lord.”
“Or of the English?”
“Nothing.” Radu tossed down the quill, straightening from the map with a quick, jerky movement.
“Oh—pray don’t forget to write in the names of the lakes,” Sandu said mildly. “I find them immensely helpful.”
The map was simple but surprisingly well done. It was clear Radu had some skills, at least, beyond subterfuge; every line was certain, every image perfectly identifiable. He’d even drawn in his flocks, clusters of sheep and goats and cows scattered amid the forest meadows.
The lakes’ names were scribbled in black. Lacul Rosu, Bicaz, Spatar Cantacuzino. Between each one oozed fresh red letters, bleeding through as strong and thick as all the other marks.
The red lettering said, Serf. Usurper. I hope they eat your heart.
He was still looking at those letters when he spoke once more. Radu was gone, taking with him the odor of his stifled hate. The hallway beyond the double doors held no whiff of human or drákon; the maids and footmen would be belowstairs still, cleaning and chattering, preparing the castle for another day. Someone would be up for the dinner tray, but they would give him time yet. They knew not to interrupt.
There really seemed to be no reason not to acknowledge her.
“I know you’re there, child.” Alexandru didn’t glance up from the map. “You needn’t hide.”
He was staring at the word Serf, letting it burn like fire into his vision, when he heard her exhale. He closed his eyes briefly, erasing the word, and when they opened again, she was edging forward from the shelter of the far bookcase, easing into his deliberate puddle of light.
CHAPTER SIX
I was quiet. I had been so quiet, I was a mouse, I was a mote of dust. But he’d heard me anyway. Or smelled me. Or sensed me.
I certainly sensed him. I sensed him across my skin, the delicious little goose-prickles he roused with the timbre of his voice. The scent of him, dark night and spice and unpolished diamonds. The way the colors of him seemed to lap up the light, deep blue soaking into his hair, gold into his skin. And those eyes, flat-clear mirror eyes, pale and empty as they captured mine from across the chamber.
I left the shadows that had shielded me. He’d addressed me directly; he was looking straight at me, it was stupid to cower, and anyway there was a part of me that no longer wanted to cower. I wanted his attention. I knew that. I was sure it was why I had come.
I can Weave away, I told myself, as my bare feet found the edge of his rug. I hugged my arms across my chest. If I have to, I can Weave.
I wasn’t certain if it was actually true. I knew I would Weave back sooner or later, but my control was still dubious at best.
Prince Alexandru hadn’t moved from his chair, his body long and lean, his legs outstretched and his feet crossed at the ankles. He wore boots, even indoors. He wore a silk shirt with pearled buttons and a waistcoat of charcoal brocade, breeches of supple soft leather. Everything about him breathed power, pleasure, luxury. Control.
I envied him that. The control. There wasn’t any hint of emotion on his face; I knew my own would reveal every little fear that bit at me. It always had.
One hand lifted, bringing a finger to rub lazily against his lips. I halted, abruptly both uncomfortable and excited by that simple, sensual motion.
“Ah,” he said, and allowed his hand to drop back. “You’re not a child tonight, are you?”
He hadn’t even glanced below my neck. I had managed to Weave not quite nude this time. I was wearing my chemise—not the dress, just the undergarment—which was nonetheless quite an accomplishment for me. It had taken me a year to manage this much. I still couldn’t do anything like jewelry or hairpins. Sometimes all I ended up with were my garters.
A chemise is only muslin, however. Translucent. And the corsets somehow never made the Weave.
A single dark brow began to arch. The prince was waiting.
My mouth opened; I’d waited so long for this moment. I’d practiced my speech a hundred times to the painted walls of my room, every word premeditated, every argument clear-cut. But now, when I tried to form the words, no sound came out.
“Honor,” he said. “Is that your name?”
This time I didn’t even attempt to answer. My speech wiped blank. I stared at him.
His ankles uncrossed, sudden and stealthy. “Honor Carlisle. Correct?”
Oh, no—
I glanced around the room, my heart in my throat. It looked like my old father’s study but larger, with glass-fronted bookcases and masculine side tables, green leather chairs stuffed with horsehair. The paintings on the walls were all gilt-framed oils of men and landscapes. There was a bronze statue of a hart by the door. The room was more grandiose than Alexandru’s private quarters, antiquated somehow, tinged more of other people than of him. But we truly seemed alone.
“Are they here?” I demanded anyway. “The English drákon? Are they here for me?”
“No, girl. The only foreign creature here is you.”
He rose from the chair, taking with him the map drawn by the other man, the dark-eyed one. He walked to the desk and opened a drawer, pulling free a smaller piece of paper, holding it out to me.
“I received your letter,” Alexandru said.
“What letter?” My heart was still pounding.
His lips quirked, just barely. “The one you wrote.”
He held it out, patient once more, until I came near enough to take it from his fingertips.
“I never sent this,” I said, backing up again to scan it. “I never wrote this.”
From the edge of my view his stance seemed to tighten, a very subtle shifting of his muscles, of the dark evening colors spilling into him. “You’re not Honor Carlisle?”
“I am.” I shook my head. “But I didn’t …” write this yet, I almost said.
There was no question it was my handwriting. But it was so strange; I’d had no notion to send him a letter, not in all these years. I wouldn’t even have known how to direct it. All I knew of Zaharen Yce was that it was a castle set alone amid some very bleak and cold mountains. In Transylvania. And I could hardly pop back to Darkfrith to ask anyone there to clarify matters. Lady Lia had made it exceedingly clear, ever since she’d first stolen me, that if I were to go back home, my life would be forfeited.
Forfeited. As in, given up, given away.
She would not tell me why or how. She claimed she wasn’t certain. But when she spoke like that, when she spoke about her dreams, it was impossible not to feel my flesh crawl. Whatever else she hid from me, whatever other troubles we shared, the instant she’d said to me, You will be killed there, I believed her.
I turned Alexandru’s letter over in my hands. Yes, still my writing, the imprinted wax seal of the shire—most likely from the forged stamp Lia kept in her nightstand drawer, one of her few souvenirs from childhood.
“Senyoreta.” The prince waited until I looked back up at him, distracted, pushing a fall of hair from my eyes. “How is it, exactly, that you appear to be both a child and a full-grown maiden? That you manage to get in and out of my castle without smoke?”
I chewed my lower lip. “May I sit?”
He indicated one of the green chairs, the one directly across from him. I chose one by the hearth instead. The chemise wasn’t very insulating.
“I’m not mistaken, am I?” Prince Alexandru remained standing. “You are that child I pulled from the river six years ago? And the young woman from the ball? From the granary and the field?”
“Yes.”
Now he did take his seat, slowly, his hands relaxed upon the arms of the chair, his hair a blue-black spill caught against the cushion behind him.
I took a deep breath. “My name is Honor Carlisle. I’m nineteen years old. I’ve known you since I was a child, since I was fourteen, to be precise. That was the day I met you in the river. Oh, and, er … thank you. For saving me. From drowning.
I don’t believe I said it at the time.”
He didn’t take his eyes from my face. “Two weeks later we spoke in my bedchamber. Yet you were older. Like you are now.”
“Yes. I was seventeen then.”
That single brow began to arch once more.
“I know how it sounds,” I said swiftly. “I know how it must seem to you. I’m sorry to have been avoiding you all this time, but you see, I’ve just recently discovered … I’ve gotten the news that we are to marry. You and I. And I thought … I thought it might be best if I came here to talk to you about it.”
I ran out of breath. I sat there with the letter clutched in my hands and gazed back at him, feeling my face heat far warmer than the fire or the air in the room. Alexandru, however, seemed carved of pure, cool stone.
“I’m a Time Weaver.” My fingers knotted harder around the paper. “That’s the answer to all your questions. I’m drákon, and I Weave through time. No doubt I did write this letter to you. Or—I will. Only not yet.”
“Time Weaver,” he repeated, neutral.
“Yes.”
“Drákon. And English.”
“Yes, yes. I should tell you right now that I’m not certain how long I’ll be able to remain—”
“Are you also a member of the sanf inimicus?”
Of all the responses I’d expected, I’d never anticipated this. My jaw dropped. “The—what? Are you serious? The dragon hunters? Of course not!”
Alexandru continued to regard me without expression. He only blinked once, and for a second—just a second—the mirror clarity of his gaze blazed to silver, liquid phosphorous. It was a dragon’s gaze, fell and sharp, and if his voice could engender prickles, this look gave me a bone-deep chill. Then it slipped back into gray.
“Residing in Spain these days?”
“Yes. I ran away from England. Years ago. Rather, I was kidnapped.”
“I wonder if I might trouble you to write that down for me,” he said.
Another surprise. He seemed quite difficult to shock. “Um … which part?”
“Any of it. There’s ink and a quill on my desk there. A sheaf of papers to the right.”
I stared at him for a moment longer and he stared at me. Even in shadow, he was so savagely handsome I felt my throat parch.
I could all too easily imagine his elegant fingers stroking my skin. His lips slick against mine. Our bodies—
“Very well.”
I stood and crossed to the desk, acutely aware of how I must look from behind, with my hair undone and the chemise probably revealing a great deal more of me than it hid. I found the quill, dipped, blotted, and began to scratch out a sentence on a blank sheet.
“What year is this?” I asked, without looking up.
“Seventeen eighty-eight.”
I would be twenty-one in this year. Wherever I was, I was twenty-one. And apparently not yet wed. God, it seemed a lifetime away.
“Here.” I thrust the paper at him. He accepted it, held it up to the light. No doubt the letters would run; I’d forgotten to sand it.
I am Honor Xavière Carlisle. I am a the sole Time Weaver of our kind. Everything I’ve told you is truth.
I concentrated on returning the quill to the crystal inkpot, on rubbing away the fresh smear of ebony that stained my knuckle. When I peered up at him, Sandu’s expression was still stone but his cheeks had gone red.
Red. He was blushing.
“Please believe me,” I said. “I wished only to find you so that we may speak frankly. We are supposed to be married. And I … wondered … if you wouldn’t mind, of course …”
His lashes lifted. His gaze burned.
“If we didn’t,” I finished weakly. “If, perhaps, we could just go on as we are.”
“As we are,” he echoed.
“Yes. I’m sorry. I have no wish to offend you. But I don’t wish to wed you, either. What I’ve seen of wedlock is—difficult. I don’t think I’m suited for it. Not that you’re not comely,” I added hastily. “Naturally you are. I mean, look at you. You’ve those eyes, and those shoulders. And your lips. Meu Déu, your lips alone—”
“I beg your pardon, how old did you say you are?”
I steadied myself. “Nineteen. I’m nineteen years of age right now. In your time, however—in this year, I’m older. No doubt I’m awaiting you.”
The candles in their wrought iron branches had been left aflame too long; one by one, they were flickering out. The chamber was growing dimmer and dimmer, which gave me a surge of courage.
“I’ve never been with anyone,” I admitted. “Never even really kissed. I don’t actually socialize at all. I spend a great deal of time indoors. So I don’t know why I’d …”
“Marry?” he supplied, exquisitely calm.
“I don’t desire it. Might we just have physical intimacy instead?”
I heard the air leave his chest exactly as the penultimate candle extinguished. The room, the furnishings, the prince: We were all now things of shadows, little clear but the shining stars beyond the windows.
I felt the pull coming, the swell of its tide looming over me. I was better at predicting it as I aged. I was better at holding it off, even if for mere seconds.
I spoke in a rush. “Find me now. Find me in my Natural Time. You can’t tell the English, but I probably still live in Barcelona, in the Barri—”
I never got to say Gótic. I was gone again, yanked back home to my bed two years before I’d ever hand him that sheet of paper, with only the memory of his gaze, hot and silver and pinned to mine, and of his cheeks, still ruddy in the dark.
You might be wondering why I didn’t just Weave right back to Sandu to finish our conversation. Certainly I tried. But a significant portion of the rules of my Gift remained a mystery to me. I had puzzled out the basics, such as that without great mental effort I would wind up nude, and in the same location. Yet the amount of time I remained in each Weave was inconstant. It might be minutes or hours or even months. And once I Wove to a certain time and place, I could never return to it precisely … nor to any period of time closely surrounding it. It became buffered in some way, untouchable by me.
Plus, the Weaves themselves were exhausting. As I grew older I began to develop headaches after doing them, and then minor nosebleeds. None of it ever lasted very long, but it was worrisome. Privately I wondered if this might be the beginning of the “sacrifice” for my Gift I’d mentioned to myself in that troubling fifth Letter Over Time, the same letter in which I’d informed myself I was to wed the prince. The headaches weren’t exactly horrific, but they were unpleasant. The nosebleeds didn’t hurt now, but who knew what they might be like in the future? I had a ghastly vision of myself gaunt and drooping in a few short years, wandering around the palace like an unfortunate wraith with a handkerchief ever pressed to my face.
Amalia and I agreed that I needed to approach my Gift with caution. That I shouldn’t try to explore my limits merely for amusement.
I did not consider Alexandru an amusement. But I didn’t have enough skill to Weave near to him at that age for a good while after that conversation in the castle. I knew the sensible thing to do would be to wait for him to find me, as I’d instructed him. Two years. It needn’t be too terribly long.
Of course, it was.
One of the peculiarities of my kind was that, like swallows and swans, we tended to mate for life. One mate, two hearts, that’s it, forever and ever. The saddest, saddest sight in the shire would be a widow who’d lost her second heart, or betimes a widower. If they were lucky, they had children to surround them and help them slip into old age. If not, well, then they had the inescapable presence of the tribe, which would never leave them alone, regardless.
But in every case, the drákon left behind would wither. I witnessed it with Lia, nearly every day. I didn’t really know if Zane considered her his mate the way I knew she considered him hers. But watching her dwindle into slow, wistful mourning whenever he left her was misery for
us both.
I did not want that for myself. The passionate excitement, yes. The ardor. But that depth of attachment that meant you were no longer whole, that your entire existence depended upon another’s …
No, thank you. I’d be pleased enough to become Sandu’s consort. I liked my heart just as it was.
Still, there was the promise of that passion …
So I tried twice more to Weave back to him. The first time I discovered myself in a gray, gloomy hut of some sort. It had been furnished as a house, but a very rudimentary one: three rooms, a hearth built from riverstones, a chimney that clearly didn’t properly draw. The room I was in contained a roughly planked table set with thick, chipped earthenware and pewter—I heard the songs—knives. Four chairs of unpolished wood. Dirt floor.
Smoke from the fire simmered against the thatched ceiling, curled sharp inside my nose. The sole window to the hut had been left open to siphon out what it could, revealing pine trees and a cobalt sky.
A woman’s crooning floated from the adjacent room. I sidled over to the doorway and peeked inside.
She was seated in a rocking chair, a fine one, much finer than anything else surrounding us. She was cradling her black-haired baby in her arms, smiling and humming, and he turned his head and looked over at me.
There was no mistaking those clear silvery eyes.
The second attempt was stranger yet. I ended up back at the castle, standing outside alone in a huge, circular courtyard of crushed gravel and dead grass. An alabaster fountain cast a frozen shadow across my legs; it wasn’t functioning. There wasn’t even any water in it. A magnificent carved phoenix at the top was obviously meant to spit a stream from its mouth, but its wings had been broken off, and the lead pipe protruding from its beak had been bent.
I looked up at the castle. At first it appeared the same as it always had. White sparkling blocks of quartzite. Tall beveled windows. Crenulated towers, balconies, everything blinding as snowfall in the sun.