by Shana Abe
He snared her with his right front claws, the abrupt change in his equilibrium wrenching him sideways, reeling them into a loop before he could recover. The sea became a smear of gunmetal and foam, the tang of bitter salt filled his mouth and nose, choking, but then he was in control again, flinging them both higher to the safety of the open air.
Alexandru wasn’t actually certain which part of her he’d caught, only that he had caught her, and her hands were clutching at his leg, and her hair now streamed up and around his chest. After he stabilized he peered down at her, hoping he’d not pierced her with a talon.
He had her at the waist. Naked Honor was half-wrapped around his foreleg, her cheek and torso hard against him.
And she was laughing.
They returned to her roof. There seemed to be no better location to land besides the flat fields plowed in rectangles beyond the city, but landing out there would mean having to figure a way for them both to get back to the Gothic Quarter somehow at dawn, without clothing or coin or anything else. He considered leaving her there, returning as smoke to the cathedral and then hiring a carriage back to her—if he could locate a carriage; if he could secure one without horrifying the horses or chickens or sheep or any of the other myriad of cattle being transported along the streets—but by the time the sky was beginning to bleed scarlet at the horizon, Honor Carlisle was already pointing downward toward her bell tower, tugging at his leg.
There truly was not room to safely alight. Dangling a live female at the same time made things rather worse. Still, he forced a gradual descent, his wings beating frantic, rushing grit from the tiles and he thought, hummingbird, hummingbird, as he managed nearly a hover until her feet found purchase.
The second she dropped to her knees, he went to smoke. The relief was stupendous.
He Turned back to man as she watched, still standing on the sloped tiles. He Turned below her, for her safety, then took her hand and guided her back to the bell tower. She seemed unperturbed by the loss of her nightgown. When he gave her his shirt, she accepted it with a nod but didn’t put it on.
Sandu discovered his arms and legs curiously weak. Electric snaps were shooting outward from his spine to his rib cage, both painful and not; even his skin seemed foreign to him, too tight, as if he’d shifted back into the wrong shape. When he looked at Honor all of these sensations intensified, and the notion that he was no longer himself, that he had changed into something new and unpleasantly alien, anchored into his thoughts.
Aside from the drag of her weight, he hadn’t been able to feel her at all in his claws, not her skin or her heat. He might have grievously injured her and not known it. He might have actually cut her in two. A dragon’s claws were beyond sharp, they were harder than steel and meant to slay, to gouge both flesh and solid rock. It was a goddamned miracle he hadn’t hurt her, but she didn’t even seem bruised.
The bleed of sky beyond the rooftops became flame, and the stars singing above him began, one by one, to disappear into a rising sheer blue.
He noticed his breeches on the tower floor and turned his back to her to put them on. He sincerely hoped she’d at least have the sense to hold the damned shirt up to her chest when he turned back around.
She’d shrugged it on. The sleeves reached past her fingertips and the hem down past her thighs. Only she hadn’t tied it, merely held the panels closed with one fist, wrinkling the ruffles. Her hair stirred in long, spiraling locks down her breasts to her waist. Her legs were long and muscled, just exactly as they’d felt.
“I apologize.” His voice sounded so calm; another strange miracle.
“For what?”
He couldn’t help the mirthless laugh. “Are you jesting?”
“No.”
She appeared genuinely puzzled, small and female with her hair blowing about and her lips pursed, as if she hadn’t nearly ended up in pieces not ten minutes back.
“I dropped you,” he said carefully. “You fell. You might have died.”
The purse of her lips became a blinding smile. “No, but you caught me again.”
“Honor—”
“And you didn’t truly drop me, you know. It was my fault. I had my arms out, to better feel the wind.”
He felt that snapping in his spine ratchet higher. “You did what?”
“Had my arms out. Like this.” She lifted them straight from her sides, her fingers brushing one of the limestone columns of the tower, and his shirt rippled apart like some gentle, tormenting dream. “It was the nearest I’ll ever get to flight. I wanted it to be real. I wanted to hold the wind.”
“The wind,” he repeated, feeling dazed.
“Yes.” Her smile widened as her hair danced around them, coppery-pink strands to blend with the sky. She pushed them back from her cheeks with both hands. “Oh, Sandu. It was utterly smashing.”
He looked away. He decided to lean against his own pillar, his bare back to the stone, and let the steady, peaceful music of the limestone sink into him as he examined the sunrise.
All the sunrises of his life, all the same, with rich colors and a slow staining of the heavens, against mountains or plains or against the buildings of man, clouded or clear, winter or summer, every one of them he’d spent alone or with the others of his kind on some official business or another. Every one of them.
Except this one.
Except with her.
“You weren’t afraid?” he asked, low.
“No.”
He felt himself shake his head. “You should have been.”
Her answer came serene. “I knew you would catch me.”
Sandu shoved off the pillar. “That’s just damned stupid. I might not have. Easily! Do you have any idea how hard it is to fly like that? To sustain that sort of control?”
“No,” she said.
He brought a hand up to cover his eyes. A distant part of him was aware that it was trembling.
“Hard,” he said.
A donkey pulling a cart below them let out a snuffle. Its plodding steps reverberated sharp up the vertical walls.
Honor moved to stand before him. She didn’t try to touch him; he felt the ends of his shirt brushing his stomach.
“I think you’re right,” she said. “I think I should have been afraid. I’m not sure why I wasn’t. Why I’m not now. It’s something to do with you, I imagine. Something about you. I don’t know.” She gave a hushed laugh. “I’ve been afraid my whole life. Just not with you.”
“Stupid,” he sneered again.
“Perhaps.”
He wished she’d move back. If he dropped his hand and opened his eyes she’d be right there, more perfect than the sunrise, and he would have to manage that. He’d have to have the will not to kiss her, not to shove the shirt back over her shoulders and let it slither down her arms to the floor.
“It’s unbearable, isn’t it?” she asked after a moment in a different tone, very cool.
Sandu spoke through his teeth. “Yes.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
He opened his eyes and looked at her, her fresh and dewy beauty. He thought of war, of dragons that were living blades in flight, of the vulnerabilities of the hamlets, the crops that would scorch, the children who would perish. He thought of the castle he’d sunk his heart into, the years of struggle and defiance, of proving to himself and everyone else that he was more than just a farm boy chosen by his royal sister to rule. That he was worthy to command his species, their history, and the gemstones that hummed and preened at his touch.
He thought of the hot spurt of liquid that had covered his face when he’d torn out the throat of the first Zaharen drákon to challenge him. How it had tasted in his mouth like rust and lush, demented victory.
How, in that red and dangerous aftermath, all he’d wanted was more.
“I have an idea,” Honor said, her eyes shadowed and endless. “I’ve been saving the Weaves, saving my Gift, so to speak. I can’t Weave to any unique time and location more than once,
and I can’t go there at all if I’m already there—if the future or past me is physically anywhere nearby. But I’ve been thinking. I’m going to Weave ahead, just a few years. I’ve tried it before, but I wasn’t skilled enough to pinpoint the time. I believe I can do it now. And since I’m planning it now, to go there then, I’ll be able to do it, d’you see?”
“What?” he managed again.
“I’m going ahead, Sandu. I’m going to slip into our future for a moment, just to see. I’ve been waiting and waiting. If I’m not there with you—if it’s not meant to be—I’ll come back and tell you. Then we’ll know.”
He felt a surge of alarm. “Honor, I don’t think—”
She stepped back at last, haloed in magenta and russet and flaming blue, unsmiling. “Wait for me. I’ll see you soon.”
Then she was gone, and he was left to squint at the first dart of sun stabbing under the clouds.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I was in a forest. It was a summer forest, by the feel of it. Ferns and wildflowers whispered in blankets around the shaggy trunks. The dirt I stood upon was soft, coffee-black, and when I rocked back on my heels to look upward it sank with me, loamy.
Conifers reached high above, perfuming the air; when a delicate breeze swept through they didn’t even shiver, although the tiny vermilion and orange wildflowers nodded all around.
I heard crickets far off, and even farther the strumming of a guitar, the player picking through the notes with relaxed fluidity.
It felt like twilight, although it was difficult to truly tell. The trees were so thick and tall they blocked most of the sky. The air was faintly green and pleasantly dim, and from deep beneath the soles of my feet rose the treble lilt of silver, still trapped in veins inside the rocky deep earth.
Was this Darkfrith? Had I Woven to the wrong place? It was familiar, no doubt, but were the pines this massive back in England? I wasn’t certain. Perhaps it was a part of the woods I’d not been to before. The shire had forbidden areas, places even I had not ventured to. Was I in one of those?
The breeze returned, laden with resin, and when it died I heard something new: a tinkle of crystal, like chimes. Lots of it.
I walked toward that sound.
There was no path but it was easy to pick my way through the undergrowth. I tried to make as little noise as possible but there was no disguising the scent of the flowers I couldn’t help but crush. The truth was, this place didn’t feel like Darkfrith or the land around Zaharen Yce. It felt olden, darkly ancient. I sensed no animals nearby but there was life everywhere, like the trees themselves were breathing, watching me.
The crystal-chime sound began to ebb. I paused, glancing around me, my fingers tying closed Sandu’s shirt, which thankfully had made the Weave with me.
Something flashed ahead, to my right. It vanished against a haze of deeper green, then came again—a wink of light, small as a forest fairy.
It actually was crystal, a cut-crystal pendant like a lustre from a chandelier, strung with thread and suspended from a lofty tree branch, half lost behind a fan of needles. I walked to stand beneath it, gazing up at it as it spun and sparked in lazy mystery.
The guitar playing rose behind me, but I still felt compelled to go forward, away from it, toward the denser darkness of the trees. A few feet in I spied a new crystal—no, two of them together—hung near enough that they might ring, if another breeze would come. A few more steps, wildflowers gilding my legs with pollen, and there were more pendants, high and lower down, some so low I could reach up and stroke their pointed tips, creating my own cascade of sound. The woods before me were draped with them now, crystal lustres tinkling and swaying, a hundred fairy winks guiding me on.
It was like a dream, this forest, so fantastic and inexplicable and yet still teasingly familiar. I glided through it like a dreamwalker, like I could walk and walk and never tire.
But that’s not what happened.
I didn’t really come upon the clearing as much as it came upon me. I had been hiking enthralled, unheeding of much beyond the pendants and the flowers and the aroma of shadowed, balmy woods. It seemed that when I blinked, it was there: a meadow of plush grasses and more wildflowers, a sky above that showed it was twilight, just the beginning of it, and a stream at the other green edge that burbled and purled.
In my dream, Alexandru stood by the stream.
I halted in place, still beneath the canopy of trees. I trusted my eyes but I trusted my senses more, so I inhaled deep and sought the scent of him and yes, there he was, his wonderful perfume of night and day. There was a blanket spread on the grass between us, food and wine upon it, and I smelled that too, but more than anything there was him. Raven-blue hair, broad shoulders, lean. A silk shirt similar to the one I wore, but burgundy instead of white, and with a cravat, no waistcoat, leather boots and doeskin breeches.
He turned around. He found me at once, and his lips turned up into a smile.
“Réz,” he said. “You did come.”
I stepped forward, glancing around us. There didn’t seem to be anyone else nearby. The prince only stood in place as the lustres threw sparkles at the corners of my vision.
“Perdoni,” he murmured, and shook his head. “I’d forgotten how you looked in that shirt.”
“I beg your pardon,” I said, enmeshed in that dreamlike calm. “Are you addressing me?”
“I am.” He came toward me, circling around the blanket. I noticed vaguely that his hair was even longer now, down past his chest, but he still didn’t bother to tie it back. “We changed your name when you first came, to throw off the English.”
“To Rehzz?” I asked, trying out the sound.
He had reached me, stopped just before me, still smiling. “It’s from the language of the mountains. It means something like ‘red-haired.’”
“Really?” I said, disgruntled. “That’s the best you could do?”
Alexandru laughed. Truly laughed, a deep and lovely sound that sent those prickles along my skin and unlocked something fragile in my chest, something carefully unfolding.
He found my hand, curled his fingers around mine. “You liked it at the time. At least, you told me you did.”
“I’m not a very good liar,” I said. “So if you believed me, I’m sure I meant it.”
The crystals let loose another round of rippling chimes; his smile began to fade. Through the dusk, through the gloaming, he looked at me with a clear gray intensity that seemed more than ever animal, even though he was fully in his human form.
And he was older. Not much, but I could tell. The lines around his mouth were slightly deeper, his cheeks a bit more hollowed. His skin looked darker too, although at the moment it was hard to be certain. I thought he might have a hint of a tan, because there were faint, faint, paler lines around the corners of his eyes, as if he kept his face to the sun.
But, oh—he was still the most handsome drákon I’d ever seen. Still with those sensual lips, and lashes so thick and long that when he dropped his gaze, they masked the gray entirely.
“Well,” I said, or tried to, but my voice came out more as a croak. I tried again, stronger. “I suppose then I made it here after all. That’s why I came. To, um, ensure that we’re supposed to … be …” I wet my lips. “This is where we live? The Carpathians? We’re a couple?”
“We are,” the prince said.
“And … where am I now? The me in this time?”
“Away. So that you could come.”
“Did we wed?” I asked, and the prince glanced up again with a very dry half-smile.
Well, hell.
“Not yet, but a fortnight ago,” he said, “you at last agreed to be my wife.” His smile grew more wry at my silence; he pinned me with that mist-pale gaze. “It’s been over a year of me asking, Réz. Every morning. Every night. You’re a most stubborn woman. But it happens that I’m a most persistent man.”
“Oh,” I said. “I see. Fine. I’ll just … I’ll be …”
&n
bsp; I ran out of words. It was rather ludicrous. He was the same Alexandru, the same person. But with his hand covering mine, my confusion of thoughts seemed blown to the wind. I could only feel.
And I felt—panicky. Like my skin had been rubbed raw and every second I remained with him flayed me deeper, a pain that was both exquisite and agonizing at once.
He was older. He was so composed. We were going to wed. And despite that sardonic, knowing smile, he looked at me like I was one of the succulent little fishes that used to swim by him, back in those days when he lounged on his throne in that cold, cold Great Room of his castle.
Those days that might be right now, I realized.
“Don’t go yet,” he said easily, and drew my hand through the crook of his arm, forcing me to step by his side. “I’ve brought a supper. All your favorites.”
Most of the dishes were. Shallots in almond sauce, roasted pork sausage. Minced olives and capers as tapenade, torn bread for dipping. Fresh cheese drizzled with honey, cubed melon, coca cake. Even paella, yellow with saffron. But there were other provisions there I’d never seen or smelled before. As I settled upon the blanket, tucking my legs beneath me, I leaned over to take a closer look at the nearest one: a ceramic bowl holding a red stew of some sort, with shredded meat and a pungent, peppery spice I could not name.
“That one is my favorite,” said the prince, sitting beside me. “Tochitura. It should be served hot, but we do what we can alfresco. Will you have some?”
“No, thank you,” I said, which prompted another smile.
“You never have, you know.”
“I’m sure it’s delightful,” I hedged.
He tipped his head in acknowledgment. “An acquired taste, perhaps.”
Alexandru began to serve me. I followed the movement of his hands, his deft purchase on the knives, the shape of his fingers against the blanket and the ghostly curves of the platters and plates. The light above us was fading rapidly, but there was already a moon, lovely and full, rising above the conifers.