by Shana Abe
I sat beside him in that chamber of damask and gold one afternoon. I listened as he did to the farmers who’d trudged up the mountain to converse with him, the herders of sheep and goats, the hunters, the men who unearthed truffles from beneath the forest trees to catch the wild boars. Some of them were darker-skinned and some of them were alabaster pale, but all of them bowed to their prince, and spoke in words I nearly understood, their voices lifting and falling and ultimately bouncing away against the truly blinding, shiny splendor engulfing us. Remaining seated in the midst of it was a bit like drowning in a gilt pot.
Offerings began to pile up on a side table in a corner. Round wheels of cheese coated in wax, clusters of grapes, candied walnuts. Jars of blond honey, ropes of dried sausage. Saddles and blankets. Skeins of wool so floaty soft and beautiful I could not imagine spinning them into something else.
I kept looking over at it, in part because it puzzled me: Did this happen every time? All these lovely things, brought with reverent bows and deep curtsies? But also I stared because muted, natural colors offered my eyes wonderful relief.
By the end of that day the gifts from the Zaharen overflowed the table before us, and still there stretched a line of people beyond the doors, bringing more.
“They love you,” I said, standing with my arms planted akimbo above my panniered hips, half-awed. A particularly fine chunk of clear quartz had been shaped and polished into a solid thick ball. The reflection across it showed me a pair of human-looking drákon in court clothing, copper and cream, blue and black, cast upside down.
“No,” said the prince, standing before the table with me. He brushed his palm against the small of my back; I barely felt it through the corset. “This isn’t for me, Réz. All this is yours.”
I sent him a dubious glance, squinting, because the wall behind him was of actual shaped gold leaves, layered like Spanish roof tiles from floor to ceiling.
“We don’t need a wedding,” he said, stepping closer, cupping his hands around my eyes so I wouldn’t squint. His lips touched the tip of my nose. “You’re here, you’re one of us, already entrenched in our legend. You are Alpha, you’re mine. So they’ll pay homage to you. It’s in our blood. It’s how we are.”
Alpha, me. It seemed both impossible and just what I’d always secretly, deliriously expected.
Oh, Réz was fully awake, and she was well pleased.
Our eight days brimmed with wonder. Our nine nights with a dark and magnificent passion. I took the time to find the meadow I’d call Sanctuary and began to hang the first of the crystal lustres from the trees around it, the ones that would lead me to my future. Sandu helped, reaching the taller boughs, sometimes boosting me up to his shoulders so I could get the highest ones of all.
I drank the wine and ate the food and submerged myself in this bright new gladness, this sense of home and love. Of hope for the very best of tomorrows.
Of course, none of that actually came to pass.
Instead, Lia showed up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It had been a very long while since Amalia had attempted a hunt. And it had been even longer since she’d flown in daylight.
Not that this was much of a hunt. She knew where she was going, just as she had known where to go to find Zane. She’d been to Zaharen Yce before, in her wilder youth, even though over a decade had passed since she’d been anywhere near the bald, snow-scuffed Alps that cradled the last of the original tribe of drákon.
She remembered the mountains. She remembered the taste of the wind, that icy snap of pine and glacier frosting her senses. The flash of the green and blue lakes below, the cold foaming rivers. Forests rippling over hill and dale in velvet colors without end.
The first of the dragons approached while she was still leagues away. He’d been a haze of smoke above a field when she first spotted him, but had swept near with a sudden velocity as soon as he was high enough to Turn to full dragon.
He was burnt red and orange, only a little larger than she. He arrowed close enough to force her to veer, which she didn’t, because Lia knew better than to let his first challenge lead to her capitulation.
The new dragon veered off instead; she got a very good look at the crisscross pattern of his scales. No doubt he’d gotten near enough to realize her gender, as well. He didn’t try to force her down again, but instead began to fly alongside her, his lips curled back and his eyes strangely scarlet.
Lia herself was dyed more of the heavens, cobalt and violet with pearled wings, golden barbs along her tail. In certain lights she knew she blended with the sky, but it was too late to blend, and she had no intention of slinking into Zaharen Yce anyway.
They flew as a pair. Another mile in and yet another dragon looped up to join them, a green one, all different shades of green, from ivy to peridot to glass.
The next one was bronze and rust, and the next silver and pink and black.
By the time she circled above the turrets of the fortress, she had an escort of no less than eighteen male dragons, and she didn’t know where the hell they thought they’d all land, but she herself was going for the inner courtyard, because it was graveled and open, and she’d likely break only one of the fountains in her skid.
She broke two.
They were oversized and placed too close together, but she still might have avoided them if her escort had only realized what she was entirely about. Instead, a dragon with a yellowish back and an actual gray beard attempted to head her off at the last moment, and Lia was forced to duck beneath him, snapping at his flank. It shattered her concentration just enough to sacrifice that second fountain, which had featured a large bird or a dolphin, and was probably ugly anyway.
She left furrows of brown dirt easily nine inches deep, starkly visible against the crumbled white gravel.
With all four legs on the ground again she Turned to smoke, allowing the valise strung around her neck by a rope to fall free. She resumed her shape standing beside it, holding a hand to her eyes as the beasts above her Turned as well, one by one, slithering down in plumes to the courtyard.
The valise contained, among other things, a robe, which she removed and slipped on, ignoring the eyes of all the men materializing nude around her. She belted it, bent down, retrieved the nearly empty valise and let the rope drape over her arm.
“I’ve come to see my daughter,” she announced in Romanian, her words clear and carrying in the thin, fragrant air.
From the dense pocket of shadows that concealed the main doors behind her, her name was spoken.
Lia turned around. Prince Alexandru—God, so grown, how many years had it been?—stood at the brink of the gravel, the light splashed just along the toes of his boots. When he moved forward into the sunlight and his hair went to indigo and his handsome face was thrown into sharp relief, she had a moment of vertigo so intense she had to ease a step back from him to preserve her equilibrium.
This place. The crushing magic of this place. How did any of them stand it?
“I must see her,” she said, glad to hear her voice revealed nothing of her momentary weakness.
“Lady Amalia,” murmured the prince again, and had the courtesy to offer her a bow, one complete with that unique Zaharen salute of curved fingers to his forehead. “Welcome, Noble One. Please come in. We’ll speak inside.”
“Yes,” said Lia, holding her balance with a lift of her chin. “We will.”
He was unsurprised to see she was still beautiful, this female who’d stolen the child Réz from the shire, and who’d summoned a faint tinge of unconscious jealousy in adult Réz’s voice. Yet Amalia possessed a different sort of beauty than his beloved, more typically English, he thought, and in that sense, at least to him, more commonplace. She was lovely, yes, but Réz was extraordinary.
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 imagin
ed 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. All 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, Alexandru. 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 Drákon 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 Réz.”
His lashes lifted.
“Not the one you know. An older Réz. 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. Réz 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. Réz 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 Réz circle warily around her. “I lied.”
Réz 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 be
en struck dumb 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.