by Shana Abe
And the one thing they did not discuss, not in the cave and not in this bright open day, was last night, and what had happened between them. It might have been another fevered dream of hers, except for the faint, smarting soreness between her legs that even Turning had not diminished.
No. He was no dream. That pleasure, his lips, his body inside hers-it had been far too bittersweet to be another dream.
After the tenth or eleventh stream they’d hopped across, Lia stooped to pick up a switch of pine. She shook off the snow as they walked and stared very hard at the tuft of needles sprouting from the end.
She blew fire, and it caught. As usual, Zane didn’t break his stride.
“We could make a fortune off this back home,” he said casually, not looking at her. “Consider the headlines: Fire Girl. Breather of Light. That sort of thing. People will pay a groat to gawk at a talking monkey or a counting horse. You’d bring in at least a shilling. Think about it, why don’t you?”
She stripped off her gloves, alternating between cupping each palm against the small crackling flames until the blood returned to her fingers. The scent of burning sap wafted smoky sweet into the air.
“Roaster of Chestnuts,” the thief said. “Heater of Bedpans. No Matches Required.”
“Would you like to carry it?” she asked him.
He took the switch. Almost at once, the fire snuffed out. She found a new stick for him in the woolly edelweiss fronting the road, and after it was lit he held it out in front of him like a torch.
“You won’t get warm that way,” Lia said.
“No.” He still would not look at her. “I’ve a better notion on how to get warm.”
“Actually, so do I.”
His mouth tightened. “Lia-”
She spoke lightly, quickly, to cover her embarrassment. “You’ve changed your mind about wanting to marry me. You’re afraid I’ll burn down your home. Embarrass you in front of all the other city brutes.”
“I am afraid,” he said gently, “that you will burn down my heart.” He glanced at her askance. “Am I a brute?”
“That doesn’t even make sense, you know. Hearts don’t burn down.”
“That’s what you think.”
They reached the brink of another wash cutting a sluice through the mud. Zane dropped his branch to the clear water. It sizzled and bobbed, tipping askew with the downward flow. They watched together as it caught in a lethargic spin against the bank, then freed itself, floating away.
“My world is a tinderbox, snapdragon,” he said, distant. “It’s dangerous and unpredictable, and you are the cinder that could kindle it all to ash.”
“Would that be so dreadful?”
He closed his eyes. “Yes. It’s all I know.”
“Not quite.” She waited until he turned to her. “You know me.”
His face hardened again, his gaze bright and wary, thoughts she could not read turning behind his look. Lia only gazed back at him. She curled her fingers in the pockets of her cloak and felt the roll of coins he had given her, unyielding against her palm. Then his lips began to curve.
“Isn’t this the part where you weep prettily and beg me to change, to give up my evil ways and become a decent man?”
“Who’s been reading penny novels? I think you’re a decent man already.”
He shook his head. “Then you don’t know me at all.”
She said nothing. She stood in the mud and let the air cloud in front of her, hearing the soft, small rush of the streaming water, the snow melting into raindrops that slipped from the trees, the diamond whispering and yearning below.
Zane picked up a pebble and plunked it into the wash. “Play it out, my heart. What would happen to us? We’d retire to Darkfrith on Papa’s reward, and I’ll become a dull country bloke, growing old and bored and fat by the fire-when I’m not busy ducking your family, who will not, I assure you, find any of this amusing. No doubt they have some eager-eyed, sharp-clawed mate all picked out for you, so I’d be ducking him too. You’d despise me within a year.”
“No.”
“Then I would despise myself. Lia, all that I am is what I do. I’m not meant for a tame sort of life, to dwell in bucolic splendor. I’m a city rat. I ache for it. I was made for it. And I wouldn’t expect you to live as I do. I wouldn’t want that for you. But it’s all I have to offer.”
“Then-I accept.”
He brought a hand to his forehead and began to laugh. “It’s like being snared in a sugartrap. You won’t listen.”
“I heard what you said. I’m not the silly romantic you think. I don’t want the heavens or the shooting stars. I don’t want gemstones or gold. I have those things already. I want…a steady hand. A kind soul. I want to fall asleep, and wake, knowing my heart is safe. I want to love, and be loved.”
“I do not love you.”
“You are a good liar.”
“I want you.” He turned and stepped closer to her, suddenly imposing, all humor vanished. His cravat was tied; his hair was braided back; he might have been any English gentleman on any given day confronting her in a wild forest, but he was not. When he moved, he blocked the sun from her eyes. The day flared into a nimbus around him. “I want you all the time, and that’s the honest truth. I want to touch you again, I want to be inside you. I want to make you scream, and the hell of it is, I know you want that too. But don’t be witless. This isn’t love.”
She stood her ground. She felt shamed and light-headed and didn’t know if it was the sun or him or the lack of nourishment, or if it even mattered.
You will not change the future, the dragon whispered. You cannot make him care.
From somewhere far, far away, an eagle let out a single piercing cry, and another one answered it, their calls dying off against the hills.
Zane bent his head. His mouth touched hers, cool and impersonal, the kiss of a courtier, and Lia felt her heart give a painful skip.
“Is this your love?” he asked, his hands rising to her shoulders. His lips traced her cheekbone. “Is this the steady kindness you spoke of?”
Her hands raised too, clutching at the fabric of his coat. She lifted her face and closed her eyes, tilting back into the sunlight, and the world went to red behind her lids.
The coat was one from Jászberény, itchy and coarse, nothing of the smoothness beneath it: the damask vest, his hot skin. But the fact that she knew what waited beneath was enough to excite her. She’d tasted him now. She’d known him, in the depths of the night. His skin was pale without his tan; his nipples were brown; there was an old scar that slashed thin along his left ribs. His arms were muscular and his chest was sculpted. He was a man who used his body as a weapon, and with his every breath, it showed. He tasted like candy, like wine and spice and sugar, no matter what he’d been eating. He moved inside her like a demon, opening gates within her she had not known were there.
She touched a hand to his cravat. She found the knot that held the linen in place and began to loosen it, working a finger down into the folds.
“Don’t bother,” Zane said. He tore off the sheepskin and blanket, and then the greatcoat and his gloves, letting it all fall to the mud. He yanked at the buttons of his breeches and pushed her hard back from the stream, over moss and ferns and rocks until something hard pushed back: a tree trunk, digging into her spine.
His hat fell off. His hands parted her cloak and dragged up her skirts. His mouth didn’t leave hers; she felt his words against her lips as his fingernails scratched up her thick stockings.
“Is that truly what you desire? Love and matrimony, innocence and froth? Or is it this-” He stroked her beneath the chemise. He thrust two fingers deep inside her, and despite herself, Lia moaned. Pressed against her, stomach to stomach, chest to chest, his hand sliding in and out-and in-Zane gave his wicked smile.
“That’s what I thought.”
His free hand took hers and held it to his shaft. He felt both foreign and familiar, throbbing hot and stiff with his bre
eches falling open to his hips. She dragged her fingertips against him, exploring his shape, his heat, eager to understand this part of him, eager to know how he tortured her dreams and sent her body into night-sweat agony.
She found his smooth tip and rubbed it, following his ridges, the curves and veins and satin softness, all the way down to the curls at his base. She drew her nails lightly back up, turning her hand, rubbing her palm along his center, very gently, because it made him freeze on a breath.
Zane knocked her hand away. He grabbed her by the waist and rammed into her, and the beech tree sifted snow down around them in utter silence.
He was rough. He was uncouth. He gave her no quarter when she turned her head for a cold, quick breath, but pressed his fingers into her cheek and held her prisoner for his kisses. His beard rasped against her face.
“Scream,” he bit out, turning his lips against her throat, his teeth closing on her just hard enough to hurt. He pushed deeper into her, fire and pain, delicious heat and lust that rose through her veins. His words were a hiss against her skin. “Go ahead and scream, Lia. I know you want to.”
She buried her face in his shoulder. She felt her toes lift from the earth.
“Lia.”
She bit down on his waistcoat. She closed her eyes and opened her throat on a sound that hit the sky more urgent than the eagle’s, her body shattering around him.
He caught her to him with both hands, thrusting hard. He was as silent as she was not, a force without words or timbre beyond his ragged breath, the slap of his skin against hers, the sifting of the snow with every fierce push of his body. She felt his release. She felt him spilling inside her, his entire being shuddering, her legs spread wide and every inch of her raw to his touch.
For a long time afterward he kept his cheek to hers, winded, their eyes averted. He kept his hands at her shoulders as he swallowed and slowed his breath.
“That-was stunning. But it wasn’t love.”
Lia had no answer. Not now. She felt sore and bruised and horribly relaxed, a doll with loosened joints. Her head drooped against his neck; his hands reached up and dragged through her hair, tugging at the coronet she’d plaited tight this morning, his fingers pulling as his palms slid down to her cheeks. She smelled him and burnt pine and fresh water, more intoxicating than any wine.
With his thumbs at her jaw he tipped back her head, another kiss as his body withdrew. Then he dropped his hands and stepped away. Her dress slithered back down over her legs.
A new noise rattled the forest, not very distant. Horses. The steady squeak of wooden wheels.
Zane shoved his shirt back into his breeches as Lia stepped around the beech to glimpse the road. A coach and four-not their own-was heading down the mountaintop, gigantic brown horses picking their way down the slope, the driver’s whip primed high and loose in the wind.
Zane expelled a breath, bending to retrieve his tricorne. “Apparently, my lady, we are expected.” He turned around to jerk up her bodice, speaking grimly all the while. “Don’t look so calf-eyed. If he hasn’t already spied what we were up to, he’ll guess it in an instant by the expression upon your face.”
She pushed him away, enough to make him stagger. But he only came right back, brushing her loose hair back from her cheeks, dusting snow from her sleeves and shoulders. She reached up and yanked his hat over his ears.
Zane raised it up again carefully, examining her with a critical eye. “It’s not entirely your fault, I suppose. No doubt you can’t help being so damned ravishing.”
She could not think of a single rude response before the coach and four was upon them.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
T he strongest magic, as you must know, is born from the shiny sharp brink of sky and earth. Earth has her roots and geometric crystals; these things are useful for grounding spells, for tempting living beings and bending their fates like a cherry-hot blade to the hammer and forge.
Sky has his planets and orbits and infinite constellations. Sky’s magic is transparent, ungrounded, useful for slipping into thoughts, for whispering a name in an unguarded ear, for suggesting alliances and enemies or revealing venom in a cup by the aqua light of a harvest moon.
But only in that bounded, unspoken space where these two realms scrape edges is the purest magic revealed: violent, churning, sparks and comets and whirlwinds, invisible to the human eye. From that place, eons ago, from diamonds and lava and ruby spinning stars, the drákon were first thrust into light, which is why we are the apex of all things.
We bleed with the mountains. We ponder with the stars.
Our Gifts are plentiful. We speak to stones. We Turn to smoke. We bend metal with our hands and end lives with our talons. We’re clever and subtle like the sky, and feral and potent like the earth.
But dreams are not our natural province. When the Gift of clairvoyance is stirred into the soul of one of our kind, terrible beauties result. Of those few in our history who have grasped this Gift, nearly all sank with it into madness over time. It cannot be an easy thing to know your own future, or that of your kin. It cannot be pleasant to witness the story of the life and death of your tribe before it unfolds.
Under the spell of the mighty Carpathians, with the breath of her creation blowing over her heart, Amalia’s Gift splintered. She was given two futures: one dark, one bright, the same mortal lover pulling her two-handed into each.
Every step she took lured her closer to the dark.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The castle was huge. Even from a distance it swallowed the view, commanding the eye with white quartzite towers and rivers of time-melted crystals that bled down the walls. It seemed to cling improbably to the side of its mountain, anchored in some way Lia could not fathom-perhaps by the claws of her dead and buried people: she felt them here everywhere. But beyond the cheerful coachman-human-who had picked them up, there were no other figures to be seen. No footmen, no laborers or dairymaids. The windows of the castle flashed black and empty against their icicled casements. Woodsmoke poured up from unseen chimneys, streamers pointing the opposite direction of the wind.
If the coachman spoke French, or Hungarian, or Romanian, he did not reveal it. He greeted them with a phrase Lia did not recognize and waved them into the carriage with big, open gestures, without climbing down from his seat.
Zane had been standing between her and the horses, studying the man. When the coachman set the brake and made to jump down, the thief lifted a hand, a gesture to hold, and strolled forward to open the door. He helped Lia inside with a speaking look.
Beware. She didn’t need to hear him say it. Every nerve in her body tingled.
The coach was far more ornate than the one the gypsy had stolen. It was older too, done up in crimson and brushed saffron, fringed tassels looped from the seats and satin window curtains. There were furs and goosefeather pillows strewn across the squabs, and a small yellow songbird, a real one, in a cage hung from a hook in the ceiling. The bird gripped its dowel with tiny feet, staring at Lia. The brass cage rocked with every bump.
Zane had already overturned the pillows, looking for what, she didn’t know. He’d checked the compartments beneath the seats-stuffed with more furs-and run his hands along the walls and cherrywood trim. When he was satisfied there was nothing else to be found, he sat back and looked at her, frowning.
“No hidden perfidy?” she inquired, only half mocking.
“Not yet.”
He sat forward and opened a window, letting in the frigid air. He turned around and worked at the latch to the birdcage, tugging it open, reaching a hand inside. The bird never moved.
His fingers were lean and strong. He stroked a finger down the creature’s back and pried it carefully from its roost. With his cupped hands against the sill, his palms opened like a lotus. The songbird fluttered out to the sky, a speck of butter yellow diminishing into the blue.
“Well, that’s certain to get us off on the right foot,” Lia said.
“An unf
ortunate accident. The latch was loose. The window was down.” He lifted the sash to close the glass once again, shoving at it when it stuck. “It’s not my fault they didn’t bother to clip her wings.”
“She’s not meant to survive out there, you know.”
“I know.” He was watching the sky, or the bird; she couldn’t tell which from where she sat. “But I’d rather die out there than trapped in here. Wouldn’t you?”
She remembered another bird, another time, in the dark woods, with her brothers and sisters surrounding her. She remembered her fear and her determination, and the fragile life she’d ended in her hands.
Lia bent her head to hide her face, dragging another fur over her legs. “Considering the past few weeks, I’d rather not think about it at all.”
“Only a fool fails to contemplate the possibilities. It’s better to be prepared.”
“Yes. And we’ve been so well prepared for all this, haven’t we?”
“Pardon me for saying so, but it seems one of us should have been. Why don’t you tell me of your dreams now, Lia? The bad ones.”
She hesitated.
“Lia,” he said again, dark and smooth, just like those dreams. “Do you think I don’t know? Do you think I don’t hear you at night? You skim across the surface of sleep. You say my name. Betimes you weep. I’d rather you tell me now our future troubles, and spare me the later.”
She lifted her eyes. “I die an old woman. I never visit Tuscany.”
“Tuscany.”
“Yes.”
“What would be there?” he asked, very mild.
“You,” she said.
He stared at her. The tassels beside him danced and caught the light in their bright satin weave.
“Did I say we should charge a shilling for your talents? I’m certain we could get at least a full crown.”
He’d spoken of the sun in her blind dreams. He’d spoken of the sultry Italian heat, and of the palazzo they’d buy as soon as their first child was born.