by Shana Abe
But he was in love, and Lia was in love, and eleven-year-old Maricara had seen for herself what their love meant: blood and sacrifice and a great deal of noble, unspoken suffering. It had all been a little tedious.
Yet she remembered the man Zane for something more significant than his looks, or even his devotion to one of her kind. Maricara remembered Zane most for the very last words he spoke to her, just before climbing into his carriage and disappearing from her life.
He had turned to scan the small crowd in the castle courtyard waiting to see them both off, then limped slowly back to Maricara. She'd been standing farther away than most. The horses spooked when she ventured too near.
He'd taken her hand. He'd swept her a bow, even though he'd already bid her adieu. "They're going to come for you," he'd murmured in French, very low.
Mari tipped her head, puzzled. There had been some discontent in the hold since the death of Imre, but surely even this human understood she could manage it.
"The serfs?" she'd inquired.
"No, Princess." Zane lifted his eyes and sent her that clever, crooked smile that had, just perhaps, made her heart beat somewhat faster. "The drakon. The English ones. They know about you now, and you'll be far more dear to them than any mere diamond. They will come." He released her hand with a final squeeze of her fingers. "A bit of unsolicited advice, my pet: They'll court you and flatter you and offer any sweet vow they'll think you want to hear. But you'd be a fool to trust them."
And he had walked back to the carriage and was gone.
So when she'd finally found her way to the outskirts of Darkfrith—a land as lush and distant as Lady Amalia had once dreamily described—Maricara was already on her guard, flying low, her senses prickling. Yet she was still taken by surprise at the sheer number of drakon patrolling the skies of this dark English place.
From miles away she had first begun to perceive them, initially just one, then three more, and then, suddenly—as the half-moon glowed across her back and she caught the fresh, warm scent of a river below—over two dozen. And they were a patrol, she could see that. They followed a set pattern, not deviating. Some were smoke; some were dragons.
Mari had banked instantly, wheeling back a few miles to conceal her trail, darting through a cover of hills and trees. It seemed to work; no one followed. Perhaps she had escaped before any of them felt her.
She landed beneath a shadowed outcropping of granite crumbling with lichen and remained there a good while, considering, observing.
She could not Turn to smoke to slip past them, not carrying her valise. It held all her garments and bread and cheese and some of her most favorite gemstones. Damned if she was going to leave it behind just to avoid a troop of sentries, and she suspected it was still much too far to Darkfrith to walk. Everything around here was either forest or field; she hadn't seen anything like a village in nearly an hour.
And if they were patrolling the skies, they were likely patrolling the ground as well, so she needed to be closer, already hidden in their center, if she was successfully going to avoid them.
She had crossed a sparkling channel of ocean that very morning. Mari didn't know what these English dragons were looking for, and at the moment, she didn't care. Her body ached, every joint and tendon. As a species the drakon were exceptionally strong, but she'd been approaching her limits for weeks now just to reach this place. It didn't seem fair that she'd have to surrender so near to her goal.
Maricara did not consider herself a fool. The English had sent envoys to her home despite her repeated directives they stay away. They'd been pushing to enter her realm for years and had apparently decided to no longer wait for an invitation. She would not simply promenade into their midst and request an audience with their Alpha, this Kimber earl. She needed surprise on her side. She needed every advantage.
Mari dug a single talon into the granite, thoughtful, pressing deep enough to crack the stone as she weighed her options.
She would have to be fleet. She would have to be silent. And she would have to fly very, very high above them, high enough so she would blend with the infinity of heaven should anyone glance up. At least there she had an advantage: By fate or chance Maricara was the only dragon she had ever seen without color. Even the creatures scoring the sky ahead of her shone bright like May ribbons in the light.
But she.. .she was formed of space and stars, her scales gleaming jet, her eyes and mane and the bare tips of her wings burning silver.
From the safety of her rock she Turned human to devour the last of the bread, the final, thin slices of the Camembert melting against her fingers. She licked her fingertips clean and settled back naked against the lichen, examining the patrol's distant flight.
After a full hour of surveillance she was able to predict their patterns, where they would loop and dip, how the wind would steer them. They were organized and tightly knit, but there was no real sense of urgency threading through the group. If they were hunting, they had not yet spotted their prey, and by all appearances the search was focused below them. Very well. With any luck at all, they'd keep their heads down and their sights fixed to the earth.
At least her valise was dark—not an accident.
Mari stood and brushed the bread crumbs from her stomach. She sent the English drakon one last glance, then Turned, picking up her valise—the leather handle like a familiar bit in her mouth—and launched herself high into the night.
The atmosphere was thicker here in England than in the alps, far more moist. Her wings beat against it. The air sucked hard between her teeth. It was never comfortable to attempt a straight rising vault, but she had to do it. She climbed and climbed, until her lungs labored and her claws opened and closed convulsively at nothing, scratching at the wind.
At the pinnacle of her ascent the ground was a remote, alluring span of ruffled darkness, the dragons below small toys and cottony flecks. Mari drew in a final enormous breath, took aim, then tucked her wings close and began her dive.
She had a single chance. There was only a single spot, a narrow rectangle of air left unguarded between the left-banking of a yellow dragon and the right return of a bottle-green one. It would be left exposed for twelve short seconds. If she hadn't made it by then, they'd discover her.
She dropped nearly without sound. The English weaved their paths, hushed and rhythmic, yellow dragon, bottle-green. The valise pressed like an iron weight into her throat; her stomach rose to meet it. A half league above the patrol, Maricara closed her eyes. She would make it or she wouldn't. She could feel the night with fiercely honed clarity, the drakon energies, their humming vigilance, the empty patch of air; she didn't care to see.
She shot through in a blur, the wind around her parting with the barest siss. The yellow dragon veered up at the last moment, then twisted right—the wrong way, but by then Mari was gone, Turning to smoke mere inches from the deadly tips of a grove of trees, losing the valise after all. It went smashing into the branches, striking the earth with a loud thump.
She sank into mist. She held close to the base of the trees, inert, willing herself into nothingness, only steam, only nature, nothing new or strange or wrong.
A host of dragons convened in the sky, circling. Two of them dropped into smoke and then became men, less than thirty feet distant.
Atom by atom, inch by inch, Maricara began to slink upward, following the knotty crevices of the pine tree she hugged, thin as a thread. She lurked in the first fork of the trunk as the men began to stalk the forest floor.
Her valise had not crashed all the way to the ground after all. It lay snared between two thick, high branches of a yew several yards away. A sprinkling of bark and small broken leaves dappled the ferns spreading beneath it.
The dragon-men hadn't yet drawn closer. They spoke to each other in low, English words, and paused at something Mari couldn't see. One of them squatted down and ran his fingers over the dirt.
She smelled it then, what he had found—deer scat, fresh. Bloo
d on the thorns of a patch of briar. A hart had braved these woods tonight, perhaps more than one. Perhaps even as she had fallen.
Multumesc. Run faster, hart.
A hot breeze stirred and tried to pry her from the bark of her tree. She clung to it as the leaves on the ground flickered, releasing an aroma that covered the scat, thick and rich and earthy.
The dragon-men conferred a while longer, glancing around them. But eventually they Turned and left, rising up again to the stars.
Mari waited anyway, in case it was a trap, but when she opened her senses she found no trace of them nearby. They seemed actually gone.
She slithered back down to the roots of the pine. She Turned, crouching, lifting her face to that breeze, searching for a scent beyond that of trees and humus and whispering wheat.
No luck. England might be formed entirely of forest and heated air, for all she could tell. She rubbed her palms against her cheeks and tried again, fighting the exhaustion creeping black into her mind, and then, when she was ready to give up, to find a safe place to curl up in the leaves—she discovered it. A whiff of gold metal with saffron and hours-gone partridge, roasted with wine.
Surely the bouquet of a prince.. .or an earl, at the very least.
She Turned to smoke to reach her valise, to free it and tuck it deep within a hollow beneath its chosen yew. The case was very large, and it didn't fit easily, but she managed. When it was done she shook her hair over her shoulders and began, barefoot, to walk.
It took almost another hour to slip through the woods, to come upon the manor house in all its moonlit magnificence.
It was imposing. She'd truly seen nothing like it before, not in Hungary or Austria or Amsterdam. It was dun and massively sprawling, with three full wings and more glossy windows on a single side than all the walls of Zaharen Yce combined. There was a colossal dome of glass topping the main segment, an upside-down chalice of ice. Chimneys and cupolas studded the peaked slate roofs; limestone tracery scrolled across balconies and down every corner, ending in shaped shrubbery and waterfalls of flowers, and gargoyles that leaned and stared across silvery-blue gardens.
It was a place designed for humans, she thought, and then realized: to enthrall them. To ensure they would have no desire to glance in any other direction, especially upward.
So Maricara did, seeing nothing but the stars and the setting moon. Quickly, before she could change her mind, she darted across an expanse of cool, thick grass that cushioned the soles of her feet, ending in a coppice of willows. The main doors weren't far now. She could see them clearly even through the dark, planked wood and solid steel bracings. Another quick glance up; another sprint across the grass. She reached the doors and threw herself into the shelter of the carved stone archway surrounding them, panting.
When she could, she pressed her cheek to a panel and then one spread hand, seeking the presence of a hallboy or footman in the vestibule beyond.
Nothing. Her fingers slipped down to the latch.
The doors were locked, of course. More than locked. There were no keyholes, no slits of any kind piercing the heavy panels. The entire entrance was sealed tight against both men and smoke. Even the handles were soldered solid into the wood.
Well. At least she knew she was in the right place.
Mari turned around to face the lawn again, flexing her hand to get rid of the steel chill. That left just the windows. If the doors were that secure, no doubt the chimneys would be as well. At least glass could be broken.
She had to steal along the base of the manor to an entirely different wing before she found one open. And it wasn't even open, just cracked, as if someone had meant to shut it all the way but had gotten distracted before finishing the job.
Good enough. She Turned to smoke beneath it, squeezing past the sash.
It was a music room, very much like her own back home, with a pianoforte and a gilded lyre propped in a corner, pretty openwork chairs and cool, soothing colors on the walls. She became a woman in its darkest place, by the curtains, a sliver of a breeze from her passage bringing the scent of crushed flowers, stirring her hair against her hips.
There was no one else here. She was quite certain of that. There were smells and vibrations of the drakon everywhere, almost over-whelming—noises of them deeper in the halls, snoring; muttering; the sound of blankets rubbing, wool on wool—but this room was well deserted, and felt like it had been for some while. Even the pianoforte looked sleek and abandoned.
Such a place. She closed her eyes once more and inhaled deeply, taking in everything that she could, but nothing changed. The floors were beech over limestone, the ceiling was plastered, she was alone. So she moved back to the window, opened it wider and Turned again, siphoning outside to stand softly amid the bed of pansies below.
It was proving somewhat inconvenient to travel with things that would not Turn.
She tossed the rings she had left atop the dirt inside, followed them at once as smoke, and caught them in the palm of her hand before they even hit the rug.
Then she merely stood in place in the dark, savoring her victory.
Another girl, in another life, had once submitted to lessons on the pianoforte, but it was the harp that had captured her interest. The harp, with its taut strings and secret songs, with delicate harmonies only waiting to be revealed, had proven to be the favorite of a young princess. It was the only instrument that ever came close to echoing the music of diamonds.
With the rings in her hand Maricara found herself standing before the lyre, a smaller thing, less majestic, but still shining with strings and a promise of the same sweet, sad songs. She wondered if any of the English ever really played it.
Her hand reached out. She touched a finger to the wood, and then to a string, long and tight, feeling the coiled note that wanted to come.
And it was in that exact moment, with her arm outstretched and her back to the door, that she realized she was no longer alone.
Nothing visible had changed. No new shadows, no new breath. She couldn't even hear a heartbeat, which was the most startling fact of all, because Maricara had never met anyone, not human or dragon, whose heart did not betray them, even by the slightest murmur of sound.
But no—all she felt was the difference. The change around her, intangible, a subtle, mounting shock against her unclad skin, vibration that did not cease but expanded, enveloping her body and her blood and nerves, piercing down into the corners of her marrow:
Animal.
Virile.
Male.
She moved her head, only that, and saw what she had not before: the outline of him against the doorway, more stealth than man, and the pulse of drakon pounding between them, so powerful she felt herself rocking with it.
He eased forward. She remained where she was, breath caught, and when he shifted again she saw him fully.
The drakon were comely. Every one of them, from newborn child to wizened old man, was comely, because that was one of their Gifts. As dragons they were lithe and elegant; as humans they were nearly the same, with skin pure as alabaster and colors reflecting all the best of nature, gold and copper and oak, sky-blue, deep mahogany. Even a faded hint of dragon blood could be obvious in otherwise ordinary serfs: an unmarked complexion, slender bones, lips that smiled cold red.
But this man.this man was different. There was nothing faded about him.
He had the golden hair, the fair skin she had seen grace a few others of her kind. But he was muscular where Imre had been slim, tall and substantial where her husband had been like vapor in the night, never stable.
He was motionless as well, staring at her, his eyes pale green and hostile, and she realized that also unlike Imre—who seldom desired direct confrontation—this creature was poised to attack. Would attack if he thought her a threat—without pause, without regret.
She caught his scent now too, night and wine and musky perspiration. A faint tinge of saffron. Ah. Of course the earl would find her. Of course he would.
>
He let out a breath, and with it—everything changed. His expression turned sharper, more wolfish; he shifted instantly from one kind of predator to another.
With the sudden impression of sinking into a hot, murky lake, Maricara began to understand the depth of her folly. They stared at each other with the heat and the tension aching between them, his musk and her surprise and the moonlight burning white fire across her shoulders.
The earl's gaze flicked up and down her body, just once, but it was beast bright, enough to sear her to the bone.
Zane's warning of so long ago had been in vain after all. Too late. Only a fool would have ventured here.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was interesting to note that in all his years of superior education and well-financed travel, in his time spent at Eton and Cambridge and London, all those carefully shaped lessons in society and etiquette both human and drakon, not once had anyone ever mentioned to Kimber what to do when confronted with a nude, unexpected princess in his music chamber.
Nude.. .and gorgeous. Undeniably gorgeous.
"I beg your pardon," Kim said, also in French. "Would you care to sit down?" Her eyes narrowed. "I would care to have you explain these."
He did not glance again at the rings she'd tossed between them; he didn't even follow the flash of her arm as she gestured at them. He didn't quite dare lower his gaze below her chin. Not again. Instead, he studied her face.
He knew her age, but she appeared younger than that; it might have been the moonlight smoothing her skin, or the long, shining fall of her hair that—thank heavens—managed to conceal most of her body. She looked familiar and yet not; a drakon and not; he was accustomed to females of flaxen locks, or ginger, or gilt. Only a very few of the tribe had such dark hair, and no one at all had eyes like that, strange and clear and haunting.
Alpha, whispered the dragon in him, still rising. Every nerve ending in his body felt it, the strength of her Gifts, her subtle, feminine perfume. She was Alpha, just like him. She'd been naught but smoke minutes past, and he could feel that as well, the force of her Turn—that smoldering, pleasurable sting of gunpowder. It flooded his senses; he felt nearly dizzy with it.