The Time Weaver

Chapter One

Dear Honor,

I leave this letter for you knowing you'll find it in the Year 1782, at the age of nearly fifteen, right before your Gifts begin to fully emerge. This is going to sound mad, but you must believe me.

I am you, eleven months and four days from now.

Keep reading. This is not a jest.

You are a Time Weaver. You are the only Time Weaver born to the drakon. It's just as it sounds: You will have the ability to Weave through time when you wish it—and sometimes, when you do not.

As it is when the rest of the tribe Turns to smoke or dragon, you will not be able to bring anything not of yourself with you when you Weave. You will reemerge in each new time exactly the same as you left the last, and (unless you Focus upon it very fiercely), in exactly the same place. However, you will be nude. You will have no jewelry. No weapons. Nothing left in your hands.

I am working, though, on a way.

I've not discovered what happens to all those things, because apparently they're not left in the previous time or place, either. They're Vanished. For now, don't Weave wearing anything you especially like.

When- and wherever you go during a Weave, however long you spend there, inevitably you will be drawn back into your Natural Time. It's rather like a pull inside you that grows stronger and stronger, until you can no longer resist it. Picture a strand of india rubber stretched long and thin and then snapping back to its normal shape. The strand connects you to your Natural Time. You always come back. And it's always the exact amount of time later there that you spent during the Weave.

That's another thing that's Vanished: the time you've spent away from your Natural Time. Once you Weave away, you can't touch it again. I've tried.

In a few nights, on July 6, a human man is going to come to the shire in secret for you. His name is Zane; you will recall he's the London Thief befriended by our Alphas, the Marquess and Marchioness of Langford, until he was banished for wedding their daughter. He will have with him some shards of a blue diamond once known as Draumr. He will summon you from your bedroom at Plum House, and you will go with him.

I know that at this point in your life, you've never heard of Draumr, so I will briefly explain: Draumr was a stone from our ancestral home in the Carpathian Mountains, and once upon a time it was guarded by, and belonged to, our cousins the Zaharen drakon . Its name means Dreaming Diamond, and it has a very long and unpleasant history relating to our kind. It enables whoever wears it or carries it (or its splinters, for that is all that is left of it in your Natural Time) to command the drakon. We have no choice, we must obey it.

Please do not attempt to resist it. Zane will not harm you. He will take you to a safe place. Your life is in danger in Darkfrith. You must not remain there. Zane is coming to save you.

To convince you I am who I say I am, I offer you the following:

1. The second plank under your bed is loose, and there is a space beneath. You keep all your romantic

novels Father thought he tossed away there.

2. Your first kiss came from Lord Rhys Langford, when you were eight and he twenty-two. He kissed you on the chin after Wilhelmina Grady pushed you down yet again, this time in front of the silversmith's shop.

3. You hunted Wilhelmina later that night, waited until she was alone, then threatened to cut off all her hair if she continued to hurt you.

4. You would not have cut off her hair (she did have a lot of it, though). Wilhelmina has always been extraordinarily large and short-tempered. But you were convincing. She never called your bluff.

5. Your secret tree in Blackstone Woods is an ash. You keep charms in its hollow; it's where I left you this letter.

6. Your favorite butterfly is the Brimstone. Your favorite wildflowers are harebells.

7. Here's the best bit: Approximately one week past, on a Tuesday, you lost an entire three hours. You were in your bedroom, feeling sleepy and reading (The Decline of Lady Pamela) whilst the hall clock was striking half past noon. And then all at once you were there on the bed cold and unclothed (you remember that ) and the clock finished its chimes at half past three .

You told no one about it, which was wise. You decided that you had fallen asleep, that you must have walked and disrobed—even the blasted corset—in your sleep. You were wrong. You never found that gown again, did you? Nor the book.

That was your first Weave, Honor. Eventually, the memory of it will return to you. (Hint: You went to a river.)

The rules of the shire are indisputable. You know what will happen to you if anyone discovers you're Gifted, especially since it's so rare these days for females to display Gifts of any sort. Yes, I realize you've daydreamed about being special, special enough to be given like a prize to the Alpha and his family to better their line. But believe me, your life with them will not be the stuff of dreams. You cannot Turn into a dragon; your Gift is unique ... and, some might say, dangerous. The Alpha and his Council would never have permitted you the Freedom of your Gifts. At best, you would have been kept in chains and darkness. You would have been wed and bedded as a prisoner, for all the rest of your life.

There is a much, much better future awaiting you. There is a prince, I swear it. A real one.

Put this letter now in your apron pocket. Burn it after tea today. The drawing room is always deserted then, and no one will see. Remember everything I've written here, but don't speak of it to anyone. Even Zane!

Don't be frightened.

—H.C.

Second Letter

(I need to keep track, I think. This is the second letter I've written to myself Over Time.) Honor,

By now you're in Barcelona, living with Lia Langford, and sometimes her husband, Zane. Yes, I know he's still a criminal, and a human. But she's like you, Gifted and apart. Please listen to her counsel. She wants only the best for you and all of us.

You're surprised to discover that you miss Mother and Father, and even Darkfrith. Well, the woods at least. I'm four months ahead of you, so I know it can be difficult. Dreadful, even. But Lia, more than anyone, can help you understand what it's like to venture into the future, to wrest control of it. You need her. Not only is she one of the last few females who can Turn into dragon, she alone has the Gift of Dreaming Ahead, and she's seen what's to come. Perhaps she seems too strict sometimes; perhaps she seems unfeeling. She's not, though. I'm certain she misses Darkfrith too. Remember, she's a Lady, the youngest daughter of the Marquess and Marchioness, of powerful blood. And yet she's been vanished from the tribe since she was a young woman herself.

She'll teach you Control. She'll teach you Responsibility. You Must Learn These Things.

You're fifteen, so by now you know about Sandu. Stay away from him. He's not ready for you yet.

—H.C.

Third Letter

The lovely heat. The white-salt scent of the Mediterranean floating inland, gentle against your face Pa amb tomaquet, sangria. Festival dancers in the streets, laughing boys with black hair. Yellow sunlight and ripe oranges spraying sugar as you peel them open, fresh flowers all the year long. Oh, Honor . there are many things to recommend Spain.

I know you feel ready to burst at the seams. I know you're Sick Unto Death of Catalan and watching the traffic on Carrer del Bisbe pass by from behind the glass of the bower, that particular warp in the pane that