The Time Weaver

He paused, watching that smile, small and not quite abashed butknowing, a slight curve that spoke plainly of mischief.

'You have,' she said, after a moment, 'a great many gemstones embedded in your castle. Uncut diamonds, right there in the mortar. Every room.'

'Ah.'

The last of the Zaharen wealth. The last glimmering, corporeal link to their heritage, the overflowing riches of those first few dragons.

'I've taken only the slightest of them. You've not even missed them, have you?' 'No. Not yet.'

Her smile erased. 'I apologize. I wish I could say I wasn't raised to steal, but truthfully, nearly every aspect of my adult life has been shaded with thievery. It feels rather natural to me now. And it seemed to me, that if, in the future, I'm the mistress of your castle, or even just a consort, it couldn't really be considered stealing .'

Alexandru pressed his fingers back against his nose. 'Sorry,' she said again.

More thunder. The notes of the fiddle, rising and falling. The room felt heated now, the scent of food and her surrounding him, flooding him, erasing all thoughts of practicality and caution, promising pure magic in return.

'I'm enjoying the wine,' he said, when he could speak again.

'It's from the Roma,' she responded gravely.

Jasmine and honey, her smoky voice, her luminous skin. He wanted her so badly he thought his blood would boil dry.

Sandu dropped his hand.

'Do you realize what it would mean, were we to wed? To be involved at all? The trouble it would cause?'

She tipped her head again, impassive.

'We are at war,' he said. 'Perhaps you don't know that. It seems impossible that you wouldn't, but it's so. It's a silent war, one without blood, but very real nonetheless. Your tribe is determined to oust me, to take what is mine. For years they've been stalking us, sending spies, attempting to feel their way around my grasp on my kin. I think perhaps the only thing holding them back now is my sister—her last, lingering loyalty to me—but she can't keep them out forever. I know our ways. I know what I'd do, were I the English Alpha. I would have sent an army a full five years ago, and done what I could to win. War is pitiless, and war is cold, and I guarantee you someday your tribe will strike. We've done what we can to prepare, but I don't needyou to be their excuse.'

She regarded him without moving. 'The English are no longer my tribe, Sandu.'

'I don't believe they view matters quite the same way. You disappeared from their shire, you claim they want you dead. Do you even know why?'

Her lips flattened. She shook her head.

'Because they think you are sanf. That you are a member of the sanf inimicus.'

The fiddle song died. Honor leaned forward, biting off her words. 'That marks the second time you've accused me of that. I don't appreciate it.'

'I don't accuse. I repeat to you what I was told.'

'It is a lie.'

'It doesn't matter. Lie or not, it's what they accept as truth.'

She shoved back from the table. 'Then someone is lying to them! The sanf are an atrocity! I've never had anything to do with them.'

Yet.

It lingered in the air over the fading echo of her voice, that single unspoken syllable, sinking heavy between them.

One of the serving girls inched forward, placed a hand on Honor's arm. Slowly she resumed her seat, a well of satin puffed around her. Her face shone even paler than before.

'I would never,' she vowed softly, her beautiful eyes vehement. 'Never.'

Alexandru lowered his own, finding her sheet of paper on his lap, their ardent sideways sentences.

'Da,'he murmured, without lifting his own gaze. 'Gentle One. I believe you.'

 He left her at the door to his chamber. Rather, she left him. It was, after all, her cathedral, not his, no matter how she'd managed the payment. She'd taken a lamp from one of the alcoves and guided him here, to this small square room with a faded mural of what appeared to be apostles and cherubs, and a bed with feather ticking, and a basin of water on a stand.

There was no scent of her within. It wasn't her bed, and the disappointment that jagged through him at that realization was tempered only slightly by strained, prudent relief.

He hardly knew her, or even what to think of her. If nothing else she was a gentlewoman, and the gentleman in him—serf, sneered a malevolent voice from the black corners of his mind —would respect that, no matter how bright her skin or smoldering her gaze.

She would mean war. He knew it down to the marrow of his bones. Taking her, claiming her, would unquestionably shatter the frigid, watchful stalemate he and the English had managed these past few years. Sanf inimicus or just a stolen child: They'd never abide his mating to her.

'Good evening,' Honor Carlisle had said to him, her hand on the door.

'Good evening,' Sandu had replied, a bow to her curtsy.

She'd left trailed by that Gypsy boy, who was the only one throwing glances over his shoulder as they faded into the gloom.

Outside, the autumn storm drew nearer, promising wet and wind.

Tomorrow Alexandru would return to the belfry, fetch the satchel he'd left there, and go.

Chapter Ten

Across the city, across the man-built grimy peaks and turns of the many rooftops that made up this particular quarter of Barcelona, above all the other noises begat from the Festes de la Merce, Lia heard the music.

She was standing at the balcony off their bedroom, modest enough in her wrap of flowing silk that was pale as peaches, as the first light that would spill over the long blue horizon of the Caribbean and break into opals across the waves. She kept her hands fixed to the iron railing before her, because it hurt a little—iron always did —and that kept her grounded to earth. That kept her from Turning.

But the music would not cease.

Like the roofs, it was also made by man. A fiddle, she thought. Perhaps a viol.

She did not know why it struck her so coldly on this warm night. She did not know why she felt a chill as the melody pulsed around her, tantalized her, repelled her. It was a song she'd not heard before, she was sure of that much. Yet it spoke to her as if they were old familiar friends.

I'm here. You tried to stop me. But I'm here. It has begun.

Perhaps it was just because of the festival. Perhaps she was oversensitive to this particular night, to the parties and drunken carousing. The smoke in the air.

One year, their second autumn here, she and Honor had ventured out to become swallowed by the Festes. It had been a first for them both; for all her years away from the deliberate isolation of the shire, Lia'd never grown comfortable in truly large crowds of Others. There was something about them that whetted her animal instinct, some subtle, tingling, disquieting thing: beyond the smell of them, beyond their bodily noises and emissions, their garish loud ways ...

Shoulder to shoulder with them, unable to see her way clear, Lia felt ensnared. And ensnared was a dangerous feeling indeed for a barely leashed dragon.