The Time Weaver

Free from the restrictions of the shire, I'd learned to embrace what dragon traits I had. I liked the slow, budding ferocity that had trickled—and then gradually rushed—through my blood as I had grown older. I liked hearing stones and metals, and being fleet, and being strong. I liked the looks men sent me now. That my complexion had finally gone to alabaster. That my hair no longer resembled reddish straw. I'd never possess Lia's cream-and-honey beauty, but I had my own kind of allure, something a bit more untamed. Or so I hoped.

I liked Weaving. I liked being able to escape the confines of ordinary time and place, even if only temporarily. The only thing I actively disliked still were the aftereffects from it, the shooting pains that would inevitably wrack me from my head to the tips of my fingers. The bloody noses that would leave me dizzy.

None of that was the fault of the shire, though. Was it?

Besides, I couldn't imagine why a group of humans who desired to hunt and kill dragons would accept a dragon in their ranks. It made no sense to me.

However .

Against my will, my thoughts returned to the letter I'd written to myself so far ahead, that fifth Letter Over Time. Its tone of understated discontent, which vexed me more than I liked to admit. Twenty-three years from now I seemed morose, confused, yet determined to change something I'd done. I'd spent a long time now trying to guess what that might be. Surely if it were joining the sanf inimicus—I'd never, never do that, but if I did —I would have told me. Something like that, something so spectacularly important, no matter how confused I was, I would have mentioned it.

Dear Honor, please do not become evil and hunt down your own kind.

Ridiculous.

I sighed and adjusted my nightrail so that my shins were uncovered. Even though it was September, the darkness felt too warm and I had already pushed off my covers. After dinner I'd taken the trouble of washing the powder out of my hair, which cooled me slightly, but it was very long and took forever to dry. I'd spread it out around me like a sunburst along the pillows, away from my body.

The old cathedral was long and skinny and yawning open in the middle, but lined with smaller, private chapels both above stairs and below. I'd claimed an upstairs one that must have once been devoted to some high church official; it was more spacious than the others, more elaborate, with carved, figured stone and rounded windows I'd already torn the boards from. I kept them cracked whenever I could, to allow the outside scents in. It was open and interesting and another aspect of my life that I liked, that I had this clandestine place, essentially all my own.

The Roma bedded down all over, scattered about the rooms or in the central atrium as it suited them. I never instructed them on where to sleep or eat or congregate. They dwelled here and I dwelled here; we were like ghosts haunting the same ancient home, brushing sleeves when we needed to, otherwise drifting through our own private worlds.

Once upon a time the cathedral had been named after a local saint, but I had unofficially renamed it La Casa de Cors Secrets. The House of Secret Hearts. I didn't think Zane or Lia knew about it. I'd never told them, and they were well used to me vanishing without word for hours at a time.

I'd come here whenever I needed an escape from the careful formality of the palace apartments. From Lia's sidelong, worried looks, or Zane's more blatantly watchful ones.

A terrible new notion struck me: Did Zane and Lia realize what the tribe thought of me, that I was sanf? As far as I knew, we were all three still in hiding from the English, but perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps they'd covertly resumed contact with Lia's family. Or maybe Lia's Future Dreams told her something, that I was tainted, not to be trusted.

It would explain those looks. It would explain—

No. It wouldn't be true, and for one very simple reason: Zane would have killed me already. I knew without a sliver of doubt he would destroy any threat to his wife, and that certainly included the sanf inimicus .

I brought my hands up to my face, closing my eyes in relief. I was never more unreservedly, profoundly grateful that my human father had turned out to be a ruthless son of a bitch.

Someone had made a horrible mistake, that was all. I wasn't evil. I was never going to be evil.

Beyond my windows a late storm was brewing, but it wasn't raining or even humid. Dry thunder grumbled through the floors and walls, and occasionally lightning flickered close enough to reveal the outlines of the room in pitch and ice-blue, the posts of my bed, the canopy curtains, the commode and armoire.

Young Adiran was bold and brash and not yet asleep. Between the thunder a floating string of melodies from his fiddle ricocheted up and up from the atrium. I wondered if he were playing so loudly on purpose now, to provoke either me or the prince. More likely the prince, I decided. His chamber was much closer than mine.

I'd placed Alexandru in one of the chapels that ringed the floor below. Obviously, we were not sleeping together. It had been clear from the moment I invited him across the threshold of the door he wouldn't consider it. A part of me was glad for it, but another part of me—that drakon part—burned red inside me. Hungry.

I wish I could say I was shocked at myself. I was not. I was becoming more and more accustomed to the dark, silky beat that thrummed through my blood now. It was nothing of the porcelain-faced, human-shaped female who wore gowns and drank wine in tiny sips and crossed her legs at the ankles to be polite. It was animal. And as much as it still sometimes scared me, out of every mysterious force that shaded my adult life, I liked it best of all.

Not evil, just animal. The most normal thing in the world for someone like me, a woman with a dragon trapped in her heart.

When the lightning flashed again, Alexandru was standing in the doorway of my room.

It was like a street magician's surprise—or more probably, something I myself would do. He was not there, he was.

I sat up, tugging my nightrail back down to my feet.

We gazed at each other for a long moment. He was barely perceptible against the paler limestone, mostly phantom color, shape and heat, although the heat part was almost certainly my imagination.

'Did you wish to fly?'

His voice was so soft, tailed by another growl of thunder and one of Adiran's more forceful refrains. I tipped my head, puzzled. Was it a test of some sort?

'Of course,' I said.

'I meant,' he cleared his throat. 'With me.'

'Oh.' I sat up straighter. 'Yes. Of course again.'

'Now?' he inquired, when I made no move to leave the bed.

'There's a storm.'

'We'll go above it.'

'Will I be able to breathe?' I asked doubtfully.

I saw his sudden smile. 'I don't know. You'll have to tell me when we get there.'

The most envied girls in the shire were the sweethearts of the boys who could already Turn. I was old enough by the time I'd left that I, too, seethed with that envy, though the idea of any of those radiant, glimmering boys throwing me even a second glance was laughable. Still, I had a tender heart. I dreamed. And I sighed with the other unmatched maidens over the girls who could soar to the clouds with their loves, girls who kicked off their buckled heels and hucked up their skirts and climbed astride the backs of slender young dragons, their hair dancing out behind them as they'd take off.

We grounded things lived through their adventures, we simmered and ached as they described what it was like.

Utterly smashing.

I never stopped laughing.

He turned loops! He was upside down!

We tore through a rainbow. Did you see?

I maneuvered out of the bed, shoving my damp hair over my shoulders so that it licked at the small of my back.

Sandu's smile was gone. 'You're very fair,' he said from his position by the door, now sounding severe. 'But