The Time Weaver

crustless sandwiches, and all the drakon ladies would remark upon my fine manners. My mother would incline her head graciously.

The truth was, I was too petrified to speak. My mother, with her icy kohled gaze ready to find fault with me; the marchioness, with her daunting haute couture and imposing French wigs; all the simmering, contained ladies of the shire who beneath their imported satins and bell-beautiful voices burned to be as vicious as the menfolk were allowed to be—every single one of them frightened me, and always had. I had been born a timid gray mouse into a den of starving lions.

I did not belong. I was nothing like any of them. It didn't astonish me in the least to learn that my life was in danger; it had seemed apparent to me since I was a small child that, sooner or later, one of the real drakon would end up killing me.

I didn't even resemble the rest of them, not really. We were a clan of mostly fair, blond beauties, and although I had inherited my mother's blue eyes, my own hair wasn't the color of wheat, or sunshine, or summer flax. It was a shade caught between red and ginger, a little of both, not quite either. I was pale like all the girls, but while their skin shone with the translucent clarity of fine alabaster, my complexion looked to me more like chalk. I was scrawny, timid, and not very tall. A certain cadre of the village children found it persistently amusing to refer to me as the runt.

As in Look, it's the runt. Let's show her what happens to the weakest of the litter, shall we? Oh yes, let's.

So on that sweltering summer night of July in 1782, I felt little more than wonder that somehow, for some reason, all of that was about to change. I was leaving. I was Gifted—I would be—and I was leaving.

I was a Time Weaver, apparently. Whatever that meant.

My bedroom's sole window faced north, so it was always one of the gloomiest chambers in the house. I was comfortable in that gloom, seated at the edge of my bed, listening to the cockchafers whirring in the woods nearby, the soft perfume of the honeyed wax the second maid had rubbed into the armoire that morning wafting sweet against my face.

Generations past, one of the young brides of the House had planted love-in-a-mist outside my sill. The flowers bloomed in a tangle of pink and mauve all summer long and spilled petals with the slightest hint of a breeze; they, too, were scented of honey. If I concentrated hard enough, I could hear the drifting petals tip-tap the spaded earth where they landed.

It was hot. I was wearing my best apricot silk dress with a buffon for modesty and a mobcap that dripped Irish lace to my shoulders. Eventually I removed the buffon from my bodice; it was far too warm to be wrapped in a muslin kerchief up to my neck. Despite my resolve not to nod off ... I did. I only realized it when I lifted my head, because there was a sharp new twinge in my neck, and the slow, pensive music of the dream I'd been having did not fade.

I turned toward the sound, pushing back the lace from my cheek. Yes, there were notes floating around me, simple and haunting notes, a tune so familiar and yet not ... like a lullaby with words you can't quite remember.

The dreaming part of me thought,That's a diamond? Because it was unlike any I'd ever heard before. Most gemstones sing to our kind, metals too, but diamonds sing strongest. They surround us with melodies that are always clear and keen, sparkling with life. We drakon love diamonds. Young or old, every female of the shire had at least a glittering pair of earbobs or a handful of fiery-cut rings. During my mother's especially stylish assemblies, the din from the ladies' necklaces and charms could drown out entire conversations.

Yet this song slipped over me like a cloud, dulcet and eerie, devouring my senses. It made me feel at once both happy and languorously indifferent. It made me want to close my eyes and release my very last breath.

Then came the voice, whispering between the notes. 'Honor...'

It was no natural voice. It was sly and gentle and chilled my skin.

'Honor Carlisle. You alone will hear me. You alone will sense me. Come to me.'

I was on my feet before I'd realized I had moved. Layers of skirts and petticoats rustled back into place, brushing the tops of my slippers. The case felt suddenly light as air in my arms.

'Come.'

And the music wrapped around me so completely that I practically glided out my door.

It was well after three in the morning. Everyone else in Plum House was asleep. Mother, Papa, the maids and the cook, who snored. No one heard me leave. No one but me heard the brass latch of the front door give its low amiable hum as my fingers closed about it. No one but me saw the starlight sketching the grass of the front lawn, or heard the press of my footsteps through the blades.

There'd been no rain for weeks, and the lawn was turning brittle. I'd leave a path here, I knew that, but it didn't matter.

'Hurry, Honor.'

I reached the edge of our estate. Should I turn right, I would meet the road that led to the village, to the august mansion that housed the Alpha and his kin. Should I turn left, I would enter the thick black forest that surrounded my home, crisscrossing trails soon lost to peat and bracken and streams, and eventually a wide, churning river.

The notes, the voice, were coming from the forest. So I went left.

I knew my way through these woods. I'd grown up here, after all, and had claimed even the densest thickets as my own. Maidens without friends tended to spend hours exploring alone. And maidens who made enemies needed places to hide—I had plenty of those.

Blackstone Woods welcomed me with its familiar heady fragrance, rich and loamy, but even that was dulled beneath the uncanny notes of the song pulling me onward. The moss cushioned my steps; feathery ferns brushed my ankles; twigs crunched and leaves sighed and the voice had gone silent, but that was all right, because I knew where he was now, the man who had come for me.

He was on the river. He was in a boat on the River Fier, standing alert beneath the dim starlight, one hand lifted before him, a faint sparkle of blue shining from his open palm.

I should have been afraid. I was afraid nearly all the time, afraid of my parents, afraid of my species, afraid of myself. I was afraid of the dark, and of mirrors, and of the Council, of the strange smiles of the village boys and the casual cruelty of the village girls. I definitely should have been afraid of this notorious thief who was going to do who knew what with me.

Yet I was not.

Because of Draumr. I felt it from yards away, the music growing stronger and sweeter, drugging my senses. I floated forward and thought blissfully,This is what it's like to fly. This is how it must feel when we Turn. Finally I understand. This is flight.

The River Fier was never asleep, and the skiff rocked gently with the tugging of its currents. The man held his balance easily, lean and shadowy against the steel-gray ribbon of water beyond him, his shirt ruffling with the small breeze, his hair a long braided plait that swung all the way down to his waist. He watched me approach without another word. When I was close enough I was able to make out the color of his eyes: a wolfish amber, so clear and bright it seemed nearly inhuman. But hewas human. I knew that much about him. He reeked of human sweat and musk.

'Get in,' he said. His fist closed around the sparkle of blue, and I felt a rush of pleasure so intense my eyes nearly rolled back.

'For God's sake,' muttered the man, and grabbed me by the arm. 'Spare me the swooning spells of adolescent girls. Bloody damned diamond. Honor Carlisle, I presume? Get in. Now.'

The notes echoed him,yesss, get in , but I took a slow, river-scented breath. 'Where are—'

'And do shut up,' the man said pleasantly. 'Aside from the fact that I'd rather leave this place with my head still attached to my shoulders, I doubt there's anything you could say to me I would find of interest.'

That was my introduction to Zane, the Black Shadow of Mayfair, the Secret Worm of the Sanf Inimicus —and my new father.