The Time Weaver

'Let us be serious a moment.'

'I'm dead serious.'

'As am I. You're not the villain here, admit it. If you've a plan, tell me about it. I'll make it better, you know I will.'

'There's no time.'

'Lia, you haven't seen her. Not like this. I swear to you right now, she's no one you can manage.' 'She's my daughter.'

He struggled to sit up higher. 'Not any longer!'

'That never changes. Hearts don't change.' She gave him that melancholy smile, lifting free of him. 'Now, wait—'

'Do you remember the turtles?' she whispered. 'The baby turtles on the beach?'

'What?' he said, still holding her arms, absurdly close to tears again.

'I will meet you there.' She leaned down for another kiss. 'I love you so. Go west.'

Before he could breathe another breath, before his heart could pass through another beat, she'd Turned to smoke. He was left cold and alone on the floor, watching the tendrils of the only being in his godforsaken life who gave a damn about him slither back through the windowpane and siphon up into the starred navy sky.

Chapter Twenty-Two

As it so happened, Sandu and I fit together very well indeed.

I smiled to myself as I recalled what he'd told me about the courting Zaharen couples, how they might take flight together to see how they'd fit.

I wasn't sure if he'd meant it literally, or if that was his charming, European way of not mentioning the word sex , but whenever I was atop his glimmering back, it felt like I'd been made to be there. We fit.

In a French port town named Cette we ate steamed mussels at a tavern perched at the edge of an empty beach, the Gulf of Lion spread out before us in a sparkling ultramarine blanket.

In Genova we found the astonishing Piazza di Ferrari, and admired the soft greenish brown hills backing away from the sea.

And in Bologna we spent the night, and that was the very first night that Alexandru asked me to marry him.

We were walking to the Neptune Fountain, which he had visited twice before and I, of course, never had. The streets were heaving with Others, almost as if there was a festival, although Sandu told me it was nearly always like this in the heart of the larger cities.

There were a few low-slung clouds above us, but mostly just the deep blue of a hazy night. Bologna offered imposing streetlamps of molded iron and glass on nearly every block, as far as I could tell; their light condensed into one long, mellow pool along the boulevards. The prince and I strolled slowly through it. I was a little sore from the long day's flight, but mostly I was enjoying the sensation of simply being beside him, human Sandu and human Rez, arm in arm, just like all the other human lovers chattering and jostling around us.

The Neptune Fountain was a popular meeting place. People encircled it fully and still it loomed high above them all, the bronze god with his trident staring firmly away from the unruly masses gathered upon the steps below his feet, fish and mermaids squirting water from interesting orifices in high, glistening arcs.

We angled closer, Sandu easily parting the crowds with just a turn of his body, lean and graceful, guiding me forward. Men and women both stepped aside for him, and in the process he garnered more than his share of admiring glances.

Mine included. Less than an hour past, we'd been smothering our laughter atop the roof of a deserted warehouse, scrambling into our clothes. For our promenade tonight he wore the jade green velvet again, and with the coat buttoned closed I couldn't even see the splattered stains of my blood I knew had set near the waist. They wouldn't come out. I'd tried.

In my gown of silver foil print on primrose I liked to think we made a smart couple. But between the two of us, Alexandru was the beauty.

The light from the oil lamps above accented the contours of his cheeks and lips and threw long-lashed shadows across his gaze. Beneath the shadows, his eyes shone looking-glass luminous. When he smiled and caught me close because I'd stumbled over an uneven paver, I swear I heard every female around us give a low gasp.

I understood. It hardly seemed fair to unleash him upon the general population.

But we were only in the great city for a single night, and I thought perhaps Bologna could suffer that.

I heard the bronze of the fountain well before we'd come near it. Bronze is a compound metal that has less of a song than a hum, which can be soothing, especially when combined with the tranquil splashing of water.

I didn't feel soothed. I felt awake, alive, delighted. I felt so filled with wonder and joy I couldn't seem to erase the smile on my lips.

I—that little lost runt of the shire—was in Italy. With Sandu.

It was the most tremendous thing that had ever happened to me, even if there was that small, disquieting niggle in my mind that could not stop remembering the note Future Rez had left me in my old bedroom.

I hadn't told the prince. I convinced myself it was because I still wasn't sure, and I wanted to be. When the time was right to tell him, I would.

Perhaps I wasn't entirely the dragon Rez yet. She was coiled around my heart, whispering you cannot change this ending, but Honor's old ways were proving difficult to break. Honor was a woman who was running off with a man after a whirlwind courtship that had lasted both days and years, and Honor liked to be sure.

Her reply to the dragon was simply:Let me have this moment. Nothing is yet etched in stone.

There was a nude god above us and a mass of malodorous people around us—no doubt some of them pickpockets, at the least—and the light was golden, and the fountain hummed, and at the edge of the stairs to the bottom pool Prince Alexandru slipped my arm free of his so that he might take my hand instead. We stood, both of us, facing the water, following the glittering streams that jetted and fell without pause, a miracle of some clever mechanical pump work we could not see.

I rested my head upon his shoulder. I closed my eyes, so that the light turned red behind my lids.

'Will you grant me the privilege,' he said, in a voice low enough for just me to hear, 'of becoming my wife, Rez?'

I sighed, so happy. 'No, Alexandru.'

'How many more times am I to ask?'

'I'm not certain. But when I am, I will tell you. Instantly.'

Then he sighed. It was a small one, without frustration. His fingers tightened a fraction over mine.

'There's a word for this in English,' he mused, still soft. 'I can't quite recall it. I've made you a ... a fallen woman. Yes?'

'Yes,' I agreed, still smiling. 'Thank you ever so much.'

'It's been entirely my pleasure,' he said in Romanian, and I turned my face into his sleeve and began to laugh.

The journey back to Zaharen Yce took around a week. Had I not been with him, Sandu might have flown faster, but with me on his back I could tell he was taking care to ensure my comfort.

'The last thing I want,' he said one morning in some watercolor-idyllic Austrian village, as we sipped our hot chocolate, 'the very last thing, is to have come all this way and gone to all this trouble, just to end up with a mate who's little more than a distant splat against the earth. All because she wouldn't hold on.'

'I do hold on,' I protested. 'Mostly.' I sent him a sideways look. 'Am I all this