The Time Weaver

two long strips of satin floated against her arms as she regarded her own reflection, pensive, both palms spread flat over her abdomen. Late autumn light filtered through the organza curtains behind her and lit every inch of her to a peachy glow.

The hotel was named the King's View, and Prince Alexandru was not unknown here. Composed of creamy brick and marble and overlooking the great river itself, it was the preferred lodging of traveling diplomats and aristocrats or anyone aspiring to either. The senior footman had recognized him as they'd ascended the front steps, and by the time they'd reached the threshold of the main doors the manager himself was there, bowing low with effusive greetings, accepting the coat and stick and hat Sandu had only just donned twenty minutes before.

'Merci,'Sandu had said, and then drew Rez gently forward. 'Ma femme, la princesse.'

The manager transferred his attentions instantly,how delightful, he had not realized, Her Grace honored them, champagne of course, and fresh flowers, the bridal suite was regretfully booked but the king's own rooms were free...

During all this Rez only inclined her head with just the right degree of imperial condescension—did she speak French? he'd never even thought to ask—but Sandu thought he'd felt a stiffening in her posture, barely there.

He might have only imagined it. Looking at her now, so slim and girlish, with her hair curling wild down her back and her fingers pushed apart, she looked more elfin than dragon, a sprite wandered into the elaborately embellished royal suite of the best hotel in Hungary.

'Princesse,'he said softly, from his place in the doorway.

She looked up at once, dropping her hands. Their eyes met through the mirror glass. 'I hope you didn't mind,' he said. 'As one day, it will be true.' 'One day,' she agreed, and added, 'I suppose I never thought of it before. The title.' 'It can be a surprising thing,' he conceded, feeling the smile that wanted to come.

Her gaze lowered to take in that promised smile; her own began to rise in answer. 'Will I get a crown?'

'Holly,' he reminded her.

'I like holly.'

'Good thing. I fear there's not enough gold left in any of the mines for the other sort.'

'But there are diamonds in the walls, and emeralds around your hearth. Those will do. Your castle twinkles with song.'

He pushed off the doorway, giving a bow of acknowledgment. 'I'm glad you like it.'

Rez laughed. 'It is noisy.' 'We'll drown it out.'

'How?'

'By making our own music, of course.'

Her brows knit; the peached light shimmered through her shift as she turned to face him. 'Oh, that was truly dreadful.'

'My apologies. English is not my best language.'

'Alexandru,' she said, meeting him in the middle of the room, her fingers on his, her eyes deep as oceans, 'that would have been dreadful in any language.'

'I love you,' he said, and in the sudden silence of the splendid chamber heard his own heartbeat, thudding hard.

'It's soon, I know,' he said.

The windows had been left open a little. The organza puffed and fell like living breath, and beyond them a bell from a ferry on the river was clanging in clear, insistent tenor. The swell of air stirred her hair, lifted his own from his shoulders.

He pushed it back with one hand. 'And perhaps you don't feel the same about me. Not yet. That's fine. But I wanted you to know.'

She'd dropped her gaze again. He was left to look at the reddish brown crescents of her lashes, the straight line of her nose and lips that gleamed rose and tender gold. Her fingers remained curved loosely over his.

'Mate,' he tried, and she glanced up.

'This is how we are,' she murmured. 'You said that to me once.'

'I did?'

'I thought at the time you meant—something physical. But I understand you now. This is how we are. More than physical. More than animal. Two hearts as one, unable to part. This is what it means to be bonded.' She shook her head. 'I'd never guessed. I'd never come close to guessing how this might feel. You are the center of me. I think I ... I think I wouldn't want to live without you.' But the soft wonder of her voice had transitioned into something tinged more of indignation. She regarded him more directly, confrontation in her stance now, as if she dared him to refute it. 'I don't want to live without you.'

'Perhaps I'll find you a crown of gold, after all,' Sandu said, and to his surprise, they were just the right words. Her edge of confrontation melted away into the spreading light.

'No, I'll take the holly.'

'And me.'

'And you,le prince . Of course, you.'

He lifted her hand for a kiss to shield his smile.

Chapter Twenty-Three

When the princess named Rez Wove away from the massacre at Zaharen Yce, she went ahead in time. Far ahead.

For a very long while, she was stuck there.

As a girl she'd already endured the experience of losing nearly a year of her life. She never recalled her trials as a sixteen-year-old, although she did live through them. At the age of twenty-five, she lost another six and a half years to the Dragon of Time, which took particular delight in devouring her then.

An enraged drakon , a screaming drakon , mother to a freshly slaughtered child, wife to a freshly slaughtered mate—in her involuntary Weave away from the dungeon of Zaharen Yce , she was especially delicious.

When she was thirty-two, she awoke one morning with nearly all the memories of her previous life restored intact. She sat up in her narrow, cotton-sheeted bed and realized that she was in Germany, that Germany was at war, and that she was English.

That she wasn't human. And it was not her war.

Rez attempted to Weave back. Over and over again, she flung herself back in time, but she never did return to the scene of her family's demise. She never even managed to get close.

Zaharen Yce had turned its back on her. Whatever magic had lived in it before the pillaging, whatever welcome she'd once received, had all been revoked.

It did not have life , this castle. Not in the way the dragons did, or the forests, or even the lesser beasts. But it had a sort of memoried awareness, a sense of being, and of having been. Polarity, chemistry. Every block of quartzite, every single embedded gem, every grain of sand in the mortar ... all of it, polarized like a magnet, drawing sweet, heavy magic to it, basking in it.

Until that day it did not.

Dragons may change the chemistry of stones; stones may change the chemistry of dragons. On that cold March day in 1791, the crimson flowing deaths of its inhabitants changed the chemistry of Zaharen Yce forever.

A smaller mind might describe the years that followed as accursed, for both Rez and her former home. She herself began to believe in witches and curses, in all manner of jabbering ghouls, although that might have been merely the onset of her madness sinking its first juicy tendrils into her.

The castle now existed as a hulking shell. Its polarity had been reversed, rejecting all magic, rejecting Rez