The Time Weaver

Yce.'

'Not just the castle.' She sounded nearly sympathetic. 'Everyone. Everything. Every last drop of blood in this land. Especially yours.'

He was not surprised. He told himself there could be no surprise in this news, that in fact, the only actual astonishing part of it was that they had taken so long to reach this step in the deliberate, long-distance chess game they'd been playing with him since he was a boy. Stratagems and strategies, all the devious skills he'd learned in his short few years of rule, all for naught. He'd danced and sidestepped and tried to ever remain at least a move ahead of them but now, in the end, their patience was done. It was all going to come down to simple brute force.

Check, Sandu thought, detached, and opened his fingers. The proposal fell, a flat feather drifting, settling upon the rug between his feet.

It had landed upright. The true words of it glared up at him, bold slashes:Give Us a Fight, Then, Boy. Let Us Destroy You.

'Where did you get it?' he asked once more.

'From Rez.'

His lashes lifted.

'Not the one you know. An older Rez. A different woman. I'd like to wait to show you the other letter, though. Until Honor is here.'

The arched connecting door to the next chamber swung open, the flat china painted panels a sudden glare in a shaft of sun. 'Honor's not coming.'

They both turned their heads. Rez glided forward into the jelly-sun room, her eyes swift to his, then focused back on Lia. She seemed to have no trouble walking, not as he did, and the jelly was beginning to affect his vision as well; impressions of her came to him in quick, brilliant relief: December curls pinned up, a scintillating frock of robin's-egg blue. Pale cheeks, pale neck, pale chest. The puckered gauze that ended her sleeves matched the open petticoat of her skirts.

Her gaze, holding their deep rivers of emotion.

Apprehension, he thought now, so attuned to her. She was worried to see Amalia, even though her face was as smooth as a mask.

'I'm sorry to hear it,' Lady Amalia was saying.

'Don't be. Rez is a far happier person than Honor was.' She paused. 'I'm happier, Lia.'

'For now.'

'Is that Draumr ? There in that valise?' 'Yes.'

'I thought you said you'd lost it.'

Lia shrugged, watching Rez circle warily around her. 'I lied.'

Rez reached him, took his hand. Perhaps the dread had sunken into her as well; her skin felt like ice, chilling his bones.

'You won't separate us,' she said. 'If you came here to try, it's fruitless. Despite the diamond, there's nothing you can say or do. I swear to you, I won't go back.'

Lady Lia smiled, a poignant smile, and with it Alexandru abruptly remembered the first moment he'd laid eyes on her, here in this very room, back when he'd been just a child and she a young stranger to his land, come to save the life of the human man she'd loved. How he'd been introduced to her but was too bashful to lift his gaze, until she'd knelt before him and took his hand, pressed a kiss to the back of it, something no one,no one , had ever done before. How the boy Sandu had looked up, astonished, and been struck dumb by just the smiling shape of her lips and the perfect lie of shadows on her face.

'No filla,' Amalia said gently, older, but perfect and shadowed still. 'That's not what I want. There was never any going back.'

She had the prince show Honor the letter from her people, signed by Lia's brother and all the members of the Darkfrith Council, those gnarled, frightened old men. It shamed her that they would resort to this, shamed but did not amaze her. Lia'd always known the rulers of her tribe would place their own survival above all. A measure of bloodshed had never stopped them before.

It was her fault, some of it or maybe even all of it, and so she had to do what she could to mend these two families. Had she never come here with Zane so long ago, had she never fled the shire as a girl, had she never stumbled upon Zaharen Yce and written that very first letter to her parents, breaking the news of this unanticipated and undomesticated clan of dragons....

Perhaps it would have mattered. Perhaps not. It seemed unlikely the two groups could have continued to exist for much longer in utter ignorance of each other. The world was a shrinking place.

Honor held the proclamation between her fingertips, pinkies extended, as if the page might fold over and bite her. She had that drowsy, cat-eyed look she sometimes wore first thing in the morning, indicative of a long Weave or a restless night.

Or not precisely restless, Lia amended to herself, her gaze shifting to the prince standing beside her, his arm curved about her shoulders.

It had been many years since Amalia had been around males of her own species. She'd never flown with the dragons of her shire; her Gift had come too late for that. She recalled being enamored of the village boys as a maiden, their shining skin and brilliant eyes. The way they'd work the fields in their shirtsleeves, plowing, sowing, reaping, sweat darkening the cloth just enough to cling, to show off the unbearably sensual concurrence of muscle and bone.

The same boys at her mother's social balls, dancing with their eerie grace, everyone fair, everyone gleaming, and the scent of lust in the air a near tangible mist.

Young or old, it seemed that drakon males seethed with the instinct to seduce, not merely sexually but intellectually, emotionally; without even trying, they could hit every pitch-perfect note. Unsuspecting females tumbled like skittles in their paths.

Poor Honor, because this male would be no different. Ebony hair, which didn't happen in her tribe, but the same sinuous elegance, the same instinctive sensuality that lured the eye and kept it there, appreciating every last detail.

The same lust too, she thought. Prince Alexandru and her daughter clung to each other like wool in winter static. If they pulled apart, Lia was sure she'd see sparks.

Useless to ask if they were already lovers. She knew that they were, but even if she hadn't, she would have guessed by the intimacy of their postures, how they leaned into each other, how even shaken, he hovered over her, and even drowsy, she accepted it.

Honor, the timorous child who'd never relaxed enough to fully welcome physical touch, not even a buss on the cheek.

Oh, Lia thought, watching them, aching,let this be true. Let what they have be real and true.

Honor looked so vulnerable. She wore no paint, and her hair had been pinned into an uneven pile that tumbled down her back, and the style of the gown she wore was both too old for her and too young. A wedge of lace from her shift showed past the edge of her bodice, as if she'd had no maids to help her dress.

When she lifted her eyes to Lia's again, some of the sleep had vanished from her gaze. 'What does it mean?' she asked. 'Wait,' said Lia. 'There's more.'

Then she gave them both the second letter, the one that sealed their fates.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Lia,

You don't know me. My name is Rez. I used to be Honor Carlisle.

My Natural Time now is well ahead of yours. I'm older than you, than I ever knew you to be. I live in what you would call the former Colonies.