The Time Weaver

'No, but—'

'Honor,' she interrupted firmly. 'You will .'

Wiiiiiill, throbbed Draumr , swooning deep. Wiiiiiill....

There were people outside in the courtyard. I'd only just noticed them. We were invisible to them, lost behind windows, but they moved slowly, languidly, as if they too were caught in the swooning net of the diamond.

'Wait,' said Sandu, strained. 'Wait a moment, please.' 'Your Grace?'

'I . I thought I knew what love was,' he said heavily. He looked at me, so dearly fierce, his face angled with light and shadow. He drew his fingers down my cheek, his gaze lost, absorbed. 'If it means dying for her, I would. Gladly. Dying for them, for my people, I would. But leaving them. Abandoning them.' He closed his eyes to shut me out; the lines bracketing his mouth deepened. 'I'm sorry. I cannot.'

Lia's tone turned astringent. 'You would leave them for that love. To remain here is to doom them. If you choose that path, what lives in your heart isn't love but merely pride. I expected more from the male who won my daughter's heart.'

I swallowed. The song was thick in my throat, blocking my own words, and I swallowed again.

Don't, is what I would have said, if I could have. Cowardly me, I would have pleaded Don't choose them over me. Please, please, don't choose them.

But I said nothing.

Instead, Lia spoke for us both, and she was no coward. She was merciless.

'Everyone dies if you stay. I've dreamed it. Rez's letter reveals it. Is that the future you desire?'

Sandu looked like a man who was splintering in two deep inside, silently, invisibly. He was harsh, dark, and bright, his hands working into fists at his sides. He would not raise his eyes to mine.

'The English will come anyway,' Amalia tried again, as if explaining a logic problem to a very young child. 'They've been planning to for years, and ultimately there will be no preventing it. But if you are gone, they will take over in peace. I know them. Without the potential threat of your rule, your tribe will be treated with respect. Their ways and traditions will be honored, as long as they don't flaunt their heritage, which may sound severe, but it's better than annihilation. The very best you could hope for if you stayed, Prince Alexandru, would be to become a puppet leader, enslaved to Darkfrith and its Council. Otherwise, I suppose a few years from now you'll fight to your death, and your daughter's death, and destine what's left of your kin to disaster. You cannot win against them. I don't believe that the child I raised would fall in love with an entirely stupid man, so I must assume you're intelligent enough to realize that.'

Now he looked at me, a hot and helpless look, and Lia saw that too.

'You have a choice this morning, my lord. You have a chance to seize destiny by the throat.' She lifted a hand to the blurry figures in the courtyard. 'You can save them,all of them. Or not. I must wonder ... what manner of ruler are you? What matters to you most?'

The drakon behind the glass were swimming in light, picking up chunks of fountain, putting them down again.

I asked her, too afraid to hope, 'You've dreamed it that way? Everyone safe?'

If only, if only that bleak Future Rez would never come true—

'I will,' she answered, with simple surety.

'All right,' Alexandru rasped, facing her, expelling a breath. 'Damn you, and let's do it.' 'Turn around, both of you.'

Draumr moved my feet for me. I felt Lia's hand push aside my hair, stroke the bare skin of my neck, the curve of my back that the gown did not cover. Her fingers burned like the sun.

There was a wedge of shift showing above the scalloped back neckline of Honor's gown, as well. Lia smiled at the sight of it, that girlish bit of lace against a border of sequins, a smile that felt like laughter and tears both.

The valise was at her feet. She bent down, removed the knife. It was one of Zane's, one he'd left for her protection, which was a dear and silly thought, but the edge was brutally keen.

'Don't move. You will not feel any pain.' She closed her eyes, thought about it—just the right place —then pricked the flesh above Honor's shoulder blade with the honed tip.

Blood welled up, began a scarlet trickle down the slight curve of Honor's back to the edge of the gown. Prince Alexandru jerked in place.

'Be still,' Lia snapped, a little appalled herself at the amount of it. She pressed a hand over the cut. Honor turned her head, made a soothing sound toward the prince, smiling up at him.

When they'd divided what was left of the wicked stone that had once been a wicked whole dreaming diamond, Lia and Zane had agreed that she would take the three larger splinters and he would have everything else, all the dust and smaller splinters and chips. Her three pieces of Draumr were narrow and pointed, almost like needles. She'd removed them from the pendant days before, torn them out atop a white limestone cliff with sensitive dragon claws, and she knew firsthand how sharp they could be. It wasn't difficult to press them deeper into the wound.

Two splinters to Honor, that diminutive creature of formidable talents. One to the prince, who'd shrugged off his coat and waistcoat and shirt without another verbal protest, only a fearsome scowl at the floor.

'No pain,' Lia chanted softly, standing on her toes to reach the marbled crest of his shoulder, another small cut, another diamond needle inserted. 'No pain.'

She sank back to her heels, wiping the blood down the folds of her robe, faintly sick despite herself. She dropped the knife back into the open neck of the valise and took a breath.

This was the end. The edge of all her hopes for this young drakon woman, her ambitions for her, right here and now.

'Neither of you will remember those pieces are there. The song will always be with you, but it never vexes you. You'll both heal and never even see the scars, or remark upon them. Do you understand?'

'Yes,' said the prince.

'Yes,' whispered Honor.

'Good. Listen.'

Lia was speaking. I was listening to her, admiring the serenity of her voice, that calm reassurance that had always seemed to be such a fundamental part of her. Whenever she spoke like that, in that tone, a tiny over- wound part of me deep inside began to relax, like a coiled spring easing loose.

She's so pretty, this Mama, I thought, watching her. Not because she's drakon. Just because she is.

Alexandru clasped my hand. I held the other over my stomach, and wondered why I felt so very fine.

'You will remember only what I say to you now,' Amalia said. 'Honor, you will Weave with your mate. You have that power. Do you feel it?'

'I do,' I answered, marveling. And it was true, there was something new blooming inside me, something born of fearless Rez the dragon and my own more sensitive heart. It warmed through me, a magic stronger and better than any tug of Weave I'd ever felt before. It was potency without doubt, certainty without hesitation, a deep mighty sparkle in my bones. I was going to Weave with Sandu.

Finally, I was powerful enough to share my Gift.

'You will Weave to the future, generations away from now. You will spend the rest of your lives there, and you will never, never return to this time or any time near it. In fact, after this last Weave, you'll never Weave again. Can you do that?'

'Yes,' I replied, smiling. 'I can do that. Thank you.'

She took a step back from us, her robe a puddle of silk around her feet.

'Your lives are ahead of you now, but don't ever regret what you had here. You will adapt to whatever the future holds, and in those years ahead, you will thrive. Do you understand?'

'Yes.'

'Yes.'