The Time Weaver

Chapter Twenty-One

Along the white-cliffed coast of southern France, not too distant from the city of Marseilles, was a series of caves that had once sheltered dragons, and then humans, and then eventually no one at all, because as the aeons had passed their entrances became submerged beneath the enameled blue Mediterranean. Accessing these caves now required the ability to swim to great depths, and to discern which sort of darkness between the limestone stalactite teeth might eventually lead to a space with a bubble of ancient air trapped inside it, and which might just lead to more water.

Within the greatest of these caves, one with an entrance tunnel that sloped sharply upward and so was spared the worst of the sea's invasion, was a cavern large enough for a tall man to stand fully upright. The walls were curved and covered in images: primitive handprints outlined in black and red, simple drawings of bison, horses, fish. There were even scattered depictions of what might have been, to one who didn't know better, curling snakes with talons and wide open wings.

And there was a box.

It was a modern sort of box, nothing natural to the cave. It was composed of oiled wood with gold metal hinges and brads, because she'd known that gold would never rust, not even under the sea. Inside the box was a silk bag with a drawstring cord, and inside the bag was a pendant, heart-shaped, made of silver. The silver was tarnishing, and there was nothing to be done about that. But embedded in it, as brilliant and evil as the day they had first been set, was a series of sky-blue diamond shards: the last known fragments of Draumr.

The box had been placed in the cave five years earlier, just because.

Because Lia had always known the future was an untrustworthy thing.

Because the gambler in her, the wily dragon, demanded a plan of last resort.

And because all the other pieces of the diamond, which had been in Zane's ring, had mysteriously vanished, and she would not risk these vanishing too.

Lia flew past the cave on her way to Paris. If she cocked her head and listened very hard, she could hear the lure of the shards, their soft broken calling to her that felt—for a perilous few seconds—like the most urgent yearning ever, even with miles of air and sea stretching between them.

She flattened her ears. She winged higher, putting more distance between her and the cave.

She'd retrieve the box on her way back.

He was dreaming.

Strange, because he seldom dreamed. He was not the dreamer of the family; he was the more practical hand and voice, the procurer of life's necessities, of all tangible things great and small. But tonight he was dreaming.

He must have been, although to Zane's best recollection he was actually stealing through the chambers of the palace of Versailles, moving silently from room to room, because it wasn't yet dawn, and he could not reasonably summon his coach and depart before then without raising unnecessary conjecture.

It was never in Zane's best interest to arouse conjecture.

He'd been unable to sleep. His waking mind had become mired in a loop of exhaustive unpleasantness, of tactical arson and bullets, and how many men it would take to flush and ambush a sleeping English village, and how much coin it would take to ensure their utter silence, and what to do about the smoke that would rise and disguise what wasn't smoke—

He could not sleep. He needed to leave, and he could not sleep, and so he thought he'd been exercising one of his very best skills as a distraction: prowling.

He'd wound his way out of the wing of Unpleasant Cells, where most of the official visitors to the king and queen were housed. He'd passed, unseen, footmen nodding off at doorways, and hall-boys flopped about on beds of blankets, their livery and wigs and shoes all placed prudently near to their heads as they dozed.

Padded rugs were better for prowling than bare wooden floors, or—worst of all—marble tiles, so he'd been aiming for those, sliding from salon to salon, most of them unlit, looking close at paintings and sculptures, the intricate gilded friezes, mentally estimating the weight of the chandeliers, or the cost of the ivory and malachite inlay along the walls. There was an entire long gallery of mirrors that had been done up in nothing but real silver: silver chairs, silver pedestals and urns, silver tables, silver cherubs hoisting silver-dipped candles—if he hadn't been so rotten sure his luggage would be searched upon leaving, he might have lessened the unspeakable extravagance of the place a fraction.

As if anyone but the servants would have noticed.

He'd left the gallery of silver untouched. He was in another salon, one of those named after the Roman gods; he could never keep them all straight. He was standing stock-still and looking out the window at the starlit expanse of one of the gardens, and it was at that particular moment that Zane realized he was dreaming, because there was a mist of smoke against the panes, inexplicable smoke, not from a fire at all. It pressed against the glass and found a weakness, some chip in a panel, perhaps. And it poured into the salon and became his wife.

His wife.

He did not move. He only stood there and tipped his head and looked at her, lovely naked Lia, standing motionless as well with a particularly large and saccharine portrait of Diana with a stag hung behind her back.

The name of the room popped into his head. Salon de Diane. Of course.

"Awake?" murmured his wife, with an expression on her face he couldn't quite peg.

"Perhaps," he answered, careful. "You?" "Oh, yes. Bad dreams."

"Snapdragon." He did awaken, then. She was here,here , and not held hostage by a murderous madwoman—

He went to her on his silent feet, his hands at her shoulders, gathering her hard into his embrace. And for a flicker of a second, everything was right, just as it had always been. She fit snug against him and her arms lifted to hold him back, and her hair smelled like wonderful summer roses, and he was so goddamned happy to just have her with him again he felt a burning prickle behind his eyelids that threatened to become something more, something entirely ill-suited to a hard-grown criminal.

But ... there was a resistance to her he'd not felt before, or at least not for a very long while. A definite lack of the trusting pliancy that usually defined her.

It sent a chill down his spine and brought forth another unexpected thought:She knows.

Instead of acknowledging that chill, or even worse, that subtle menacing thought, Zane opened his hands upon the smooth flat of her back and took another breath of roses. Then he released her.

"Did you tell her you were coming here?"

Lia watched him steadily, her hands at her sides. She didn't bother to ask who he meant, and the chill bit into him deeper. "No."

He lowered his voice and spoke very quickly; he wasn't certain they were alone any longer; he wasn't certain of that at all. "Good. Listen. I need you to evaporate for a while. Whatever you do, don't return to Barcelona. Go—go home to the beach house. I don't think she knows about it, we never told her, and—"

"Where will you be, Zane?"

The palace was still and silent, holding its breath, as soundless a place as he'd ever heard.

He took both her hands and drew her back to the wall, to the darkest of the shadows. A basalt bust of a crowned Caesar in a toga smirked at them from its pedestal.

"Zane."

His wife gazed up at him, ignoring the garish chamber and the bust and everything but him, and when she blinked at him—the slow, lazy blink of a predator arising—her eyes had gone to liquid gold.

"Amalia," he whispered, helpless.

"Where do you plan to be?" she asked again, cool and calm despite that gaze. "Where I must," he replied.

Very deliberately, she freed her hands from his. "I had a dream."

"She is here ," he all but hissed at her, desperate. "Do you understand me? She's here somewhere, lurking, and every day she finds me and dangles your life like a carrot on a stick in front of me, and god damn it, Lia, what do you think I'm going to do? She's a Time Weaver! She can be anywhere, anytime. You'll never be safe from her unless I act!"

"No," she said.

"You don't know her now. You don't know who she is. This isn't your precious Honor, this is a beast named Rez, and all she wants—" He stopped himself, forced himself to draw a measured breath. He feared that his hands might be shaking with emotion and so clasped them behind his back, so she wouldn't see.

Lia only waited.

"I love you," Zane said. "You know that."

"I love you as well," his wife murmured to him. "But if you move to harm my family, I'll have to kill you. Surely you know that that would kill me ."

He stared at her, dumbfounded.

"Where is the gain in that?" she added, composed. "I speak to the thief now, to the clever Shadow who never risks without gain. Your death would mean mine. I will not live in this world without you."

Love is a demon that destroys your soul. It eats and eats inside you, it hollows you out, and you'll do anything to keep feeding it.

He was breathing hard through his nose, unable to dig free the words to reason with her or bully her or just flat-out plead with her to go. Violence trembled at the edge of his fingers, half-formed, crazed notions, knock her out, trundle her away, keep her hooded, hidden, safe—

"Go to the beach house," she said.

He shook his head.

"You were right, she doesn't know about it. Go there, straight there, and I will find you." He unlocked his jaw. "Absolutely not."

"Zane," she said, and smiled at him, still with those unholy glowing eyes. "I have a plan. But it won't work if you muck it up."

"I never muck it up—"

"If you go north, toward England, I'll know. If you go south, toward Spain, I'll know. If you go any direction but due west, I'll know. I'll take it as an act of war."

Shit.

"Please," said the creature with the unholy eyes, sounding just like his kindhearted and marvelous wife.

"Please go west. If you do love me at all—" "Stop it. Stop."

"At all," she continued firmly, "you'll listen to me now. You'll trust me."

He sank down into a squat with his back against the silk-and-velvet wall, unable to look at her any longer. He dropped his head into his arms and closed his eyes.

The palace, breathing, and then the sound of her kneeling down before him. Her fingers stroking his hair. "Beautiful thief," she whispered. "My steady heart. I've missed you so much."

"You've a bloody odd way of showing it," he mumbled to the floor, "what with the threatening to kill me and all."

He could not see her smile but he imagined it, small and slightly sad. He felt her lips against his temple, cool as the night.

"And my God," he went on, aggrieved, not moving or relenting, "have you any idea howhungry I am here? How hungry I've been every sodding day?"

"Me too." Her lips found the top of his forehead; her hands slipped down to his shoulders. "I've been hungry too."

If he opened his eyes again she'd be back to herself. That's what he would believe. Back to her human self, with brown eyes, not gold, and he would lift his face and kiss her back, and then he would end up making love to his wife right here in the Salon of Diana, on the king of France's plush teal-and-orchid rug, and to hell with the entire rest of the world. He would.

Zane looked up. Lia knelt before him, her small smile still in place, her gaze that rich and familiar deep brown. Her palms cupped his cheeks.

He reached for her. He sank down the rest of the way to the floor and pulled her between his legs at the same time, all notion of restraint abandoned with the feel of her waist beneath his fingers, the teasing brush of her hair against his neck.

She tasted of summer, too; a soft evening in the countryside, a slow flowing river, nightflowers with exotic perfumes and petals that unfurled beneath the silvered light of the moon. He drew up his knees to better capture her, his fingers curving into her, urging her closer. Lia complied, her head above his, her lips stroking, retreating, her tongue gliding against his.

He cupped her breasts in his hands, his thumbs working at her nipples, teasing them into peaks. They were full and heavy and by heavens he'd grieved for this so much—grieved for her while they were apart, all of her, and now he was tearing some. Just some, faint moisture around his eyes that she found and kissed away with a breathless small moan of commiseration.

I love you, he wanted to say again, but he didn't need to, because every atom in his body sang it for him.

I love you, and her hands were at the buttons of his breeches, nimble fingers freeing him, and oh, she knew exactly what to do. Her stroking, her succulent lips, and he was arching into her, helpless once more, as she caressed him and kissed him at the same time.

Love you, as his magical wife crouched over him and lowered herself onto him, and Zane used the wall to brace them both as he held her at the hips and pushed up higher into her, his heels digging into the rug, straining for more.

More of her, more of this, this nearly unbearable sensation of Amalia wrapped around him, her legs spread wide over his, her face tipped back now, that breathless sound returning.

He knew her, knew her in every way. He knew exactly what she needed, and gave it to her, freeing one hand to find her place, his fingertips stroking, then gently pinching her, and when her movements grew more frantic and she clenched above him he covered her mouth with his other hand, muffling her cry.

But it did him in, too. As she shuddered and came down on him hard and deep one final time he lost control, and let the pleasure sling through him so violently it was closer to pain.

It was always like this, so very good. She was always so good, and he adored it, every shameless, unkempt, ravishing-her-in-the-king's-salon second of it. He adored her.

He turned his face to the side and brushed his lips across her nipple, a flick of his tongue that had it hardened again instantly, delightful against his face.

"We'll go to the beach house together" he meant to say, only it came out as more of a guttural gasp against her breast. "You and me. Right now. Forget everything else, everyone. We'll leave Europe and never return."

She bent her head to rest on top of his, and strands of her hair caught in his eyelashes.

"My lady." He brushed away the strands. "What say you? We'll start over. No one'll ever find us again."

She stroked a finger down his cheek.

"Peru," he offered, into her silence. "The Japanese Islands. Ceylon, Cape Horn. Wherever you like." "Go to the beach house" was what she finally said, very soft. "Await me there." "Whatever this plan is you have, I'm coming with you. You know that." "No. I'm faster without you."

He pushed her back with his hands hard on her upper arms, scowling up into her face. Frescoes on the ceiling behind her depicted lazing men and voluptuous women, floating scarves entwining around them all like silken chains.

"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.