by Shana Abe
The Roma bedded down all over, scattered about the rooms or in the central atrium as it suited them. I never instructed them on where to sleep or eat or congregate. They dwelled here and I dwelled here; we were like ghosts haunting the same ancient home, brushing sleeves when we needed to, otherwise drifting through our own private worlds.
Once upon a time the cathedral had been named after a local saint, but I had unofficially renamed it La Casa de Cors Secrets. The House of Secret Hearts. I didn’t think Zane or Lia knew about it. I’d never told them, and they were well used to me vanishing without word for hours at a time.
I’d come here whenever I needed an escape from the careful formality of the palace apartments. From Lia’s sidelong, worried looks, or Zane’s more blatantly watchful ones.
A terrible new notion struck me: Did Zane and Lia realize what the tribe thought of me, that I was sanf? As far as I knew, we were all three still in hiding from the English, but perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps they’d covertly resumed contact with Lia’s family. Or maybe Lia’s Future Dreams told her something, that I was tainted, not to be trusted.
It would explain those looks. It would explain—
No. It wouldn’t be true, and for one very simple reason: Zane would have killed me already. I knew without a sliver of doubt he would destroy any threat to his wife, and that certainly included the sanf inimicus.
I brought my hands up to my face, closing my eyes in relief. I was never more unreservedly, profoundly grateful that my human father had turned out to be a ruthless son of a bitch.
Someone had made a horrible mistake, that was all. I wasn’t evil. I was never going to be evil.
Beyond my windows a late storm was brewing, but it wasn’t raining or even humid. Dry thunder grumbled through the floors and walls, and occasionally lightning flickered close enough to reveal the outlines of the room in pitch and ice-blue, the posts of my bed, the canopy curtains, the commode and armoire.
Young Adiran was bold and brash and not yet asleep. Between the thunder a floating string of melodies from his fiddle ricocheted up and up from the atrium. I wondered if he were playing so loudly on purpose now, to provoke either me or the prince. More likely the prince, I decided. His chamber was much closer than mine.
I’d placed Alexandru in one of the chapels that ringed the floor below. Obviously, we were not sleeping together. It had been clear from the moment I invited him across the threshold of the door he wouldn’t consider it. A part of me was glad for it, but another part of me—that drákon part—burned red inside me. Hungry.
I wish I could say I was shocked at myself. I was not. I was becoming more and more accustomed to the dark, silky beat that thrummed through my blood now. It was nothing of the porcelain-faced, human-shaped female who wore gowns and drank wine in tiny sips and crossed her legs at the ankles to be polite. It was animal. And as much as it still sometimes scared me, out of every mysterious force that shaded my adult life, I liked it best of all.
Not evil, just animal. The most normal thing in the world for someone like me, a woman with a dragon trapped in her heart.
When the lightning flashed again, Alexandru was standing in the doorway of my room.
It was like a street magician’s surprise—or more probably, something I myself would do. He was not there, he was.
I sat up, tugging my nightrail back down to my feet.
We gazed at each other for a long moment. He was barely perceptible against the paler limestone, mostly phantom color, shape and heat, although the heat part was almost certainly my imagination.
“Did you wish to fly?”
His voice was so soft, tailed by another growl of thunder and one of Adiran’s more forceful refrains.
I tipped my head, puzzled. Was it a test of some sort?
“Of course,” I said.
“I meant,” he cleared his throat. “With me.”
“Oh.” I sat up straighter. “Yes. Of course again.”
“Now?” he inquired, when I made no move to leave the bed.
“There’s a storm.”
“We’ll go above it.”
“Will I be able to breathe?” I asked doubtfully.
I saw his sudden smile. “I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me when we get there.”
The most envied girls in the shire were the sweethearts of the boys who could already Turn. I was old enough by the time I’d left that I, too, seethed with that envy, though the idea of any of those radiant, glimmering boys throwing me even a second glance was laughable. Still, I had a tender heart. I dreamed. And I sighed with the other unmatched maidens over the girls who could soar to the clouds with their loves, girls who kicked off their buckled heels and hucked up their skirts and climbed astride the backs of slender young dragons, their hair dancing out behind them as they’d take off.
We grounded things lived through their adventures, we simmered and ached as they described what it was like.
Utterly smashing.
I never stopped laughing.
He turned loops! He was upside down!
We tore through a rainbow. Did you see?
I maneuvered out of the bed, shoving my damp hair over my shoulders so that it licked at the small of my back.
Sandu’s smile was gone. “You’re very fair,” he said from his position by the door, now sounding severe. “But you know that.”
“So are you,” I said.
“Do you require a change of clothing?”
“No. You’ve already seen me wearing less.”
He looked away from me, around the room.
“Is there an access to the roof?”
“Through the bell tower.”
“Very well.”
He turned around and left without me. I wondered that he knew where to go until I realized that he probably always knew, in a general way, where the highest entry of any building would be. Anyone Gifted with flight or smoke would have ducked through countless bell towers, figured their way around every sort of architectural quirk to get to and from attics and roofs. And sure enough, he led the way without hesitation to the small timbered door that opened to the tower without pausing once, not even to see if I followed.
He knew that I would. He would hear my heartbeat, if nothing else.
I heard his.
The door had a rusted bolt but was otherwise unlocked; there was no real reason to secure it. The only other dragon in the country was Lia, and if she wanted to come in, she’d probably have the good manners to knock at the main doors first.
I felt the gathering attention of the Roma downstairs. I heard the fiddle begin to taper into silence.
Sandu’s hand was an elegant shape against the wood. He released the bolt and pulled at the latch, and the tower door cracked open without a squeak.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Thin, gray residue of saltpeter from the fireshow sifted down around us like the rain that would not come. I actually enjoyed the scent of it, even though it smarted my throat. The festival was officially over and the fireworks had ended hours past. A few bonfires still burned on the beaches, and pockets of people still staggered along the streets, but most of the city was now abed. Sea winds spun about us, stirring the litter below and that fine, lingering saltpeter above. I caught my blowing hair with one hand and scrubbed the other across my eyes, clearing them to the dark and the shadow that was Sandu right in front of me.
The bell had been removed from the tower, who knew when. We had space to stand and face each other, near enough that this time I knew I wasn’t imagining his aromatic heat. The odd thing was he seemed no longer fragrant with night but with day, with blue skies and hot sunny fields that enveloped me in sweetness, welcome as the summer dawn.
“I’ve never done this before,” I whispered.
No one could hear us, I was sure, but it seemed appropriate to whisper anyway.
“Neither have I,” responded the prince, also in a whisper. “Well, not like this, in any case.”
“Like this?
”
“For pleasure.”
“Oh.” I felt that heat between us mount; it might have been my blush.
“In emergencies, of course, we … my people, we double up, we fly how we must. And there are courting couples. It’s not forbidden for them to explore how best they … fit together.”
“Oh,” I said again.
He looked away from me. “But I never have,” he finished, more brisk.
I found his hand in the dusk. “I’m glad, then,” I said. “First time for both of us. Don’t drop me, please.”
“No. I won’t.”
His eyes glanced back to mine. The winds lifted the fall of his hair, blew it behind him and then forward again, so that the ends tickled my cheeks.
I inhaled once more. In that moment I breathed both saltpeter and him, and together they were delicious.
He was gazing at my lips. His heart rate had increased; his eyes were half-lidded and pooling into dragon silver, shining beneath his lashes.
I was ready. I knew I was. I leaned into him, so very slight, an unspoken permission with my fingers around his and his scent drowning me in sunlight.
Nothing else happened. Alexandru was a statue.
I leaned farther, so close now my exhalation brushed his chin, the column of his neck, and his lashes drifted closed. Yet his brow wrinkled into a frown; he looked like he was in pain, and it was so painful for me to see that, to think, Oh, he hurts, that I leaned the rest of the way in and up and touched my lips to his.
I’d thought about this moment over and over as the years had passed. I’d thought about it practically from my very first memory of him, when I finally realized where I’d gone on my first Weave, who he’d been. I’d imagined him hard and cold and I’d imagined him warm and tender, as a jet-black dragon and as an ivory-pale man but I’d never, never dreamed his mouth would be so—soft. So lovely and soft and firm, better than satin, or the salty caress of the living sea.
I’d written married to myself and imagined that too, but nothing had prepared me for this. For Alexandru’s awakening, his sudden shift in stance that brought our chests together, his free hand rising to cup the back of my neck through the mass of my damp hair, the fingers joined to mine now a tight grip that hurt. I wasn’t kissing him any longer. He was kissing me, bending me back in his ferocity, and it was as if all the air had been sucked from my lungs. I could not breathe from rapture.
I felt his tongue, my bound hand released as he pulled me closer by the waist, and through the cotton of my nightrail he was solidly male, a fine shirt and those velvet breeches and his heartbeat racing, just like mine.
I brought my own hands up to frame his face. The planes of his cheeks, the scrape of whiskers just emerging from his last shave. I’d never touched a man’s face before. I’d never known skin that could be both coarse and smooth together, provocative. I thought, dizzily, I never knew that there were so many things I’ve never known.
Sandu pulled back, releasing a breath almost like an explosion. His fingers curved into me hard again; when he opened his eyes they were fully incandescent, bright as stars.
“Climb out to me,” he said roughly, and Turned to smoke. I was left holding empty air. All his fine clothing collapsed into a pile.
I shivered with the unexpected lack of warmth, then swung about, trying to discover where he’d gone. There—there on my right, a blur of roiling vapor above the roof, gossamer gray that expanded and thickened into shape. The smoke curled away to reveal the animal left behind, a creature so very black that all I saw of him was the dull glisten of the streetlamps off his scales, and the faint, angled outline of metallic silver that defined his wings and talons.
And those eyes, brilliant, slanting back to find mine.
I hitched up my gown and clambered over the rim of the tower railing, my feet cautious upon the tiles, my toes digging in. He awaited me, massive and beautiful, poised with a delicate balance right at the edge. As I inched nearer he held out a wing to me, just as he had so long ago in that glacial river. This time, though, I grabbed it, grateful for the support. I finished the rest of the way to him with quick, careful steps, the boned curve of silver-and-ebony arching to surround me like a cloak.
I did what I had seen all those other girls do. I took up the folds of my nightrail once more, used my other hand to twine my fingers though the ruff of his mane, and hefted myself atop him.
If I’d thought him heated as a man, he was ten times warmer as a beast. His scales cut hard as diamonds against the bare flesh of my inner thighs. Prince Alexandru held absolutely still as I shimmied into place, scooting forward until I could hook both legs above the joints of his wings, my calves gripping his ribs just under.
He turned his head and looked back at me, a long, assessing look. I adjusted my gown once more and then gave him a grin—I couldn’t help it. I was here and he was here and I thought I could already taste the storm clouds above us. Excitement bubbled through me. I squeezed my thighs harder around him and his head jerked forward. I just had time to wrap my other hand in his mane as he launched from the roof.
It was almost as thrilling as the kiss.
He tried to fly smoothly. He tried not to jostle her, to soar slowly and evenly into the pitch of sky above the city haze. But ascension required wing movement; it was impossible not to buck. She would be strong—she was drákon, so of course she would be strong—and he felt the tug of her weight through her hands, the pressure of her legs hugging him, somehow both arousingly muscular and troublingly frail.
Anyone riding his back would feel slight, he told himself. She had a good grip. She would not loosen it.
The dry air below them changed rapidly into humidity, and then to the first of the clouds. Sandu pierced through them without hesitation. The cove of the storm amassed miles away yet; the vapor around them now was merely damp and chilly. He felt no threat of electric charge.
Water beaded his muzzle, caught in his lashes; the air finally tasted clean, nothing of mankind. Yet he remembered, belatedly, Honor’s concern about breathing. With a jet of warmer air supporting him in a glide, Alexandru glanced back at her.
She shone with moisture, her skin agleam against the purpled mist, her hair still bright as a beacon, even after all these years. The sheath of cloth molding to her figure had gone transparent. Her eyes were closed, and she was smiling.
He tipped gently to the right, following the airstream, then climbed higher, breaking free of the cloud.
Starlight, moonlight, a cloudscape below them like cottony thistles blown about, peaceful and silent. He stretched his wings fully then, willing to drift, to let the shifting winds move him.
Daybreak wasn’t far off. He felt that as clearly as he did the winds, a subtle quickening in his blood, dampened now, but it would begin to peak. He’d been aloft to witness the rising sun more times than he could remember, but he’d always been home in his mountains then.
A dragon descending to land at Zaharen Yce was nothing extraordinary at all. A dragon descending over the tame skies of Barcelona would cause a frenzy. People fleeing, animals rampaging, the press; even in this seaport town, far from the heart of Europe, there would be press.
He considered it. Decided they had time yet.
The clouds below slowly changed their aspect, growing thicker and more ragged. In the not too far distance lightning forked, sparking light in distinct segments, transforming what would appear to be a smooth bump of violet into boils of darker violence.
Sandu angled right again.
He’d been keeping his ears ticked back toward Honor, listening to the sound of her respiration, alert to any change. So he heard the difference in her before she moved: a suspension of breath, a soft rushed release. She came forward, crawling to do it, fist over fist through his mane. He felt her face press against his neck and—God, he was sure of it—her lips against his scales. She kissed him, nuzzled him, then crept even more forward with her legs tight around him, the hot center of her almost bu
rning, and said, very throaty, “Higher.”
He must be mad. He must be delusional, because all he could think was how he didn’t want her to move back, how if anything he wanted to feel those legs go tighter still, that space between them pressed hard against him, the incredible hot burn of her sex. So he cocked his wings and caught the next jet that blasted by, a sudden wild lifting that shot them fifty feet in seconds, if he had to guess.
Honor laughed. She screamed and laughed and he bared his teeth at her exhilaration; if he could have laughed with her, he would have. She kissed him again, still laughing, rubbing her face to him, and when the next whoosh of storm-scented air pushed against his belly he rode it. She screamed and he rode it, and it registered on him only a second too late that she was screaming from below him now.
She’d lost her grip.
He was a prince and a peasant and a leader of dark fairy-tale fiends; at the age of sixteen he’d taken the life of the first formal challenger to his rule, and by nineteen he’d killed three. Whatever terrible, trembling edge of fear still dwelled within him had been long ago pressed flat by his greater will to win.
Alexandru did not panic at the loss of the dragon-girl on his back. Instead, with a cool and calculated calm, he arrowed after her.
Wings folded, neck stretched, his eyes gone to slits. He heard her now, even though she’d stopped screaming. He heard her nightgown snapping and tearing around her, the length of her hair making a noise like tremendous static, like the lightning behind them. Her arms were stretched up toward him, her fingers splayed. Her mouth was open, a silent cry.
She flipped about and the nightgown ripped free. It whipped past him and just missed entangling with his legs, but Sandu had no time for that, he was gaining on her, he was sleek and made for velocity, and she was small and tumbling. He was going to catch her. He was going—
The sea was a white-peaked, infinite floor, rushing closer with stomach-clenching speed. If she hit it, it was going to be like stone. It would smash her apart. There would be no recovery, no second chances. So he was … not … going … to miss—
