by Shana Abe
Don’t think about it. Don’t think.
She cradled him with knees and arms. Her eyes drifted open. Her lips parted. The poison for her ate through his blood.
“Do not speak,” he ordered, watching her face. He didn’t want her to wake; he didn’t want her to shape the words that would stop him. “Just feel.” Zane found her center, her folds and damp curls, and pushed a finger slowly inside her. “Feel me, Lia.”
And he made certain that she would.
He touched her and stroked her until his fingers were slick, until her lashes fluttered closed and she made the soft, restless moan he’d been waiting for, that he recognized from his best fantasies. He freed himself from his breeches and sank into her. She gasped and stilled, her chest rising and falling in short, staccato bursts, and he thought he might die right then from the tight bliss of her sheath.
But he waited. Because she was new to this, she was tender, and some ragged part of him remembered that, for all the hunger raging through him. She was precious. Ardent and throbbing inside her, he would make himself wait.
He dropped kisses along her throat, up to her ear. He caught his breath and dragged his lips over her marble cheek, to her mouth, where she turned her face to his and shaped words he did not hear.
Lia lifted her hips. It wasn’t much-a subtle, feminine motion-but like the tumblers turning in a lock, it freed him. He couldn’t stop himself now; he pushed deep. He bit her neck and reveled in it, the flowery taste of her in his mouth, the shivers of her body around his. She made a low, keening moan that matched the agony burning through him. He thought he might die with the pleasure of her, lustrous and wet and hot against his skin. Even the shadows along the walls seemed to cower. And it was worth it, every moment, every instant of suffering, because now-
They moved together. They stretched and held and tasted each other as the fire glimmered and they found new magic. She twined her fingers through his hair with both hands and pulled his mouth to hers, her lips to his, imprisoning him even as he impaled her with his body.
“Lia,” he gasped, plunging, unable to stop.
She said something he didn’t understand, the flowing language of the mountains, soft and urgent. It sounded like a plea.
“Dragoste tu. Doamne iarta-ma…”
Her ankles wrapped around his hips, taking him deep. She was satin and fire. She closed her eyes and tipped back her head, licking her tongue along his lips. He lost himself at once, just under the spell of her pleasure, her rapture and her flexed beauty, the heat of her burning him to his core. He climaxed inside her, pressing down so hard it had to hurt her, but she only held him closer with a glad, fervent sound. He echoed it, cold white light against his closed lids, bliss and pain and unbearable pleasure wringing through him.
When he could open his eyes again, the world seemed amazingly the same. Shadows still lapped at the ceiling and walls; Lia still lay quiescent beneath him, lush and cushioning, deliciously hot.
He pulled from her, their clothing half-demolished, and smoothed her skirts down her legs as he rolled them both to their sides and drew her back against him.
“Lia-heart,” he whispered, hovering with her at the brink of the endless night. His lips met her hair, golden flax against his skin. He felt profoundly changed, a grateful ghost drifting away from purgatory. Everything was new, everything was right.
“I want to marry you,” he breathed, and in that moment, he meant it.
She rubbed her face against his shoulder; her voice was a sleepy mumble over the fire.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said.
He felt her slide back into the darkness. With the poison lifted from his veins, he followed her nearly at once.
She was asleep. She knew she was asleep because she was warm, and the sun was shining in molten streamers, and the hills of Darkfrith were grassy and thick with August wildflowers. She was speaking in a relaxed, happy voice with her mother and Joan, the three of them seated on a blanket in the meadow by the falls. They were watching the menfolk teach the children how to fish. Poles stuck up like boar bristles from the line of youngsters. The older ones-Audrey’s boys-had done it all before, and their lines whipped straight out into the deep blue pond, spreading ripples to the shore. But it was the first time for most of them, and chaos ruled.
Lia’s father pantomimed a quick, flicking cast, and the smaller children tried to imitate it. Rods clicked and tangled, arguments flared. Someone’s pole was flung a little too hard and went cartwheeling into the water.
From the middle of the turmoil, she saw Zane shake his tawny head. He waded into the pond, thigh-deep, and scooped the pole back out.
When Amalia looked down, there was a daisy chain in her hands. She remembered now: she’d woven it for their daughter.
She opened her eyes. The world dawned both prickly cold and magnificently comfortable. She was clasped in a firm embrace; she felt a heartbeat and heard breathing. Her face was chilled. She gazed drowsily at the low, chiseled ceiling of the tunnel, and then at the shadow thrown long across Zane’s chest.
A girl was standing over them with her back to the light. Dark-haired, slender as a nymph, she met Lia’s look with eerie pale eyes. She wore no clothes at all. Lia’s knife rested flat across her open palms.
Amalia bolted upright. The girl skipped back a step and vanished into smoke. The knife she’d been holding landed with a clatter against the stony ground.
Even as Zane was reaching for her, Lia Turned, chasing the creature out of the cavern and up into the flawless blue sky.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
She moved because she desired it. She had no body, she had no eyes, but she saw the woods streak below her in a blur of green and white, following the plume of smoke that rose and stretched, thinner than the fat clouds still above them, an improbable spiral of gray that pushed against the wind.
Lia raced after the drákon girl. She was gaining too, even as they climbed higher, soaring toward the razor-backed mountains. The trees began to taper off in a low, waving line. Metallic light flashed below her, blinding: lakes bright as coins, rivers feeding them, the fresh snow reflecting the sun and stark long shadows of purple and blue.
The child circled a blockish outcrop of rock, blending for a moment with the lacy filigree of clouds caught at its tip. And just that easily, Lia lost her. There was no hint of smoke amid the mist, only the faint, distant shiver that told her the girl was still there-somewhere. Lia slowed, pushed sideways with a jet of glacial air, and right as she was about to gather herself for the plunge after her, the girl reappeared. Only now she was a dragon.
Slim as a snake, writhing and twisting, she emerged from the vapor and fell toward Lia. Her wings were folded close to her body; her scales glistened absolute black. Of all her family, of all the tribe, Lia had never before seen a dragon without colors, but this child could have been a thread plucked straight from a nightmare: small and ferociously perfect, only her eyes and her wing tips and the ruff down her neck shining pale, unmistakable silver.
She opened her mouth and bared her teeth. Before Lia could swerve away, the black dragon shot through her, hard enough to leave a hole through what would have been her middle.
It did not hurt. It was strange and unpleasant; for an instant she was aware only of the sky, pulling her into pieces. She tumbled with it, seeing white, seeing azure, another lake shattered with the sun. With a great force of will she drew herself back together, and when she could focus again, the dragon-child was fanning the wind about a mile distant, looping up and down without flying any farther. Her shadow rippled along the mountainside in a slow, lazy figure eight. Her face was lifted in Lia’s direction.
Lia realized she was waiting for her.
Turn, she thought, summoning her fiercest thoughts. Turn, Turn, just this once let me do it-
But she remained only smoke.
It was considered a Gift to linger in this form. Smoke was silky and wily, a sleek, in-between blessing to fully separate
their human shapes from their dragon ones. But smoke was also slow, and it blew thin. It was never meant to be held indefinitely, not even under the balmiest of conditions. In Darkfrith, with its rolling green hills and soft inland breezes, the drákon shifted in and out of smoke without care.
But here-in an open ocean of a sky like this, with the wind whistling off the bald rock mountains, ripping into her, Lia knew that no matter how much she wanted to catch up with that child, she would fall behind. Nothing was as swift as a dragon in full flight.
She thought of Zane, waiting below her. She thought of the hotel in Jászberény, and the image of the scorched brick around her window, all that had been left of her room.
Lia fought the wind. She curled up and around and swept toward the dragon-girl, who only watched her come, still looping in slow circles. When Lia was close enough to hear the girl breathing, to make out the long black lashes above the bright eyes, the feathered silver lining her neck-the girl Turned. She dropped in a slithery gray plume down to a cliff’s edge below them. Lia matched her movements curve for curve, both of them taking their shapes as humans to face each other, standing barefoot in the snow a few feet apart.
The girl’s hair was not quite black, and her eyes were not quite silver. And she was even younger than Lia had first thought, no more than thirteen.
The child’s hair swirled with a gust of wind, a sheen of walnut brown; Lia’s flew up too. The golden ends snapped and danced a bare inch beyond the other girl’s body, but neither of them moved. The child stood straight and unafraid before her, framed with sky and light and nothing else, not even clouds.
“Cine-” Lia began.
“What are you?” asked the girl, in perfectly accented French.
Lia narrowed her eyes. “Drákon. Like you.”
“Where is your dragon?” The child lifted a hand. “You didn’t take it, even when I challenged you.”
“You set the fire in the hotel. You’ve been following us for days. Why are you trying to kill us?”
“Kill you?” A pair of fine, winged brows rose in what seemed like real astonishment. “Had I been trying to kill you, I would not have failed. You sleep very deeply, you know. Much more deeply than the man.”
“Is that so?” Lia took a step toward her now, taller, stronger, anger warming her blood. The child eyed her warily and backed away.
“It was a test, at the hotel. I wanted to see if you were truly one of us. I’ve felt you for weeks now-you’re new. You’re different. You look like us and you smell like us. But you did not change to escape the fire, so-I thought I was wrong. Yet here you are.” Her mouth pursed. “It’s very strange.”
Lia gripped the girl’s arm. “You burned down the hotel-you put lives at risk-for a test?”
“They’re only Others,” replied the child, her ashen eyes unblinking. “What do you care?”
The wind howled between them, harsher than the sun. Slowly, Lia relaxed her fingers. She dropped the girl’s arm; her feet shifted and a little ball of snow loosened from the surface. It rolled and rolled down the slope of the mountain, leaving a long, straight trail behind.
“How old are you?” Lia demanded.
“Eleven years. How old are you?”
“Where are the rest of your people?”
Once more the girl lifted her hand, a gesture that encompassed the snow and the sky and the sheer drop to the chasm below. Her expression remained stoic.
Lia released a breath, bringing her arms to her chest. Despite the child’s apparent immunity, it was cold up here, it was frigid, and she was going to have to do something about it soon; her bare back and feet had already burned numb. “I’ve come for a diamond named Draumr. Do you know where it is?”
Now the girl blinked, clearly surprised. “Draumr?”
“Do you know it?”
“Of course. It’s in the mines.”
“What?”
“Deep in the mines, the copper ones.”
Lia considered that a moment, gauging the light behind the girl’s gaze, weighing the probability of truth and lies and what the child had to gain by misleading her. But what she said made sense. It explained why the song had shifted as Lia had traveled closer, sinking like the sun from the sky to the earth.
“Can you take me there?”
“No,” said the girl, and grinned.
“Listen to me-what is your name?”
“Mari.”
“Listen, Mari. It is very important I find that diamond. I’ll pay you, if that’s what you’d like. I’ll pay whatever you say.”
“You’re English,” said the girl, tilting her head. “Yes?”
Lia nodded.
“I heard you speaking English before. I know a few words. Are you a princess? Are there many like you?”
“Mari.” Lia had to clench her teeth to control their chatter. “Will you take me to the mine that holds Draumr?”
“Even if I took you there, you would not find the diamond.”
“Why is that?”
“Because no one ever finds it,” answered the girl, candid. “And if you look hard enough, it will only drown you.”
“You hear it too?”
“Everyone hears it. The mountains hear it. The moon and the falcons hear it. Even my husband hears it. But it is beyond us all.”
“Your husband-”
“If you go searching for it, English, you won’t come back.”
“Mari-are you telling me you’re already wed?”
The girl gave her an odd, frozen look. “I must go.”
“Wait.” Lia grabbed her arm again before she could Turn. “That man with me, the one you’re not trying to kill. I need to find shelter for him. Can you show me the nearest village?”
Mari shook her head. Her hair whisked out once more, dark against the deep blue sky. “There are no villages up here, not this high, not any longer. The only shelter is over there.” And she lifted her hand a third time, pointing. Lia followed her finger. At first she saw nothing but more mountains, shimmering ice, and wispy lilac clouds-but then the wind softened. Something sparkled at the edge of a bleak, crystalline peak. Something glittered, with walls and turrets the color of winter. It looked like a castle.
Lia felt her heart sink.
“You shouldn’t take him there,” Mari said.
Lia shielded her eyes with her hand and limped a full circle along the cliff, but the girl was right: there were no villages, no trace of mankind around her but a single lonesome road leading up to that peak.
“I have to.”
“As you wish,” responded the dragon-girl, and without another word dissolved into smoke, floating away.
He was waiting for her in the fresh-packed snow outside the mine. From the sky she could follow the oval of his footprints, winding up against the thicket of spruce, winding back. Smoke from last night’s fire still leaked in a trickle over the lip of the entrance.
He recognized her, midair. He’d been gazing upward, obviously searching. As she shifted down toward him he drew himself straight, his hands in his pockets, his face inscrutable. Lia funneled into a woman, once again standing naked and barefoot in the snow.
“Come inside, it’s freezing,” was all he said, and took her hand to draw her forward.
She might as well have been a pinecone, for all he noticed her nudity.
Her gown and cloak were folded atop the sheepskin, her stockings and shoes placed neatly alongside. The chemise was a sheath of silk piled on top.
“Dress,” Zane said. “Hurry.”
“Zane-”
“No.” He sent her a smoldering look, very quick beneath his lashes, before glancing away. “Dress first, Lia. Please. Or we won’t talk at all.”
So she did.
The road was not difficult to discover, now that she knew where to search for it. It was, in fact, the same one they had been traveling with the carriage. There were no forks or branches leading off it, only the whisper of animal paths crossing through, boars or w
olves or bears long gone, without even pawprints to break the crust of new snow.
The road was a mire with disuse; mud oozed beneath their every step. Maneuvering through it was often a struggle. They’d had no food for a day and a half, and Lia felt it, even if Zane did not.
Hours passed. The sun hung very close. The mountain light cut so pure that sometimes it was a relief to close her eyes and feel her way blind-but a rock or fallen bough would always jolt her back to sight. Zane, she noticed, never faltered, not through the muck, not over water. In the sun or by the forest shadow, he only paced her. When she slowed, he slowed. When she stumbled, he held her arm. He leapt over the snowmelt streams like a panther, elegant and swift, turning each time at the other side to lift a hand to her, watching her with his sharp yellow eyes.
Usually she accepted it. His fingers were the only real warmth in the day.
Silence stretched like a bell around them; except for short warnings or observations, they did not speak. She’d already told him everything he needed to know back in the mining tunnel.
She’d described the dragon-girl she’d seen upon waking, standing over them with the knife. She’d explained how she hadn’t thought about following her, only done it, how she’d shot up into the sky like a musket ball.
That had won her a smile from him, a genuine one. She’d had to stop and pretend to adjust the frogs of her cloak so he wouldn’t see what it did to her.
She’d told him of their meeting upon the wind-whipped cliff top-some of it, anyway. Of how the girl had set the fire in Jászberény as a test, and of the winter castle that would be their only hope of relief.
Zane’s smile had vanished by then. He’d stared off into the darkness, rubbing a finger along the stubble on his chin. At last he’d heaved a sigh.
“Bloody hell. I don’t see a way around it. We’ll have to go.”
They’d kicked the fire dead. They’d left the mine without a backward glance, Zane with the blanket and sheepskin tied in a roll over his back-he’d ripped loose the hem of her petticoat for a strap-and half of the money left secure in a pocket of his coat. Lia carried the other half. Just in case.
