by Shana Abe
“Maricara. Finish it.”
A chair was pushed back, scraping the stone.
Lia found her voice. “No.” The word came hoarse, broken with rage. It sounded inhuman, an animal voice, but it was hers. “I’ll kill you. I won’t let you.”
Traitor, sang the diamond. Burn merry, a merry burn…
Maricara moved to obey like a mermaid beneath the sea. She was slim and lissome; it was one of the reasons she made such a fine dragon. She glided in front of her husband in the orange brocade gown he’d picked out for her this morning, her arm reaching up, the supper knife firm in her grip. She struck him deep beneath his third rib; he was tall and she was not; she could not reach much higher than that.
Imre stared down at her with an expression of astonishment. She felt, interestingly, absolutely nothing. His hands closed hard over hers, jerking her close, so that her skirts swept his legs and her chest met his belly. Red ribbons spurted over their joined fingers; the diamond blazed hot against her skin. But it loosened his grip on her and she jerked back, stepping into a tangle of jasmine stems.
For a long instant her husband stood alone, his blue eyes clear, his handsome face blanched. He swallowed and pulled the knife free, frowning at the blood-smeared metal.
“You didn’t say how,” Maricara said, as the prince collapsed to the floor.
Draumr rolled free from Imre’s fingers. It didn’t roll far; it wasn’t round, only rounded, and the force of the man’s hand striking the floor sent it off with a small, chinking rattle that was the only sound Zane heard beyond the prince’s breathing and Lia in his arms, panting tears upon the floor. It came to rest at the feet of the princess.
She seemed not to notice the diamond, or anything else. She stood cool and blank above her husband-but with a sudden sob, her face crumpled into tragedy. She dropped into a squat, as inelegant as any street waif, and buried her head in her hands. A choked, high-pitched moan pushed past her palms.
The prince lifted his arm. He touched the hem of her skirts.
She kicked free of him, scrambling back, and the diamond went rolling again. It bumped into the overturned table and caught against a cluster of white flowers.
Lia turned her head.
In the space between one heartbeat and the next, Zane realized what was about to happen. She still lay beside him, her body cold and nude and unbroken. She did not shift, she did not tremble, but he felt her intent as surely as if it had been his own. As his heart reached its next beat, she Turned to smoke.
He was a thief, a rat, an urchin. He did not think. He did not pause for judgment. He lurched to his feet and pitched after her.
She should have reached it first. She was a misted rush that zoomed toward the table, a silky gray cloud that began to draw into fingers, into a figure, inches from Draumr, and he was none of those things.
Zane gave up his uneven dash. He lunged chest-first to the floor, skidding with the slippery fur coat into a banner of light, his good arm outstretched. Black pain roiled up through his brain, but beneath it, behind it, the icy heft of Draumr smacked into his palm. Lia’s fingers covered his a bare instant too late. They slammed together against the table, and the pain inside him lit to blind agony.
“No,” she cried, anguished, and tried to pry open his hand. She was very strong.
Zane managed a winded gasp. “Stop. Lia, stop!”
And she did.
When the black suns faded from his vision, she was seated like a statue over him, one leg tucked under her, her head lowered and her face hidden. Her hands still covered his.
Something wet struck his wrist. He crawled up to an elbow, dragging the length of his coat and his useless leg, and then to his hip. He used the table behind him to support his back.
The double doors to the chamber opened. Voices rose; a swarm of men began to clip forward. The gauze curtains beside them twirled gold in their wake.
“Princess,” Zane rasped. The dragon-girl lifted reddened eyes to his, her cheeks streaked with kohl. “Get rid of them. Verbally,” he added hastily, as Maricara found her feet.
She gave a command in her foreign tongue. A few of the men pressed on and she sharpened her tone, lifting an arm to point at the door.
The body of the prince was half obscured by the table. If any of the servants could see it, they did not linger to ask questions. The men bowed and backed away. Maricara raised her voice to add something else, and the doors closed quietly behind them.
Then the girl only stood quiescent, a puppet awaiting the next pull of her strings. Lia had not yet moved; her head was still bent and her arms wrapped around her shin. Her skin peeked cream beneath the burnished curtain of her hair.
Zane groaned. He tried to slow his skipping heart, waiting until he could breathe normally again before opening his hand to examine the blue diamond. He was a peasant, unskilled with mystical things, but God’s truth-he felt the power he cradled, felt its buzz and shine and the promise of all things bright and dark.
He could have anything. Sixty thousand pounds, ultimate power-whatever he wanted, whatever the drákon of Darkfrith could give him. Or steal for him. He could be the greatest thief of all time; he could be richer than the king-
Softly, almost imperceptively, Lia gave the smallest of sighs.
Zane glanced at her, then lifted the diamond closer. Draumr dazzled his eyes like a cold full moon, like a secret drop of unholy sky.
The moisture on his wrist had been a tear. He rubbed it away absently on his thigh, and as if the scratch of the fabric had reminded him of it, the pain from his broken leg washed up into a great greasy knot inside his throat.
“Shit,” he muttered, squeezing his eyes closed again. “Shit. Lia. Maricara. Find anything flammable and put it in a pile at my feet.”
He heard them moving, Amalia’s soft treading and the swifter steps of the princess, and when he could see again there was a colorful mound of skirts and table linens and damp jasmine beyond his boots.
“Not the dress,” he said, and Lia lifted it out, shedding flowers.
He dragged himself straighter. “Is there any wine left in the bottle?”
“Yes.” Maricara brought it to him. He took a generous swig, and then another, and then handed it back to her. “Pour the rest on that pile.”
It was a Bordeaux, a damned good one. It stained the white holland and stone in a wave of deep maroon.
“Snapdragon.” She was standing at his side. All he could see was her leg and hip and the glinting fall of her hair, curving gently above the pretty arch of her buttocks. He shifted on his good hand, dragging his body sideways to get out of the way. “Set it afire.”
She walked to the pile. She lifted her hand to her mouth as if to blow a kiss, but instead, a small, perfect flame hit the air, falling sideways to catch at the edge of a napkin. The fire began to crawl along the cloth.
“Right.” Zane gritted his teeth and dragged himself forward again, trailing blood. He waited until the flames were taller, until the flower stems curled and the smoke lifted black up to the high, painted ceiling, and then he tossed Draumr in.
For an infinity, she did nothing. Lia really couldn’t quite comprehend it: Draumr was in the fire. Zane had pitched the diamond-his fortune and her future-into the fire.
It landed amid the folds of the tablecloth, glowing like a blue heart to all the dancing orange and gold. Its song lifted dulcet and pure, still beckoning. The smell of scorched linen singed her nose.
She sank to her knees. From a music-filled distance, she saw her hand reach out.
“Don’t.” Zane shoved back her arm. “What’s the matter with you? I thought this is what you’d want.”
“You can’t burn it away,” said the princess from behind them, her voice muffled. “It’s a diamond, not a piece of coal.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
The linen began to crumble apart. The diamond kept its blue glow.
“Lia.” He waited until she glanced back at him, her face pale, distracte
d. “I need you to remove my boot. The right one. Don’t touch the left.”
She came to life. She knelt before him and ran her hands down his left leg, finding the break in his femur, his swelling skin. Her fingers were light as butterflies, and misery throbbed with her every stroke.
“I did this. I’m so sorry.”
“Yes,” he snarled, his head banging sharp against the table. “But, the boot.”
“Use this.” Maricara handed him an elaborately decorated pump, the buckle made of lapis and heavy gold. “It’s new. There’s a steel rod down the center of the heel.”
He’d hurled Draumr against a glass lantern, and it hadn’t suffered so much as a nick. But even diamonds had fractures. All it took, he knew, was the proper application of stress and force. He’d watched stolen gems the size of hailstones cut into tiny pears and rounds by the best hands in the business. He’d seen grown men weep from an unlucky fracture in a priceless ruby or sapphire; even the most skilled of jewelers couldn’t predict a perfect facet.
Clearly, smashing something to bits only took a bit of willpower.
Zane used a spoon to roll the diamond from the ashes. He lifted up the pump and brought the heel down hard on the heated stone. The impact jarred him all the way up his spine. The wound in his other shoulder broke open.
Nothing else happened. Lia made a low moan.
He hit it again. Three times.
On his fourth strike, the heel broke off the pump, and Draumr skittled back into the flames.
He swore under his breath. He reached out, reckless, and snatched up the hot diamond, throwing it as hard as he could against the wall.
It burst into splinters, a shower of pale blue shards and light falling back to the floor. Both women cried out.
Zane looked at Lia, his fingers singed. She stared back at him with her hands over her mouth.
He said, “I’d make a ring of them for you, if I thought you’d have me.”
And then, most unfortunately, he passed out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A full day spun by.
Lia kept watch over Zane in a wing chair beside the bed, listening to the unnatural calm that had taken hold of the castle with the dawn, keeping her senses bright for any hint of coming trouble. She ate little, and slept even less.
But so far, they had been left alone.
She sat in the slow-shifting light and passed the time by deliberately considering which had been worse: watching the prince’s physician dig out the lump of lead from Zane’s shoulder yesterday, or having to help the man set the broken bone.
Zane had been awake for the bullet, his eyes fixed on hers, his skin very gray, paler than the sheets of the bed. But his lips kept a grim, narrow smile. He did not look away from her face. She’d held his hand and tried not to speak, because she wasn’t sure what might come out. Apologies, babbling love talk and nonsense. She didn’t want to break down and weep in front of the physician.
Sunlight crawled along the woven colors in the rug. She decided that setting the leg had been worse. Lia wouldn’t trust the footmen to handle him-she didn’t trust the physician either, but couldn’t see a way around that-and so she had held his ankle and Maricara his shoulders, and the physician placed his hands on Zane’s thigh and told them how to pull.
Zane’s eyes had rolled back in his head; his body fell slack. She’d been biting her lip with the effort not to cry out and was glad he couldn’t see it.
And that day had finally passed.
The death of the prince had rocked the castle society to its foundations. There had been true panic at first, the serfs converging and a rumble of ugly unrest rising through the halls. Lia had felt it, Zane had felt it. Last night, Others with rush-lights and torches had assembled outside her windows in the courtyard below, and Lia had only stood at the glass in her blood-spattered skirts, watching the people, wondering if a dragon breathing fire in their midst would force them to retreat.
But then had come the princess. Maricara, young, glassy-eyed, who had done nothing less than save Lia and Zane and perhaps all the tribe of Darkfrith as well. Maricara strode out alone into the night, into the thick of those torches, and raised her treble voice and commanded obedience.
By then Lia had the window open. She stood listening, and watching, and knew that with the candlelight behind her she could readily be seen.
Perhaps it was the notion of two dragons in their midst. Perhaps it was only that they were used to complying. But Lia thought that mostly it was the cold living flame that was Mari, pushing the restless back into their quarters, using will and daring and some God-given audacity to face a horde of Others who had lost their Alpha-to a girl-child not yet in her teens.
The serfs had gradually dispersed. The body of the prince, Lia knew, had been taken to the chapel.
She wondered if Imre would find peace in his heaven. She remembered the flames eating her skin and hoped not.
Maricara had glanced up at the window where Lia stood and Turned to smoke in front of the stragglers, probably just for extra measure. Lia had stepped back and let the girl Turn back beside the bed.
Mari touched a hand to Zane’s forehead.
“No fever,” she noted, as if she had not just prevented what promised to be a revolution.
“No.” Lia remained where she was. A pair of ladies in the courtyard scooped up Mari’s shoes and the empty orange gown, hastening back inside the castle. “The physician said the bullet wound was clean. What will happen to you, Mari?”
The girl shrugged without looking up. “Nothing. I suppose I’ll make my brother the new prince.”
“You can do that?”
Now the crystal eyes met hers. “I can do nearly anything. This is my haven and my world. Imre truly was the last of his kind, but the people will still want a male to lead. Papers can be easily forged to name him Imre’s heir. Better my brother than some new master. It will help placate them, at any rate.”
“How old is your brother?”
“Seven years.”
“You’ll have a while to reign.”
“Yes,” said the girl, and flicked her hair from her shoulder with a thin, graceful wrist.
“We’ll stay as long as we can,” Lia said. “He can’t travel yet, and you might need…extra persuasion on your behalf.”
“Yes, do.”
They gazed together at the sleeping figure in the bed, his arms lax above the sheets, his face drawn in angles and shadows, still far too pale.
“So you’re not married, after all,” mused Maricara.
“No. And neither are you.”
Silence descended. The candles flickered, very faintly, with the draft from the window. Behind walls, behind doors, the Others stirred and muttered.
“Is there a cleric for the castle?” Lia asked.
“Imre disliked having God so close. The cleric lives two villages down the mountains. It’s about a three-day ride.” The girl’s lips curved in a smile. “Less, of course, for smoke.”
Around two in the afternoon, Lia fell asleep in the wing chair. She hadn’t meant to sleep, and in fact had chosen the chair specifically for its hard horsehair base. But sleep had come anyway. She had no dreams.
When she opened her eyes again, the sunlight had shifted from the rug to the bed. The fire had smoldered out and remained dead cold. The candles had burned down to stubs. She twitched the blanket she’d found a little higher over her shoulders and shifted in her seat to check on Zane.
He was watching her. He lay very still; the light slashed hard and clear past the canopy curtains, brightening the sheets, catching in his hair, fringing color along his dark lashes. A corner of his mouth quirked.
“Hullo,” he said, husky.
“Hullo.”
“You snore.”
“I don’t!” She pushed the blanket from her lap and sat forward.
“Only a little. Very ladylike snores. I found them charming.”
She shook her head, her fingers at his wris
t. His pulse felt stronger today, and a measure of warmth had returned to his cheeks.
He blinked slowly, gazing around the room. “Did we win?”
“For now. I’m afraid we might have a slight uprising on our hands, but not to fear. There’s an eleven-year-old girl on our side, so I’m sure we’ll do fine. The physician left you this.” She picked up a glass of clouded water, a layer of white powder settled thick at the bottom. “I’ve tried it, and apparently it’s not poison. Would you like it now?”
“Dear me.” He regarded the glass. “Are things that bad?”
“For a despot, Prince Imre was apparently far more popular than he deserved.”
“Let them come,” Zane said, again with that slight dry smile. “I can do amazing things with-” He cut short and jerked his hand free. “My picks. My tools.” He began to struggle to sit up. “Where the devil did you put them?”
She pushed him back firmly. “Yes, I’m quite well too, thank you for asking. Look there.” Lia opened her hand to the top of the rosewood nightstand. “This was everything we found on you. You are an arsenal, aren’t you?”
His eyes scanned the weapons laid out-slight things, deadly things, metal and bone and wire-and finally relaxed back.
“I like to be prepared.”
“So you’ve said. I do wonder what this might be.” She dangled a heavy brass key from her index finger.
His smile grew drier. “The key to my heart? No? Very well. I sometimes find that it’s more, ah, expedient to deal with shortcuts.”
“A skeleton key. That does seem like cheating.”
“I hardly ever use it,” he said, defensive.
“That’s all right.” She replaced the key on the nightstand. “I’m not above a few shortcuts myself. I’ve sent for a cleric.”
Zane took a breath. “Oh.”
“I thought that I should, since you’re already helpless here in bed. You’re quite at my mercy.”
“I know that,” he said in a strangely flat voice.
“And there’s something else.” She reached into her pocket for her handkerchief, balancing it on her knees, very carefully untying the knot. Inside the wrinkled linen sparkled the remains of a legendary diamond. She placed it on the bed beside him and stirred her finger through the splinters and dust.
