The Time Weaver

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 drakon, 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 burning, 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—

He snared her with his right front claws, the abrupt change in his equilibrium wrenching him sideways, reeling them into a loop before he could recover. The sea became a smear of gunmetal and foam, the tang of bitter salt filled his mouth and nose, choking, but then he was in control again, flinging them both higher to the safety of the open air.

Alexandru wasn't actually certain which part of her he'd caught, only that he had caught her, and her hands were clutching at his leg, and her hair now streamed up and around his chest. After he stabilized he peered down at her, hoping he'd not pierced her with a talon.

He had her at the waist. Naked Honor was half-wrapped around his foreleg, her cheek and torso hard against him.

And she was laughing.

They returned to her roof. There seemed to be no better location to land besides the flat fields plowed in rectangles beyond the city, but landing out there would mean having to figure a way for them both to get back to the Gothic Quarter somehow at dawn, without clothing or coin or anything else. He considered leaving her there, returning as smoke to the cathedral and then hiring a carriage back to her—if he could locate a carriage; if he could secure one without horrifying the horses or chickens or sheep or any of the other myriad of cattle being transported along the streets—but by the time the sky was beginning to bleed scarlet at the horizon, Honor Carlisle was already pointing downward toward her bell tower, tugging at his leg.

There truly was not room to safely alight. Dangling a live female at the same time made things rather worse. Still, he forced a gradual descent, his wings beating frantic, rushing grit from the tiles and he thought,hummingbird hummingbird, as he managed nearly a hover until her feet found purchase.

The second she dropped to her knees, he went to smoke. The relief was stupendous.

He Turned back to man as she watched, still standing on the sloped tiles. He Turned below her, for her safety, then took her hand and guided her back to the bell tower. She seemed unperturbed by the loss of her nightgown. When he gave her his shirt, she accepted it with a nod but didn't put it on.

Sandu discovered his arms and legs curiously weak. Electric snaps were shooting outward from his spine to his rib cage, both painful and not; even his skin seemed foreign to him, too tight, as if he'd shifted back into the wrong shape. When he looked at Honor all of these sensations intensified, and the notion that he was no longer himself, that he had changed into something new and unpleasantly alien, anchored into his thoughts.

Aside from the drag of her weight, he hadn't been able to feel her at all in his claws, not her skin or her heat. He might have grievously injured her and not known it. He might have actually cut her in two. A dragon's claws were beyond sharp, they were harder than steel and meant to slay, to gouge both flesh and solid rock. It was a goddamned miracle he hadn't hurt her, but she didn't even seem bruised.

The bleed of sky beyond the rooftops became flame, and the stars singing above him began, one by one, to disappear into a rising sheer blue.

He noticed his breeches on the tower floor and turned his back to her to put them on. He sincerely hoped she'd at least have the sense to hold the damned shirt up to her chest when he turned back around.

She'd shrugged it on. The sleeves reached past her fingertips and the hem down past her thighs. Only she hadn't tied it, merely held the panels closed with one fist, wrinkling the ruffles. Her hair stirred in long, spiraling locks down her breasts to her waist. Her legs were long and muscled, just exactly as they'd felt.

"I apologize." His voice sounded so calm; another strange miracle.

"For what?"

He couldn't help the mirthless laugh. "Are you jesting?"

"No."

She appeared genuinely puzzled, small and female with her hair blowing about and her lips pursed, as if she hadn't nearly ended up in pieces not ten minutes back.

"I dropped you," he said carefully. "You fell. You might have died."

The purse of her lips became a blinding smile. "No, but you caught me again."

"Honor—"

"And you didn't truly drop me, you know. It was my fault. I had my arms out, to better feel the wind."

He felt that snapping in his spine ratchet higher. "You did what?"

"Had my arms out. Like this." She lifted them straight from her sides, her fingers brushing one of the limestone columns of the tower, and his shirt rippled apart like some gentle, tormenting dream. "It was the nearest I'll ever get to flight. I wanted it to be real. I wanted to hold the wind."

"The wind," he repeated, feeling dazed.

"Yes." Her smile widened as her hair danced around them, coppery-pink strands to blend with the sky. She pushed them back from her cheeks with both hands. "Oh, Sandu. It was utterly smashing."

He looked away. He decided to lean against his own pillar, his bare back to the stone, and let the steady, peaceful music of the limestone sink into him as he examined the sunrise.

All the sunrises of his life, all the same, with rich colors and a slow staining of the heavens, against mountains or plains or against the buildings of man, clouded or clear, winter or summer, every one of them he'd spent alone or with the others of his kind on some official business or another. Every one of them.

Except this one. Except with her.

"You weren't afraid?" he asked, low.

"No."

He felt himself shake his head. "You should have been."

Her answer came serene. "I knew you would catch me."

Sandu shoved off the pillar. "That's just damned stupid. I might not have. Easily! Do you have any idea how hard it is to fly like that? To sustain that sort of control?"

"No," she said.

He brought a hand up to cover his eyes. A distant part of him was aware that it was trembling. "Hard,"he said.

A donkey pulling a cart below them let out a snuffle. Its plodding steps reverberated sharp up the vertical walls.

Honor moved to stand before him. She didn't try to touch him; he felt the ends of his shirt brushing his stomach.

"I think you're right," she said. "I think I should have been afraid. I'm not sure why I wasn't. Why I'm not now. It's something to do with you, I imagine. Something about you. I don't know." She gave a hushed laugh. "I've been afraid my whole life. Just not with you."

"Stupid," he sneered again.

"Perhaps."

He wished she'd move back. If he dropped his hand and opened his eyes she'd be right there, more perfect than the sunrise, and he would have to manage that. He'd have to have the will not to kiss her, not to shove the shirt back over her shoulders and let it slither down her arms to the floor.

"It's unbearable, isn't it?" she asked after a moment in a different tone, very cool.

Sandu spoke through his teeth. "Yes."

"It doesn't have to be."

He opened his eyes and looked at her, her fresh and dewy beauty. He thought of war, of dragons that were living blades in flight, of the vulnerabilities of the hamlets, the crops that would scorch, the children who would perish. He thought of the castle he'd sunk his heart into, the years of struggle and defiance, of proving to himself and everyone else that he was more than just a farm boy chosen by his royal sister to rule. That he was worthy to command his species, their history, and the gemstones that hummed and preened at his touch.

He thought of the hot spurt of liquid that had covered his face when he'd torn out the throat of the first Zaharen drakon to challenge him. How it had tasted in his mouth like rust and lush, demented victory.

How, in that red and dangerous aftermath, all he'd wanted was more .

"I have an idea," Honor said, her eyes shadowed and endless. "I've been saving the Weaves, saving my Gift, so to speak. I can't Weave to any unique time and location more than once, and I can't go there at all if I'm already there—if the future or past me is physically anywhere nearby. But I've been thinking. I'm going to Weave ahead, just a few years. I've tried it before, but I wasn't skilled enough to pinpoint the time. I believe I can do it now. And since I'm planning it now, to go there then, I'll be able to do it, d'you see?"

"What?" he managed again.

"I'm going ahead, Sandu. I'm going to slip into our future for a moment, just to see. I've been waiting and waiting. If I'm not there with you—if it's not meant to be—I'll come back and tell you. Then we'll know."

He felt a surge of alarm. "Honor, I don't think—"

She stepped back at last, haloed in magenta and russet and flaming blue, unsmiling. "Wait for me. I'll see you soon."

Then she was gone, and he was left to squint at the first dart of sun stabbing under the clouds.