The Time Weaver

Chapter Nineteen

In the early morning somberness of September 26, 1788, mere hours after Amalia Langford dreamed about empty Darkfrith and a drawling girl, hours after she met her Gypsy boy spy to learn that fate had wiggled around her determined plans and sent the prince of the Zaharen to her daughter anyway, Lia experienced one last dream.

She'd returned home because she was weary, and she needed to mull the facts she knew. She did not go back to her bed but instead to the chaise longue in the Blue Parlor, the one with the rug that reminded her of sandy feet and fragrant sex and panting pleasure.

She missed her husband with a severity that felt like an actual knife to her heart. It closed her hands into fists so tight she'd later discover blood from her nails cutting into her palms.

As the predawn gray began to creep into the parlor, Lia abandoned the chaise longue, which was of stuffed satin and shockingly uncomfortable, and stretched out on that span of woven turquoise instead.

She didn't even think she'd closed her eyes.

The dream started high above her, floating, then plunged without warning through her like a solitary leaf caught in a waterfall. It took her down with it, took her in water and light, and Lia realized that this dream wasn't like any of her others. In this dream, she could see.

She stood beside a lane of hard-packed dirt, with milkwort and grass trying to grow along its edges, but it washot, so hot, and the grass had all wilted and crisped brown at its ends, and the sky was a bleached bone above her.

The sun beat down on the top of her head; she cast no shadow. The air and the grit and the dirt: Everything shimmered with heat.

A wasp buzzed past her. She turned around and there was the fence overgrown with dog rose, and dusty hedges poking through, and there was the gate, and there was the sign on the gate that read in very big, bold letters: DANGER, INFLUENZA. Only the A in DANGER was obscured, because there was a man's hand pressed flat over it, and that hand belonged to Zane.

He was wearing an outfit she didn't know, formal court clothing, a skirted coat and buckled breeches, truly splendid. One of his many disguises, she assumed; certainly they never ventured anywhere together that required such finery.

In the harsh light of the day he sparkled so radiant with silver and pale yellow she had to narrow her eyes to take him in.

"I had to," he said to her, glancing back at her, very calm. "Do you understand?"

Lia wanted to answer him but found she could not. She had no voice.

"I had to," he repeated, as if she argued. "She forced me."

He took his hand from the sign and left behind a bloody red handprint, a stain of a shape that actually did resemble a capital A, and he held out that dripping red palm to her.

"It was them or you, snapdragon. That's not a choice. She didn't leave me a choice."

Who? she tried to cry, but still made no sound. Terror had begun to climb acidic into her throat.

"She's not Honor any longer, you know. She hasn't been for years. Her name is Rez, and we should have let them have her as a girl, but we didn't, and they're all dead now."

He was a courtier who came toward her with that bloody hand, blinding silver and light, that calm, reasonable tone.

"For you, beloved," said her husband, his red fingers reaching for hers. "I killed them all for you." Then she screamed.