The Time Weaver

Chapter Twenty-Four

Within the crystalline and dreamlike walls of the castle known as the Tears of Ice, no one called princesse.

I moved through the hallways more an apparition than royalty, content to mostly observe for now, and that suited me. I enjoyed it.

There were footmen who followed me when they thought they should, and maids who found me formal gowns,robes a la frangaise from God knew where or when, and helped me dress in them. Men and women either full human or else with faint emanations of drakon—carmine lips, translucent skin, movements a tad too swift or supple for ordinary Others—served me breakfasts and teas and dinners, and opened thick wooden doors for me, and brought me figs and wine as I gazed out from any of the crenulated terraces.

Over the centuries the quartzite had begun to melt. That's why the fortress was named what it was, for the frozen rivers of crystals that dripped from casements and corners. Viewed from any approach, it was a castle of sugar cubes that had been caught in the rain: sparkling pale and set improbably at the top edge of a very bleak crest, jutting out without concern for gravity or weather or even time itself.

Zaharen Yce persuaded anyone who viewed it that, just like the mountains, it had always been there, and always would be there, and the melting, glinting rivers down its walls would always flow.

Inside, however, its hidden heart was revealed.

The heart of the castle was more than stone walls, more than even the sumptuous furnishings or the ghost-colored bumps of diamonds studding every room and corridor. The heart was a constant hum of energy, ever present beneath all the metal and stone songs, all the murmured conversations and footfalls and noises of a place that held over two hundred residents.

It was hard to hear at first. In fact, for my first few days and nights there, I missed it entirely. I did get the sense of something beneath it all, some manner of elemental cohesion that eluded me, the newcomer, the woman who'd descended to the mountain upon the back of the Alpha.

"Just listen," counseled my would-be husband, as we lay in the big canopy bed at night. "Just still your soul and listen, Rez, and you'll riddle it out."

"Riddle what out?" I asked, fretful, because the hum surrounded me and the dragon inside me knew it, even iff heard only the more commonplace melodies of the hearth.

"Riddle out why you belong here." He smiled at me from his pillow, the firelight a dim burnish on the window glass behind him.

"I already know why."

"Yes. But beyond me, river-girl, and beyond even the bond of our feelings. Beyond all that is this place. This sky and mountain, where our kind first were created. We're perched in the middle of it, right now, that invisible edge between heaven and earth. We're immersed in that ancient magic, the strongest magic known. It fills our pores and shines out of us, every one."

"Our pores ," I said. "Egad."

His laughter was a rumble that shook the bed. He leaned closer with a sly, seductive smile, and the silky blue fall of his hair slipped from his shoulders to mine.

"Our every organ." His hand found my breast, a bare brushing of skin to skin that gave me goose bumps. His fingers began a downward slide, his hand turning over, the backs of his nails dragging lightly over my flesh. "Our every . little . bit ."

"Oh," I said, or something that only sounded like that, because by then he had found the most sensitive part of me, and it seemed like magic indeed, that he could touch me and stroke me and fill me with joy with just his hand.

How could I still my soul when he tormented me like that?

But it did happen. I think the first time I felt truly in harmony with my new world was the fifth night, when I stood outside on the terrace closest to our tower bedroom, a half-finished glass of wine in hand. We'd made love and then slept, and then I awoke and he didn't. I hadn't been able to fall back asleep.

The terrace was empty of anything but stone and a few cold, unlit torches. No doubt there were eager footmen lurking somewhere nearby, ready to spring into action and open more doors for me, but it was late, and luck was on my side. I had managed to elude them.

The wine was white, dry but not too dry, and the chill of the night only made it more fine. I stood beneath an endless silver ocean of stars; the mountains were silvered with them, jagged silver with glossy black shadows, and the gold ring on my hand shone silver too.

I transferred the wine to my other hand. I pressed the one that wore Alexandru's ring to my belly. "Are you there?" I whispered. "Are you in this time, little baby, or no?"

My body gave no answer. The ring was a bright hard gleam against the woolen weave of my robe.

But . there was the something, rising up all around me. I held motionless, my breath caught, straining to gather it closer.

It was noiseless. It was infinite. It was an awareness, a light, better and brighter and more beautiful than even the frosted fall from the stars. I closed my eyes and let it warm me, let Rez the dragon lift her head and stretch her wings and sigh yes, yes, this is what we need.

I opened my eyes again, and the range of mountains before me stretched up to claw the glowing firmament, and the air was thick with unvoiced music, and the magic bathed me, even my pores.

We had been born here. All dragons, from all times and places, first came from here, this soundless, slender breadth of Milky Way and rocky tors.

I'd been lost as a girl in a river, and lost in other ways ever since.

No longer.

"I'm home," I realized aloud, and Zaharen Yce offered her silent accord.

Eight days passed. Eight days, nine nights. I moved from being an apparition in the halls to a creature of denser substance, one who felt she had a better right to wear the decidedly foreign, old-fashioned satin gowns that shimmered with crystals and beads and countless tiny sequins. To have meals served to her, or doors swung wide at her approach. I met the eyes of the drakon who moved through their lives around me and began to notice their patterns. Who spoke with whom. Who smiled, who did not. Which of the female nobles would regard me from over their fans, and which would turn their faces away and not regard me at all.

I didn't worry about them. Certainly I'd already assessed every eligible maiden of the fortress—and a few who weren't so eligible but looked daggers at me anyway—and decided I could defeat them all. I was small, yes, but ardently determined to hold my place, and perhaps the other females sensed this. Or perhaps it simply wasn't the Zaharen way to fight openly. No one challenged me. No one precisely welcomed me, either, barring the servants.

But it was fine. I was home, so everything was fine.

I toured the castle slowly, savoring each chamber or gallery or corridor, tracing my fingers along the diamond walls when I could, otherwise just listening, holding my soul in quiet. My favorite room, besides our bedroom, was the one Sandu had described to me back in Spain, the one that would host our wedding. It was called the Convergence Room, and I think it was one of the few places in the castle that really, obviously wasn't meant for humans. It was simply too yawning big and high.

That, and there were dragons painted upon the ceiling. Olden dragons, medieval, I guessed, roughly styled into the plaster but still brilliant with life. The stars painted in regular intervals between them shone with six points; it was a hidden heraldry, there for only those who knew to look up and discern it.

Alexandru had said there was no true wealth left to the Zaharen, but I found it difficult to believe. Every single room seemed to glisten with rare furniture and tapestries, huge paintings, gold-dipped chandeliers.

Ah, yes. The gold.

Like the diamonds in the mortar, gold leaf had been applied liberally practically everywhere but the water closets.

I'd not noticed it so much before in my Weaves, probably because my focus then was always Sandu—or else Weaving swiftly away again. Barring our plain tower room, gold sang and sang throughout the inner sanctum of the castle. Even in hallways with no natural source of light there would be some shimmery reflection against the ceiling from a window unseen, a door, some dusky polished glimmer to guide me on.

The most impressively gilded room of all was the royal Great Room, where the prince would sit and listen to the petitions of his people.

I sat beside him in that chamber of damask and gold one afternoon. I listened as he did to the farmers who'd trudged up the mountain to converse with him, the herders of sheep and goats, the hunters, the men who unearthed truffles from beneath the forest trees to catch the wild boars. Some of them were darker-skinned and some of them were alabaster pale, but all of them bowed to their prince, and spoke in words I nearly understood, their voices lifting and falling and ultimately bouncing away against the truly blinding, shiny splendor engulfing us. Remaining seated in the midst of it was a bit like drowning in a gilt pot.

Offerings began to pile up on a side table in a corner. Round wheels of cheese coated in wax, clusters of grapes, candied walnuts. Jars of blond honey, ropes of dried sausage. Saddles and blankets. Skeins of wool so floaty soft and beautiful I could not imagine spinning them into something else.

I kept looking over at it, in part because it puzzled me: Did this happen every time? All these lovely things, brought with reverent bows and deep curtsies? But also I stared because muted, natural colors offered my eyes wonderful relief.

By the end of that day the gifts from the Zaharen overflowed the table before us, and still there stretched a line of people beyond the doors, bringing more.

"They love you," I said, standing with my arms planted akimbo above my panniered hips, half-awed. A particularly fine chunk of clear quartz had been shaped and polished into a solid thick ball. The reflection across it showed me a pair of human-looking drakon in court clothing, copper and cream, blue and black, cast upside down.

"No," said the prince, standing before the table with me. He brushed his palm against the small of my back; I barely felt it through the corset. "This isn't for me, Rez. All this is yours."

I sent him a dubious glance, squinting, because the wall behind him was of actual shaped gold leaves, layered like Spanish roof tiles from floor to ceiling.

"We don't need a wedding," he said, stepping closer, cupping his hands around my eyes so I wouldn't squint. His lips touched the tip of my nose. "You're here, you're one of us, already entrenched in our legend. You are Alpha, you're mine. So they'll pay homage to you. It's in our blood. It's how we are."

Alpha, me . It seemed both impossible and just what I'd always secretly, deliriously expected.

Oh, Rez was fully awake, and she was well pleased.

Our eight days brimmed with wonder. Our nine nights with a dark and magnificent passion. I took the time to find the meadow I'd call Sanctuary and began to hang the first of the crystal lustres from the trees around it, the ones that would lead me to my future. Sandu helped, reaching the taller boughs, sometimes boosting me up to his shoulders so I could get the highest ones of all.

I drank the wine and ate the food and submerged myself in this bright new gladness, this sense of home and love. Of hope for the very best of tomorrows.

Of course, none of that actually came to pass.

Instead, Lia showed up.