The Time Weaver

Chapter Three

The first time he saw her wasn't in a fashionable Viennese opera house, or strolling down a street in Bucharest, or framed in the glass window of a carriage. It was in the middle of a spring-swollen river in the mountains. He was eighteen, and she was crouched alone upon a rock, stranded.

Sandu noticed her hair first. It was the only thing about her that moved. He was high above her, very high, gliding along a jet of northern wind, enjoying the brisk cold bite of it that whistled along his scales and rushed tears to his eyes.

He'd been practicing kiting most of the morning, winging high into the luminous center of the sky until he found the perfect upsweep of air to support him. With his wings spread and his legs extended, Sandu would hover in place like a solitary fragment of midnight, fixed to the heavens.

It took mastery and stern concentration, an instinctive knowing of the gusts that would flip him if they could, slam him back to earth. The winds that howled along the spines of the alpine gorges would like nothing more than to turn Prince Alexandru of the Zaharen into a fine smear of blood upon the dirt below.

But he was better than that.

He was, in fact, better than anyone he knew at flight, and he took a secret pride in that. Although he'd been born a human-shaped child, it was a distant memory to him now. Without his will, without his even trying, he'd shifted into Something Else as he'd aged: more than just a man or a prince or even a dragon. Sometimes he thought it was like he'd snared a thread of blue from the heavens and swallowed it, and it had enwrapped his heart.

They were joined now, Alexandru and Sky, perfect reflections of each other. Up here, alone, he could at last be himself. He could be free.

His people, human or dragon alike, would gather in the hamlets and all along the crenulated edges of his castle when Sandu chose to soar. Those who could would sometimes follow him; day or night, every drakon of the mountains burned to fly.

But on that particular morning, he had been unaccompanied. He'd slipped out before dawn without any fanfare, restless and eager to escape the formality of the day he knew would come. Stretching his wings was a necessary solace.

When the mists caught between the highest eastern tors had lifted from pink into pearl, he knew it was time to return home. Duties awaited him. Papers, plans. All the winds of the world would not spare him from that.

Then came that flag of color beneath him that had snared his attention. It was bright, much brighter than the dark rock around it, or the raging green-and-foam river that had carved its path through the granite of the canyon. The flag glinted in shades of copper, dancing above the rapids.

He passed it, circled back, staring. A woman's hair.

He'd made another full loop before his mind accepted what his eyes were showing him. Yes, there was a woman in the river, hunched low upon a drenched rock with her arms around her knees, her face upturned to him. She seemed without clothes.

The wind shifted and her hair blew across her eyes. She lifted one arm—white skin, a quick and nervous push of her hand along her forehead to clear her vision—and stared back at him.

Sandu Turned to smoke. Instant buoyancy, all resistance to the wind gone, all the mechanics of flight and angles and gravity rendered moot. There were times when being smoke was even better than being dragon.

Smoke could maneuver down to the river in a way a dragon could not. Smoke could twine as thin as a whip against the channel of air that rushed atop the water, regroup without effort into the thickness that resembled his human shape. Smoke gave him weight upon the rock in front of her, feet that found a reasonable footing against the slick stone, a body and head and a face, inches from hers, because, honestly, it wasn't much of a rock and there was hardly any room.

The woman had stood too, staggering a bit to find her balance as he Turned to man in front of her. She gazed at him with wide blue eyes. Very blue eyes, dark as a bruise. She was pale and thin and much younger than he'd first realized—not a woman at all. A girl still. A maiden.

And drakon .

It was the second-most obvious thing about her, after that streamer of hair. It washed over him now in pretty little sugary waves, that sense of one of his own, a pulse that throbbed and matched his heartbeat, his blood. Electrical. Unique.

Even with her youth, she felt strong, stronger than most. The people of the mountains had mingled for centuries with the Others, and so their talents waxed and waned according to the whims of their ancestry. But this girl's power thrummed over his skin.

She didn't look like anyone he knew. The drakon ran the gamut of colors in their human shapes, but he'd never seen anyone in the castle or any of the villages with splendid hair like that, copper and rose and gold.

Still, she'd know him . She had to. All the peasants knew their prince.

Sandu smiled down at her, benevolently, because her eyes were still so wide. He offered her the traditional greeting her blood entitled her to. "Gentle One. What are you—"

The girl shoved him off the rock.

The surprise of it kept him whole, and when his back hit the water he went all the way under, thrashing like a fish. The river flowed from the glaciers lodged in the basins above and was shocking cold, a frigid slap all along his senses. He actually inhaled a mouthful before managing to Turn back into smoke, wisping free of the torrents.

As a cloud he lifted, found his bearings and the rock and no girl.

He Turned to man atop the stone—dry again, his long black hair snapping in the wind; nothing remained on them from Turn to Turn—raised a hand to his eyes and scanned the waters.

There. A flash of copper, a pair of arms splashing helplessly as the currents tumbled her downstream. The spring runoff was high and she was already halfway to the falls.

Sandu sighed. It didn't look like she could swim at all.

He caught her at a bend, where she was hanging on by the tips of her fingers to another rock jutting above the froth. For an instant he debated about which would be more efficient, plunging in as a beast or a person, but there was really no question: Four clawed feet beat two human feet slipping over mossy stone.

He took his shape midstream, creating an instant barrier that fountained the rush of water into lather, splashing into his eyes. Alexandru lifted his chin and curved his neck to glare at the sodden girl. He couldn't speak or even growl, couldn't make a sound in this shape, and so only gave a jerk of his head to the ebony wing he held outstretched toward her, the river boiling up white between them.

Take it.

She was gasping, tendrils of hair tangling across her face and arms, her lips bloodless. She looked from him to the wing. Without warning, she let go of the rock.

He didn't know if she meant to slide under him or catch hold, and didn't give her the opportunity to choose. The open spread of his wing dipped down and caught her. She was scooped into a clumsy weight that mashed against his ribs.

She began to struggle. He closed his wing to hold her tighter. With the girl pressed to his side, he lumbered up the steep stone-and-mud bank, talons digging deep into the earth.

At the first stretch of level ground, he released her. She collapsed, still gasping, and curled into a ball on her side. Her body trembled, all that pale skin now tinged blue, very striking against the hair.

Sandu Turned again.

"One of us," he said, standing over her with his arms crossed, "appears to be rather stupid. Can you guess who I think it is?"

She rolled over, found her feet, scrubbing the muck off her palms and thighs. She backed up a few paces, glancing around them, stumbled over something and came to a halt. Her gaze met his, dropped down to his unclad body, and twitched up again to his face. Panic sketched across her features.

"Oh, yes," he drawled, unmoving. "Excellent notion. After all that fuss, I'm quite in the mood for a bit of fun. Besides, you must be all of twelve years? Thirteen? Kindly don't insult me. I have plenty of women," he gave the word a delicate emphasis, "who like me well enough not to drown me, anyway."

"Get back," squeaked the girl in a high, wavering voice—in English. "Get back! I'll hit you, I know how, I swear!"

Sandu blinked. He understood English, understood it very well, in fact, but it was hardly his native tongue. He'd been addressing her in the patois of the mountains, a lilting combination of Romanian and Latin, a touch of Hungarian thrown in, the language everyone from the gentry to the masses used.

As far as he knew, none of the commoners spoke English. Not more than a few words, and definitely not in that unmistakable, patrician accent. And she wasn't a royal of the Carpathians. He could count all the noblewomen on two hands.

"Who are you?" Alexandru asked flatly, also in English.

"Who the bloody hell are you?" she countered, still squeaky, and skipped back another step when he uncrossed his arms.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said, impatient. "Look here, child. I'm turning my back on you, yes? I can't see you, you can't see me. We're both properly modest now. Just don't—"

"—run," he finished, as he heard her scrambling away.

He rolled his eyes to the sky, went to smoke, and funneled down in front of her at the brink of the forest, catching her by the shoulders with both hands.

She hadn't been lying. She did know how to hit, a flurry of punches aimed wildly at his face and chest. And for all her skinniness, she was still a drakon. He'd have bruises tomorrow if she kept this up.

"Stop it. Stop. Girl, you need to—damn it!" He freed her with a small push, wiping the blood from his lip. "That one hurt. Don't run." He examined the slick of red across his fingers, then glowered down at her. "If I'd wanted to harm you, don't you think I would have by now?"

She only stood there, panting.

"I could have just left you to the river," he added. "And ruddy good riddance." "Where am I?" the girl demanded, all hint of the squeak gone.

He lowered his hand. She was yanking her hair across her shoulders and down her body now, trying to cover herself, but it was still dripping water, and not long enough. He made certain to look straight at her face.

"There are exactly two tribes of drakon in the whole of the world," Sandu said, slightly sharper than he should have, but his lip stung like the devil. "Where do you think you are? And don't bother to deny your heritage. I feel you. I know you feel me."

Her mouth dropped open. "This is ... these are ... the Carpathians?" "Very credible. Did they choose you because you can act so well?" "Choose ... what?"

"The English," he said, and ran his tongue over his upper lip. "Your Alpha, Langford. Your Council. It seems a bit desperate, even for them, to send a little girl to spy upon me in the midst of hostilities, but then your ways have always struck me as odd."

"Spy? Hostilities?"

"This is going to get tedious. You needn't repeat everything I say."

"Why, you—you—ruffian!" The words seemed to burst out of her. She drew herself fiercely upright. "I'm not little!"

"Oh," Prince Alexandru said, smiling a cool, unpleasant smile, one that had been known to drain the blood from the cheeks of grown men. "But you are a spy."

A frown crinkled the pallid forehead; she clenched both hands above her heart. The wind returned and stirred the drying strands of her hair. She was a wet skinny twig of a child with a halo of coppery rose and flesh covered in goose pimples, as unlikely a scout as he'd ever seen.

But she was here, and she was drakon , and she was English. What else could it mean?

He held her eyes, now welling with tears. He was struck, once more, by the intensity of their blue.

"I'm l-lost," the child said. Her lips pressed into a quivering line; her voice came small and broken. "Please, sir. I'm lost. Can you help me get home?"

Before he could open his mouth to reply, she vanished.

She was there and then she wasn't. No smoke or dragon. Just the empty air, the silent woods. The roaring river. Sandu was left astonished, standing alone. If it weren't for the little-girl footprints pressed in the mud beside his, he would have sworn he'd dreamt the whole episode.

But they were there. They were.

That had been the first time.

A fortnight later he'd been asleep in his bed in the castle. The official royal chambers had once been the solar of the ancient fortress, modified and restructured over the centuries so often and by so many hands that by the time Sandu was to claim his place there, the space was a cluttered confusion of gilt and diamonds, crammed with artwork and imported furniture, everything to the touch slippery fabric or cold stone or dark-grained, heavy woods.

He'd spent exactly one week in the solar. After that, Sandu had discovered the tower room at the western end of the keep, and it had been his sanctuary since.

It wasn't precisely unadorned. But it was simple. Large, square, and echoing, it held a canopy bed, a mahogany secretaire , a Renaissance table of mother-of-pearl inlay and padded chairs. The fireplace had been rimmed in precious stones, and there were Turkish rugs strewn about for warmth. As Alpha, he'd made only a single major, modern improvement to the tower. He'd added a water closet, and liked it so much he'd commissioned ten more for the rest of the castle.

But the very best part of his private chamber was the view.

Eight glazed windows had been set in the walls, each one reaching nearly from floor to ceiling. Their beveled lozenge panes flared with sunlit prisms or the milky moon. From this lone, high tower, he could gaze in almost every direction, see nearly every corner of his realm. By day the rugged crests of the mountains greeted him, snow-kissed, clouds sweeping down their flanks to caress the green valleys and walled villages below.

By night he slept amid the stars, suspended in their brilliance; it was almost as perfect as flight through the purple-velvet heavens.

So, he'd been asleep. He thought he'd been asleep, because he was burrowed beneath his covers, and the fire in his hearth had dwindled to occasional sparks and embers. He frowned at them from his pillow, wondering what it was about them tonight that seemed different. The fire was lit every evening, even in the summer months. Zaharen Yce, the Tears of Ice, was a castle actually composed of quartzite and music and very chilled air, and no change of seasons would alter that.

But the embers seemed different. After a while—he wasn't certain how long—a new spark flowered and broke apart, and that's when Alexandru realized that their difference was not in color, or heat, or even their small lazy rustlings.

Their difference was that there was a naked woman standing to the right of the hearth. Beyond the post of his canopy, he could just see the outline of her leg, her calf and thigh and the curve of her hip. The bare russet glow of her skin.

He sat up. He stared at her from the soft trap of his bed.

Surely it wasn't the same maiden as two weeks ago. She didn't look quite the same. She was older, for one thing. Her hair was longer. She stood taller. Yet she might have been that child's sister: same coppery mane, even more glimmering by the light of the dying embers. Same long-lashed blue eyes glancing back at him.

And she was drakon , and she was nude. Just like that girl had been.

"I know this place," she said slowly. She spoke in English, solemn words, trailing a hand along the rubies and emeralds and topazes embedded in the mortar around the marble mantelpiece. Her face turned back to the embers; her profile was orange and dark. "I know these gems. I know their music. I've heard all this before."

Sandu made certain not to move; he only cleared his throat. "Have you?" "And I know you." She shot him a look. "Don't I?" "No," he said.

"But ..." Her brows drew together; he saw then that he'd been fooled, just like the first time—she wasn't much older, probably barely as old as he. She crossed her arms to her chest and took a step forward, and the window behind framed her in stars. "Your face. I know your face."

"Did you Turn to get in here?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Not even to smoke?"

"No ."

"Then if this isn't a dream," he said carefully, "I'd appreciate an explanation."

"As would I."

She didn't smell like a dream. She didn't smell —but she was scented, very close to how that little girl had been. Yet it was warmer, more feminine now. More like flowers and honey than simple sugar. And strength. Still that.

Perhaps she sensed the change in him, his sudden unexpected arousal, because she eased back into the shadows. One finger tapped a topaz at the corner of the mantel, sending it into arias.

"How do you sleep with all this noise?"

"It's not noise." He inhaled through his teeth, slowly pushing back the covers. "It's beautiful." "They're loud." "They are soothing."

She seemed about to add something else, then lifted a shoulder in a shrug. "As you like. You do seem to sleep very soundly."

He could Turn to smoke. He could be before her in an instant, in less than a heartbeat. He could touch her and verify that she was real—

"You know, I'm not ." The woman dropped her hand, gave a small, embarrassed laugh.

"Not what?" One foot free. The other. He slipped from the bed.

"Not certain why I'm here. Or how."

"Let us talk then, English. Let us unravel it together."

"No, I'm not—" She started again, earnest, but vanished midsentence, a blur of tarnished light and dark that melted into empty night.

And she'd been telling the truth. No smoke.

This time he had no proof. This time he realized it might well have been a dream. A strange dream, of a strange female, and he should stop drinking spiced wine before bed, because clearly it was having a deleterious effect on his slumber. The first thing he did the next morning was ask to be served sherry instead.

But in his heart, Alexandru knew she'd been no illusion. The copper-haired girl was either a spirit set to haunt him, or else real.

Either way, it seemed like ill news.

He kept her to himself. It would not do to instill unnecessary fears into his people; his hold over them required their absolute confidence, and life here was difficult enough. The sharp-edged mountains, the stark terrain. The long, brutal winters that shriveled crops and souls until spring cracked open all but the meanest of the thick turquoise ice. It was a land saturated in legends and violet shadows, where a wolf howling from the woods became a man-eater, a baby-stealer, and the sweet dew found on edelweiss was said to be fairy's broth, poison to all pure hearts.

Where the dragons that lanced across the moon at night were either protective demons or avenging angels, depending on who was asked.

There were humans who hunted them, and a distant clan of kin who craved to conquer them. Surely those were problems enough.

He would not deliberately add to the shadows by speaking of this girl. He would not endanger his reign.

Yet three times more, he'd glimpsed her. They did not speak again; there was no opportunity. In each instance she was there mere minutes or seconds, still unclothed, still pale, appearing somehow each time a little older or a little younger ... perhaps that was nothing more than a trick of the light.

He began to wonder, rather seriously, if he were losing his mind.

He found himself searching around corners, examining empty spaces. Scrutinizing even the smallest flickers of movement around him, ready to pounce.

And this is what Sandu saw:

She was a nymph in a field of August grasses, ducking behind a pine just as he was Turning to dragon for flight.

She was sudden color against the drab inner wall of the granary, wheat chaff whirling in a tempest between them, because he and the servants were hauling out bags of rotting grains from a leak in the roof they'd just discovered that must have been there at least a year.

She was a ghost in a ballroom, standing poised and naked for a brief, amazing fifteen seconds against the mural of gods decorating the eastern wall.

It was the harvest ball, a festival of darkness and jewels, tables laid out with all the fruits of their hard year's work: apples and pears and gaudy-striped gourds; braided breads and mulled wines; enormous haunches of seared meat; poached fish from the lakes; soured cream and cheese from the cattle. Sugared almonds, crepes, chocolate. Iced cakes trembling with glasshouse flowers, dusted with flakes of silver and gold.

Champagne. French. Because Sandu insisted upon that.

It was a chance to give his people a taste of true wealth and they reveled in it, nobles and peasants alike. Thin- or thick-blooded, they were drakon, and this was their night. And if, as the hours flowed like the wine, the laughter grew too loud and the violins too frantic, if eyes flashed and glowed and followed him as he moved, searching for the least sign of weakness in the Alpha of this ragtag, elegantly savage tribe—at least Alexandru had the champagne to cool him.

He savored it, every drop. The bubbles burned in crystal fire along the roof of his mouth.

He'd been seated alone at the head table, sprawled back to eye the sinuous beast that clung to the eaves high above them all in silence and shadow, bloodred wings fanned open, a gaze of bright goblin orange surveying the chamber below.

He wondered idly who it was this year. The nobles took turns up there; it was considered a rite of passage of a sort. He supposed someone had told him whose turn it was but he—

A woman shrieked. A platter fell.

Sandu turned only his head, already discerning the nature of the shriek—startled, high-pitched, not panicked—and the food that spilled—berries in cognac, the platter a ringing pewter—and from across the chamber, through the slippery candlelight and dancing shades of his kin, he found her.

Like he was suddenly staring at her from the end of a telescope, his senses honed. His blood began to hum.

She was older again, like him, long hair. Frozen. Pale against the wall, pale against the vivid formal clothing of everyone else. Eyes gone to round, astounded blue.

The beast at the ceiling shifted, leaning down closer, wicked claws digging into stone. The girl's face jerked upward to take in its abrupt orange interest.

From his gilded chair, from his linened table, Alexandru could clearly see the white of her fingernails on the hand pressed to her throat. Hear her stifled intake of breath.

But even as the serving maid who'd dropped the tray gave a second shriek and pointed, the copper-haired girl was gone. Blurred away, just like all the times before, with no trace left behind.

At least she'd been seen. At least, at last. The maid had seen her, the guests standing nearby had seen her, the dragon in the eaves. So he wasn't mad, and she was real.

Somehow real.

And then had come the letter from Spain, and everything changed.