The Time Weaver

Chapter Twenty-Two

As it so happened, Sandu and I fit together very well indeed.

I smiled to myself as I recalled what he'd told me about the courting Zaharen couples, how they might take flight together to see how they'd fit.

I wasn't sure if he'd meant it literally, or if that was his charming, European way of not mentioning the word sex , but whenever I was atop his glimmering back, it felt like I'd been made to be there. We fit.

In a French port town named Cette we ate steamed mussels at a tavern perched at the edge of an empty beach, the Gulf of Lion spread out before us in a sparkling ultramarine blanket.

In Genova we found the astonishing Piazza di Ferrari, and admired the soft greenish brown hills backing away from the sea.

And in Bologna we spent the night, and that was the very first night that Alexandru asked me to marry him.

We were walking to the Neptune Fountain, which he had visited twice before and I, of course, never had. The streets were heaving with Others, almost as if there was a festival, although Sandu told me it was nearly always like this in the heart of the larger cities.

There were a few low-slung clouds above us, but mostly just the deep blue of a hazy night. Bologna offered imposing streetlamps of molded iron and glass on nearly every block, as far as I could tell; their light condensed into one long, mellow pool along the boulevards. The prince and I strolled slowly through it. I was a little sore from the long day's flight, but mostly I was enjoying the sensation of simply being beside him, human Sandu and human Rez, arm in arm, just like all the other human lovers chattering and jostling around us.

The Neptune Fountain was a popular meeting place. People encircled it fully and still it loomed high above them all, the bronze god with his trident staring firmly away from the unruly masses gathered upon the steps below his feet, fish and mermaids squirting water from interesting orifices in high, glistening arcs.

We angled closer, Sandu easily parting the crowds with just a turn of his body, lean and graceful, guiding me forward. Men and women both stepped aside for him, and in the process he garnered more than his share of admiring glances.

Mine included. Less than an hour past, we'd been smothering our laughter atop the roof of a deserted warehouse, scrambling into our clothes. For our promenade tonight he wore the jade green velvet again, and with the coat buttoned closed I couldn't even see the splattered stains of my blood I knew had set near the waist. They wouldn't come out. I'd tried.

In my gown of silver foil print on primrose I liked to think we made a smart couple. But between the two of us, Alexandru was the beauty.

The light from the oil lamps above accented the contours of his cheeks and lips and threw long-lashed shadows across his gaze. Beneath the shadows, his eyes shone looking-glass luminous. When he smiled and caught me close because I'd stumbled over an uneven paver, I swear I heard every female around us give a low gasp.

I understood. It hardly seemed fair to unleash him upon the general population.

But we were only in the great city for a single night, and I thought perhaps Bologna could suffer that.

I heard the bronze of the fountain well before we'd come near it. Bronze is a compound metal that has less of a song than a hum, which can be soothing, especially when combined with the tranquil splashing of water.

I didn't feel soothed. I felt awake, alive, delighted. I felt so filled with wonder and joy I couldn't seem to erase the smile on my lips.

I—that little lost runt of the shire—was in Italy. With Sandu.

It was the most tremendous thing that had ever happened to me, even if there was that small, disquieting niggle in my mind that could not stop remembering the note Future Rez had left me in my old bedroom.

I hadn't told the prince. I convinced myself it was because I still wasn't sure, and I wanted to be. When the time was right to tell him, I would.

Perhaps I wasn't entirely the dragon Rez yet. She was coiled around my heart, whispering you cannot change this ending, but Honor's old ways were proving difficult to break. Honor was a woman who was running off with a man after a whirlwind courtship that had lasted both days and years, and Honor liked to be sure.

Her reply to the dragon was simply:Let me have this moment. Nothing is yet etched in stone.

There was a nude god above us and a mass of malodorous people around us—no doubt some of them pickpockets, at the least—and the light was golden, and the fountain hummed, and at the edge of the stairs to the bottom pool Prince Alexandru slipped my arm free of his so that he might take my hand instead. We stood, both of us, facing the water, following the glittering streams that jetted and fell without pause, a miracle of some clever mechanical pump work we could not see.

I rested my head upon his shoulder. I closed my eyes, so that the light turned red behind my lids.

"Will you grant me the privilege," he said, in a voice low enough for just me to hear, "of becoming my wife, Rez?"

I sighed, so happy. "No, Alexandru."

"How many more times am I to ask?"

"I'm not certain. But when I am, I will tell you. Instantly."

Then he sighed. It was a small one, without frustration. His fingers tightened a fraction over mine.

"There's a word for this in English," he mused, still soft. "I can't quite recall it. I've made you a ... a fallen woman. Yes?"

"Yes," I agreed, still smiling. "Thank you ever so much."

"It's been entirely my pleasure," he said in Romanian, and I turned my face into his sleeve and began to laugh.

The journey back to Zaharen Yce took around a week. Had I not been with him, Sandu might have flown faster, but with me on his back I could tell he was taking care to ensure my comfort.

"The last thing I want," he said one morning in some watercolor-idyllic Austrian village, as we sipped our hot chocolate, "the very last thing, is to have come all this way and gone to all this trouble, just to end up with a mate who's little more than a distant splat against the earth. All because she wouldn't hold on."

"I do hold on," I protested. "Mostly." I sent him a sideways look. "Am I all this trouble?"

"Decidedly."

"No doubt you'd prefer someone who obeyed your every whim."

His brows began to climb. "How intriguing. Is that likely?" "I don't know. I don't know the females of your tribe."

"Well, if you'd only mentioned the possibility before," he murmured, lifting his cup to his mouth. "I do wish I'd thought of it. What a lot of time and effort I might have been spared."

His tone was dry and his gaze was focused beyond mine, past the little courtyard of the boardinghouse where we planned to sleep through the day, past the neat garden of flowers and herbs and the white picket fence that defined the edge of the yard. There had been chickens picking through those flowers when we'd first arrived; they'd all scattered to the winds. Alexandru was looking at the mountains that rose in the distance, blue shadows from here, a mere promise of what was to come.

I set my cup upon its saucer, the taste of the chocolate abruptly sour on my tongue. I couldn't fathom I'd not considered this before.

He was the Alpha of his tribe. By default, he would be the greatest prize for mating. In Darkfrith every single maiden, every one, dreamed of joining the Alpha's family, even if they didn't like their choices for doing so.

How much more aggressive might they have been, all those females, knowing their chances of becoming part of the head family would be limited to the seduction of a single male?

I tried to mentally summon any of them—faces, names—and could not. I did recall a blur of voices and gowns from that one disastrous Weave to the ball, but otherwise it seemed like I'd nearly always Woven to him when he was alone.

"Sandu. What are they like? The females?"

His gaze cut back to mine, the early sun glossing his hair.

"Acquiescent? Submissive?" I persisted. "Comely?"

His mouth curved from over the rim of his cup. I narrowed my eyes.

"Well? Am I going to have to fight them or not?"

"Fight them? Good heavens. Is that how it's done in your tribe?"

"Sometimes. If the situation demands it. If there's a boy—a male, and he's been dallying about with more than one girl—sometimes it becomes a battle of dominance. The Alpha female must win."

And oh, those Darkfrith girls. Those girls with their slanting looks and pretty pouts, and figurative claws. And fangs. Sometimes the battles were physical and sometimes they were more cunning than that, whispered rumors that tailed you, hushed giggles hardly suppressed behind lily-white hands.

Girls bigger than you, relentless girls homing in on you, the powerless. Pushing you down, pulling your hair, tripping you until you wept.

I remembered Wilhelmina and the particular pitch of her laughter as she stood over me before the silversmith's shop when I was eight. How light and trilling it sounded already, just like it would when she would be older, and courted by all the boys.

That was never going to happen to me again. I would never submit again.

I sat forward in my chair. "Is that the custom in your tribe? Do the females fight over the males?"

Alexandru stared at me, his expression arrested, the chocolate cup frozen in his hand.

I kicked at him. "Tell me. How many others?"

His lips began to pinch flat; his lashes lowered. I realized that he was laughing at me. "I fail to find the humor in this," I said in frigid tones.

A babble of squawking came from the open door behind us; it seemed most of the chickens had fled inside. The hausfrau who'd taken us in poked her head out the door, her hair covered in a yellow kerchief, her eyes inquisitive hazel. Sandu sent her away again with a regal flick of his fingers.

"Rez" He looked full at me, set his cup upon the table. "There are no other females. You're the only one."

"What, never?" I demanded, skeptical.

That pinch returned to his lips, just a shade. "Perhaps notnever . I am a male, and I have been alone for a very long while, and for all those years I did fear you an illusion, so I hope you might forgive me that much. But as far as I'm concerned right now, there has only been one female I've ever truly noticed, and who has ever truly noticed me. Only one. And she's the only one I'll ever notice again."

I regarded him silently. One of the chickens made it as far as the stoop behind him, released a piercing bwaak! at us before dashing back inside.

"Will you marry me?" Sandu asked.

"No."

He picked up his chocolate again, unperturbed, his gaze drifting back to those distant blue mountains.

They traveled mostly at night, although as they soared closer and closer to home, he began to feel more comfortable remaining aloft during the early daylight hours. He made certain they kept high enough to remain a mirage if viewed from below; a part of him worried over it, chewing over the fact of their altitude again and again like a dog over a shabby bone. Logically Alexandru understood that it would hardly matter if she fell a hundred feet or a thousand feet; neither distance would mean a pleasant ending.

But the less logical side of him—this new and unknown side, which seemed rooted in nameless, churning emotions—thought Stay low, lower, she'll be safer that way.

He'd lost count of how many times he'd twisted his head back to look at her, using his eyes to convince his mind that the insignificant weight upon his back was still there. She'd be sitting upright above his wings or else leaning forward on her elbows, her cheeks and nose pink with wind, her hands tight in his mane. He always found her hair first, that flip of coppery flame snapping out behind them like a bright pennant he'd won and was carrying home.

She'd wanted to hold the luggage, which was preposterous. It was fine in his claws; he was accustomed to transporting things in such a way. He needed nothing to distract Rez from her primary job: remaining on top of him.

He'd warned her before they'd begun that if he ever discovered her with her eyes closed, he'd land at once, city or countryside be damned, and he was sincere. Once, as they were following the lustrous polished line of the Danube, he'd turned his head and discovered her face to his neck with one eye closed and the other one open, the wind whipping her hair back and forth around her teasing smile.

Sandu found himself becharmed. Not merely charmed, because she wasn't merely charming. Becharmed, bespelled, whatever word might best suit this unexpected mixture of feelings that swept through him in a combination of tenderness and amusement and ferocious protectiveness. The closest sensation akin to it was how he felt about his position, his place as leader, but even that was born more of war and determination than love.

Miles above the earth, with the music of the wind and stars combing through his whiskers, he'd mull on that.

Love.

At times the clouds would engulf them in their acres of blue-cooled mist, and then, when looking back would make no difference because he wouldn't see her anyway, Alexandru concentrated on feeling her. Feeling her heat, and the pressure of her legs, and the small tuggings that came and went through her fists.

He couldn't do it for very long. The heat of her would translate almost instantly into darker, deeper thoughts of her body, and of beds and pillows and being hot inside her.

Never before had he known the peculiar discomfort of flying aroused. Sandu tried to avoid the cloud banks when he could.

In their hotel room in Obuda, he'd come upon her in her boudoir without knocking, some thought at the edge of his tongue, something about the distance left to travel, not far now, and how to count the miles by the lakes below.

But she didn't notice his entry. She was standing before the cheval mirror placed in the corner, dressed in her chemise and stockings and nothing else. The chemise was white, with ribbons of cherry-red threaded through the neckline and sleeves, woven in a pretty pattern around the hem. The drawstring neckline was loosened, and two long strips of satin floated against her arms as she regarded her own reflection, pensive, both palms spread flat over her abdomen. Late autumn light filtered through the organza curtains behind her and lit every inch of her to a peachy glow.

The hotel was named the King's View, and Prince Alexandru was not unknown here. Composed of creamy brick and marble and overlooking the great river itself, it was the preferred lodging of traveling diplomats and aristocrats or anyone aspiring to either. The senior footman had recognized him as they'd ascended the front steps, and by the time they'd reached the threshold of the main doors the manager himself was there, bowing low with effusive greetings, accepting the coat and stick and hat Sandu had only just donned twenty minutes before.

"Merci,"Sandu had said, and then drew Rez gently forward. "Ma femme, la princesse."

The manager transferred his attentions instantly,how delightful, he had not realized, Her Grace honored them, champagne of course, and fresh flowers, the bridal suite was regretfully booked but the king's own rooms were free...

During all this Rez only inclined her head with just the right degree of imperial condescension—did she speak French? he'd never even thought to ask—but Sandu thought he'd felt a stiffening in her posture, barely there.

He might have only imagined it. Looking at her now, so slim and girlish, with her hair curling wild down her back and her fingers pushed apart, she looked more elfin than dragon, a sprite wandered into the elaborately embellished royal suite of the best hotel in Hungary.

"Princesse,"he said softly, from his place in the doorway.

She looked up at once, dropping her hands. Their eyes met through the mirror glass. "I hope you didn't mind," he said. "As one day, it will be true." "One day," she agreed, and added, "I suppose I never thought of it before. The title." "It can be a surprising thing," he conceded, feeling the smile that wanted to come.

Her gaze lowered to take in that promised smile; her own began to rise in answer. "Will I get a crown?"

"Holly," he reminded her.

"I like holly."

"Good thing. I fear there's not enough gold left in any of the mines for the other sort."

"But there are diamonds in the walls, and emeralds around your hearth. Those will do. Your castle twinkles with song."

He pushed off the doorway, giving a bow of acknowledgment. "I'm glad you like it."

Rez laughed. "It is noisy." "We'll drown it out."

"How?"

"By making our own music, of course."

Her brows knit; the peached light shimmered through her shift as she turned to face him. "Oh, that was truly dreadful."

"My apologies. English is not my best language."

"Alexandru," she said, meeting him in the middle of the room, her fingers on his, her eyes deep as oceans, "that would have been dreadful in any language."

"I love you," he said, and in the sudden silence of the splendid chamber heard his own heartbeat, thudding hard.

"It's soon, I know," he said.

The windows had been left open a little. The organza puffed and fell like living breath, and beyond them a bell from a ferry on the river was clanging in clear, insistent tenor. The swell of air stirred her hair, lifted his own from his shoulders.

He pushed it back with one hand. "And perhaps you don't feel the same about me. Not yet. That's fine. But I wanted you to know."

She'd dropped her gaze again. He was left to look at the reddish brown crescents of her lashes, the straight line of her nose and lips that gleamed rose and tender gold. Her fingers remained curved loosely over his.

"Mate," he tried, and she glanced up.

"This is how we are," she murmured. "You said that to me once."

"I did?"

"I thought at the time you meant—something physical. But I understand you now. This is how we are. More than physical. More than animal. Two hearts as one, unable to part. This is what it means to be bonded." She shook her head. "I'd never guessed. I'd never come close to guessing how this might feel. You are the center of me. I think I ... I think I wouldn't want to live without you." But the soft wonder of her voice had transitioned into something tinged more of indignation. She regarded him more directly, confrontation in her stance now, as if she dared him to refute it. "I don't want to live without you."

"Perhaps I'll find you a crown of gold, after all," Sandu said, and to his surprise, they were just the right words. Her edge of confrontation melted away into the spreading light.

"No, I'll take the holly."

"And me."

"And you,le prince . Of course, you."

He lifted her hand for a kiss to shield his smile.