Shana Abe - The Time Weaver

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.

It had been a very long while since Amalia had attempted a hunt. And it had been even longer since she'd flown in daylight.

Not that this was much of a hunt. She knew where she was going, just as she had known where to go to find Zane. She'd been to Zaharen Yce before, in her wilder youth, even though over a decade had passed since she'd been anywhere near the bald, snow-scuffed Alps that cradled the last of the original tribe of drakon .

She remembered the mountains. She remembered the taste of the wind, that icy snap of pine and glacier frosting her senses. The flash of the green and blue lakes below, the cold foaming rivers. Forests rippling over hill and dale in velvet colors without end.

The first of the dragons approached while she was still leagues away. He'd been a haze of smoke above a field when she first spotted him, but had swept near with a sudden velocity as soon as he was high enough to Turn to full dragon.

He was burnt red and orange, only a little larger than she. He arrowed close enough to force her to veer, which she didn't, because Lia knew better than to let his first challenge lead to her capitulation.

The new dragon veered off instead; she got a very good look at the crisscross pattern of his scales. No doubt he'd gotten near enough to realize her gender, as well. He didn't try to force her down again, but instead began to fly alongside her, his lips curled back and his eyes strangely scarlet.

Lia herself was dyed more of the heavens, cobalt and violet with pearled wings, golden barbs along her tail. In certain lights she knew she blended with the sky, but it was too late to blend, and she had no intention of slinking into Zaharen Yce anyway.

They flew as a pair. Another mile in and yet another dragon looped up to join them, a green one, all different shades of green, from ivy to peridot to glass.

The next one was bronze and rust, and the next silver and pink and black.

By the time she circled above the turrets of the fortress, she had an escort of no less than eighteen male dragons, and she didn't know where the hell they thought they'd all land, but she herself was going for the inner courtyard, because it was graveled and open, and she'd likely break only one of the fountains in her skid.

She broke two.

They were oversized and placed too close together, but she still might have avoided them if her escort had only realized what she was entirely about. Instead, a dragon with a yellowish back and an actual gray beard attempted to head her off at the last moment, and Lia was forced to duck beneath him, snapping at his flank. It shattered her concentration just enough to sacrifice that second fountain, which had featured a large bird or a dolphin, and was probably ugly anyway.

She left furrows of brown dirt easily nine inches deep, starkly visible against the crumbled white gravel.

With all four legs on the ground again she Turned to smoke, allowing the valise strung around her neck by a rope to fall free. She resumed her shape standing beside it, holding a hand to her eyes as the beasts above her Turned as well, one by one, slithering down in plumes to the courtyard.