Shana Abe - The Time Weaver

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.

I had a secret.

Considering who and what I was, declaring that I had a secret was nothing more extraordinary than saying, / breathe. I am .

My life was a basket woven of secrets, it seemed. I was a secret from the shire of my birth. I was a secret from the fine people of Barcelona, where I now lived. I was a secret from my real parents, Gervase and Josephine, and a secret from my false parents, Zane and Lia.

I was nearing the age of eighteen, and every day I ate and drank secrets like candy, like wine. If I tried to repress them, if I tried to mash them down under the relentless light of the Spanish sun, they squeezed up again through the cracks of night. They haunted my dreams.

The greatest one, of course, was him .

The prince.

Alexandru.

I knew that was his name, because I'd heard the drakon surrounding him call him that. Not many did—I supposed it was because he was royal and they were not—and it took me over a year of Weaving to him before I was able to sift through the strange foreign words enough to recognize the syllables of his given name. Sometimes he was Alexandru, and sometimes just Sandu, which I definitely liked better.

Prince Alexandru of the Zaharen was an Alpha with gray chill eyes and a fine mouth that never smiled. He was pale and lean in the most charismatically feral way of our kind, with straight long hair so deeply black it shone blue, and cheekbones sculpted sharp like his mountains. His voice was nearly always unnervingly gentle; when he spoke, it felt like electric shocks along my skin. Prince Alexandru sat on a throne in a sumptuous Great Room of green damask and hammered gold and watched the shadows and the light like a shark waiting restlessly for a little fish to swim by.

And all the little fish gave him a very wide berth indeed. Even the servants who brought his chalices of wine and finger bowls of lemon water avoided his gaze when they could.

Prince Alexandru was a leader locked in a silent, frigid war, although it took me a very long time to realize that, and even longer to realize with whom.

Sandu, though ... Sandu was a man who slept. Alone. In a solitary tower chamber, with nothing to comfort him but a few blankets and stars and the songs of all the diamonds and colored gemstones pressed into the walls.

In sleep, his body relaxed, his face relaxed. In sleep, I could imagine him smiling. His hands atop the covers of satin and fur, long, strong fingers stroked with firelight. His hair unbound, smooth as ink across the pillows.

I'd watched him brush it out once early one winter morning, the strands crackling, his gaze distant, an emerald ring flashing on his thumb. I'd Woven to a far corner holding my breath but when my back touched the cold wall I think I must have released it, just a tiny bit; I hadn't meant to. He'd paused, head cocked, frowning at his reflection in the small mirror before him. Before he finished twisting around, I was gone again.

Stolen moments. That was how I knew Sandu.

I wasn't certain if it was Sandu or Alexandru who commanded his animal side, the huge gleaming black dragon who'd once plucked me from a river. He'd been both merciful and cruel, so perhaps both.

And I wasn't certain which aspect of him intimidated me more. I'd grown up with an Alpha heading my tribe, and I had a healthy respect for their power. I'd learned very quickly in life that the strongest ruled the weakest, and if you weren't prepared to be ruled, then you'd better fight or run. Alpha males not only fought, they won. If they had to kill to win, so be it; those were our ways. The shire of Darkfrith had an entire field devoted to the charred bones of those who had chosen to contest the rules of the tribe.

One glance into this prince's pale gray eyes and I could easily envision his own field of bones.

And yet ... there was that sleeping man. The curve of his lips. The twin straight strokes of ebony brows, so peaceful. Sable eyelashes, thick and spiked. He never slept with a nightshirt on, not that I could tell, not even during sleet or snow. His shoulders were broad and muscled, ivory skin, a V of short curling hair winnowing down his chest. When the fire was bright enough, if he rolled over, if he shifted or moved his hand or parted his lips on a sigh .

Oh, those nights. I found it so hard to Weave away.

Back then I had no choice, though. I couldn't control my Gift. I'd be sitting at the kitchen sideboard peeling apples, or walking through a park, or reading at my desk. And then I'd simply be somewhere else. Some time else.

Nude.

That part was always awkward, to say the least. Usually the first jolt of realization that I'd completed a Weave would be someone screeching at the sight of sudden, unclad me appearing from nowhere.

With Lia's encouragement, I began to cloister myself in the suite of apartments we rented in one of the old palaces of the Gothic Quarter. We agreed it was far easier for me to duck behind a table or a curtain there than to hide in public. The few servants we employed were silent and stone-faced and paid exceedingly well to avert their eyes from anything unusual; I was not the only drakon in the residence with unexpected Gifts. My Weaves typically placed me about a year or two in the future, as far as I could fathom, but almost always in the same place I'd just left.

So, for the sake of modesty, my bedchamber became the safest location. Within weeks, I had memorized every plastered inch of it.

At first I hated Weaving. I hated the nauseating, pulling lurch of it in my stomach. I hated being clothed one moment and not the next. I hated that all I had was a half second's warning it would come, like that feeling that rises through you just before you vomit, and you know there's nothing you can do to prevent it. You're enslaved to the whims of your own body.

That was Weaving.

And then, when I started to go to him instead of to my bedroom, it became even worse.