She moved because she desired it. She had no body, she had no eyes, but she saw the woods streak below her in a blur of green and white, following the plume of smoke that rose and stretched, thinner than the fat clouds still above them, an improbable spiral of gray that pushed against the wind.
Lia raced after the drákon girl. She was gaining too, even as they climbed higher, soaring toward the razor-backed mountains. The trees began to taper off in a low, waving line. Metallic light flashed below her, blinding: lakes bright as coins, rivers feeding them, the fresh snow reflecting the sun and stark long shadows of purple and blue.
The child circled a blockish outcrop of rock, blending for a moment with the lacy filigree of clouds caught at its tip. And just that easily, Lia lost her. There was no hint of smoke amid the mist, only the faint, distant shiver that told her the girl was still there-somewhere. Lia slowed, pushed sideways with a jet of glacial air, and right as she was about to gather herself for the plunge after her, the girl reappeared. Only now she was a dragon.
Slim as a snake, writhing and twisting, she emerged from the vapor and fell toward Lia. Her wings were folded close to her body; her scales glistened absolute black. Of all her family, of all the tribe, Lia had never before seen a dragon without colors, but this child could have been a thread plucked straight from a nightmare: small and ferociously perfect, only her eyes and her wing tips and the ruff down her neck shining pale, unmistakable silver.
She opened her mouth and bared her teeth. Before Lia could swerve away, the black dragon shot through her, hard enough to leave a hole through what would have been her middle.
It did not hurt. It was strange and unpleasant; for an instant she was aware only of the sky, pulling her into pieces. She tumbled with it, seeing white, seeing azure, another lake shattered with the sun. With a great force of will she drew herself back together, and when she could focus again, the dragon-child was fanning the wind about a mile distant, looping up and down without flying any farther. Her shadow rippled along the mountainside in a slow, lazy figure eight. Her face was lifted in Lia’s direction.
Lia realized she was waiting for her.
Turn, she thought, summoning her fiercest thoughts. Turn, Turn, just this once let me do it-
But she remained only smoke.
It was considered a Gift to linger in this form. Smoke was silky and wily, a sleek, in-between blessing to fully separate their human shapes from their dragon ones. But smoke was also slow, and it blew thin. It was never meant to be held indefinitely, not even under the balmiest of conditions. In Darkfrith, with its rolling green hills and soft inland breezes, the drákon shifted in and out of smoke without care.
But here-in an open ocean of a sky like this, with the wind whistling off the bald rock mountains, ripping into her, Lia knew that no matter how much she wanted to catch up with that child, she would fall behind. Nothing was as swift as a dragon in full flight.
She thought of Zane, waiting below her. She thought of the hotel in Jászberény, and the image of the scorched brick around her window, all that had been left of her room.
Lia fought the wind. She curled up and around and swept toward the dragon-girl, who only watched her come, still looping in slow circles. When Lia was close enough to hear the girl breathing, to make out the long black lashes above the bright eyes, the feathered silver lining her neck-the girl Turned. She dropped in a slithery gray plume down to a cliff’s edge below them. Lia matched her movements curve for curve, both of them taking their shapes as humans to face each other, standing barefoot in the snow a few feet apart.
The girl’s hair was not quite black, and her eyes were not quite silver. And she was even younger than Lia had first thought, no more than thirteen.
The child’s hair swirled with a gust of wind, a sheen of walnut brown; Lia’s flew up too. The golden ends snapped and danced a bare inch beyond the other girl’s body, but neither of them moved. The child stood straight and unafraid before her, framed with sky and light and nothing else, not even clouds.
“Cine-” Lia began.
“What are you?” asked the girl, in perfectly accented French.
Lia narrowed her eyes. “Drákon. Like you.”
“Where is your dragon?” The child lifted a hand. “You didn’t take it, even when I challenged you.”
“You set the fire in the hotel. You’ve been following us for days. Why are you trying to kill us?”
“Kill you?” A pair of fine, winged brows rose in what seemed like real astonishment. “Had I been trying to kill you, I would not have failed. You sleep very deeply, you know. Much more deeply than the man.”
“Is that so?” Lia took a step toward her now, taller, stronger, anger warming her blood. The child eyed her warily and backed away.
“It was a test, at the hotel. I wanted to see if you were truly one of us. I’ve felt you for weeks now-you’re new. You’re different. You look like us and you smell like us. But you did not change to escape the fire, so-I thought I was wrong. Yet here you are.” Her mouth pursed. “It’s very strange.”
Lia gripped the girl’s arm. “You burned down the hotel-you put lives at risk-for a test?”
“They’re only Others,” replied the child, her ashen eyes unblinking. “What do you care?”
The wind howled between them, harsher than the sun. Slowly, Lia relaxed her fingers. She dropped the girl’s arm; her feet shifted and a little ball of snow loosened from the surface. It rolled and rolled down the slope of the mountain, leaving a long, straight trail behind.
“How old are you?” Lia demanded.
“Eleven years. How old are you?”
“Where are the rest of your people?”
Once more the girl lifted her hand, a gesture that encompassed the snow and the sky and the sheer drop to the chasm below. Her expression remained stoic.
Lia released a breath, bringing her arms to her chest. Despite the child’s apparent immunity, it was cold up here, it was frigid, and she was going to have to do something about it soon; her bare back and feet had already burned numb. “I’ve come for a diamond named Draumr. Do you know where it is?”
Now the girl blinked, clearly surprised. “Draumr?”
“Do you know it?”
“Of course. It’s in the mines.”
“What?”
“Deep in the mines, the copper ones.”
Lia considered that a moment, gauging the light behind the girl’s gaze, weighing the probability of truth and lies and what the child had to gain by misleading her. But what she said made sense. It explained why the song had shifted as Lia had traveled closer, sinking like the sun from the sky to the earth.
“Can you take me there?”
“No,” said the girl, and grinned.
“Listen to me-what is your name?”
“Mari.”
“Listen, Mari. It is very important I find that diamond. I’ll pay you, if that’s what you’d like. I’ll pay whatever you say.”
“You’re English,” said the girl, tilting her head. “Yes?”
Lia nodded.
“I heard you speaking English before. I know a few words. Are you a princess? Are there many like you?”
“Mari.” Lia had to clench her teeth to control their chatter. “Will you take me to the mine that holds Draumr?”
“Even if I took you there, you would not find the diamond.”
“Why is that?”
“Because no one ever finds it,” answered the girl, candid. “And if you look hard enough, it will only drown you.”
“You hear it too?”
“Everyone hears it. The mountains hear it. The moon and the falcons hear it. Even my husband hears it. But it is beyond us all.”
“Your husband-”
“If you go searching for it, English, you won’t come back.”
“Mari-are you telling me you’re already wed?”
The girl gave her an odd, frozen look. “I must go.”
“Wait.” Lia grabbed her arm again before she could Turn. “That man with me, the one you’re not trying to kill. I need to find shelter for him. Can you show me the nearest village?”
Mari shook her head. Her hair whisked out once more, dark against the deep blue sky. “There are no villages up here, not this high, not any longer. The only shelter is over there.” And she lifted her hand a third time, pointing. Lia followed her finger. At first she saw nothing but more mountains, shimmering ice, and wispy lilac clouds-but then the wind softened. Something sparkled at the edge of a bleak, crystalline peak. Something glittered, with walls and turrets the color of winter. It looked like a castle.
Lia felt her heart sink.
“You shouldn’t take him there,” Mari said.
Lia shielded her eyes with her hand and limped a full circle along the cliff, but the girl was right: there were no villages, no trace of mankind around her but a single lonesome road leading up to that peak.
“I have to.”
“As you wish,” responded the dragon-girl, and without another word dissolved into smoke, floating away.
He was waiting for her in the fresh-packed snow outside the mine. From the sky she could follow the oval of his footprints, winding up against the thicket of spruce, winding back. Smoke from last night’s fire still leaked in a trickle over the lip of the entrance.
He recognized her, midair. He’d been gazing upward, obviously searching. As she shifted down toward him he drew himself straight, his hands in his pockets, his face inscrutable. Lia funneled into a woman, once again standing naked and barefoot in the snow.
“Come inside, it’s freezing,” was all he said, and took her hand to draw her forward.
She might as well have been a pinecone, for all he noticed her nudity.
Her gown and cloak were folded atop the sheepskin, her stockings and shoes placed neatly alongside. The chemise was a sheath of silk piled on top.
“Dress,” Zane said. “Hurry.”
“Zane-”
“No.” He sent her a smoldering look, very quick beneath his lashes, before glancing away. “Dress first, Lia. Please. Or we won’t talk at all.”
So she did.
The road was not difficult to discover, now that she knew where to search for it. It was, in fact, the same one they had been traveling with the carriage. There were no forks or branches leading off it, only the whisper of animal paths crossing through, boars or wolves or bears long gone, without even pawprints to break the crust of new snow.
The road was a mire with disuse; mud oozed beneath their every step. Maneuvering through it was often a struggle. They’d had no food for a day and a half, and Lia felt it, even if Zane did not.
Hours passed. The sun hung very close. The mountain light cut so pure that sometimes it was a relief to close her eyes and feel her way blind-but a rock or fallen bough would always jolt her back to sight. Zane, she noticed, never faltered, not through the muck, not over water. In the sun or by the forest shadow, he only paced her. When she slowed, he slowed. When she stumbled, he held her arm. He leapt over the snowmelt streams like a panther, elegant and swift, turning each time at the other side to lift a hand to her, watching her with his sharp yellow eyes.
Usually she accepted it. His fingers were the only real warmth in the day.
Silence stretched like a bell around them; except for short warnings or observations, they did not speak. She’d already told him everything he needed to know back in the mining tunnel.
She’d described the dragon-girl she’d seen upon waking, standing over them with the knife. She’d explained how she hadn’t thought about following her, only done it, how she’d shot up into the sky like a musket ball.
That had won her a smile from him, a genuine one. She’d had to stop and pretend to adjust the frogs of her cloak so he wouldn’t see what it did to her.
She’d told him of their meeting upon the wind-whipped cliff top-some of it, anyway. Of how the girl had set the fire in Jászberény as a test, and of the winter castle that would be their only hope of relief.
Zane’s smile had vanished by then. He’d stared off into the darkness, rubbing a finger along the stubble on his chin. At last he’d heaved a sigh.
“Bloody hell. I don’t see a way around it. We’ll have to go.”
They’d kicked the fire dead. They’d left the mine without a backward glance, Zane with the blanket and sheepskin tied in a roll over his back-he’d ripped loose the hem of her petticoat for a strap-and half of the money left secure in a pocket of his coat. Lia carried the other half. Just in case.
And the one thing they did not discuss, not in the cave and not in this bright open day, was last night, and what had happened between them. It might have been another fevered dream of hers, except for the faint, smarting soreness between her legs that even Turning had not diminished.
No. He was no dream. That pleasure, his lips, his body inside hers-it had been far too bittersweet to be another dream.
After the tenth or eleventh stream they’d hopped across, Lia stooped to pick up a switch of pine. She shook off the snow as they walked and stared very hard at the tuft of needles sprouting from the end.
She blew fire, and it caught. As usual, Zane didn’t break his stride.
“We could make a fortune off this back home,” he said casually, not looking at her. “Consider the headlines: Fire Girl. Breather of Light. That sort of thing. People will pay a groat to gawk at a talking monkey or a counting horse. You’d bring in at least a shilling. Think about it, why don’t you?”
She stripped off her gloves, alternating between cupping each palm against the small crackling flames until the blood returned to her fingers. The scent of burning sap wafted smoky sweet into the air.
“Roaster of Chestnuts,” the thief said. “Heater of Bedpans. No Matches Required.”
“Would you like to carry it?” she asked him.
He took the switch. Almost at once, the fire snuffed out. She found a new stick for him in the woolly edelweiss fronting the road, and after it was lit he held it out in front of him like a torch.
“You won’t get warm that way,” Lia said.
“No.” He still would not look at her. “I’ve a better notion on how to get warm.”
“Actually, so do I.”
His mouth tightened. “Lia-”
She spoke lightly, quickly, to cover her embarrassment. “You’ve changed your mind about wanting to marry me. You’re afraid I’ll burn down your home. Embarrass you in front of all the other city brutes.”
“I am afraid,” he said gently, “that you will burn down my heart.” He glanced at her askance. “Am I a brute?”
“That doesn’t even make sense, you know. Hearts don’t burn down.”
“That’s what you think.”
They reached the brink of another wash cutting a sluice through the mud. Zane dropped his branch to the clear water. It sizzled and bobbed, tipping askew with the downward flow. They watched together as it caught in a lethargic spin against the bank, then freed itself, floating away.
“My world is a tinderbox, snapdragon,” he said, distant. “It’s dangerous and unpredictable, and you are the cinder that could kindle it all to ash.”
“Would that be so dreadful?”
He closed his eyes. “Yes. It’s all I know.”
“Not quite.” She waited until he turned to her. “You know me.”
His face hardened again, his gaze bright and wary, thoughts she could not read turning behind his look. Lia only gazed back at him. She curled her fingers in the pockets of her cloak and felt the roll of coins he had given her, unyielding against her palm. Then his lips began to curve.
“Isn’t this the part where you weep prettily and beg me to change, to give up my evil ways and become a decent man?”
“Who’s been reading penny novels? I think you’re a decent man already.”
He shook his head. “Then you don’t know me at all.”
She said nothing. She stood in the mud and let the air cloud in front of her, hearing the soft, small rush of the streaming water, the snow melting into raindrops that slipped from the trees, the diamond whispering and yearning below.
Zane picked up a pebble and plunked it into the wash. “Play it out, my heart. What would happen to us? We’d retire to Darkfrith on Papa’s reward, and I’ll become a dull country bloke, growing old and bored and fat by the fire-when I’m not busy ducking your family, who will not, I assure you, find any of this amusing. No doubt they have some eager-eyed, sharp-clawed mate all picked out for you, so I’d be ducking him too. You’d despise me within a year.”
“No.”
“Then I would despise myself. Lia, all that I am is what I do. I’m not meant for a tame sort of life, to dwell in bucolic splendor. I’m a city rat. I ache for it. I was made for it. And I wouldn’t expect you to live as I do. I wouldn’t want that for you. But it’s all I have to offer.”
“Then-I accept.”
He brought a hand to his forehead and began to laugh. “It’s like being snared in a sugartrap. You won’t listen.”
“I heard what you said. I’m not the silly romantic you think. I don’t want the heavens or the shooting stars. I don’t want gemstones or gold. I have those things already. I want…a steady hand. A kind soul. I want to fall asleep, and wake, knowing my heart is safe. I want to love, and be loved.”
“I do not love you.”
“You are a good liar.”
“I want you.” He turned and stepped closer to her, suddenly imposing, all humor vanished. His cravat was tied; his hair was braided back; he might have been any English gentleman on any given day confronting her in a wild forest, but he was not. When he moved, he blocked the sun from her eyes. The day flared into a nimbus around him. “I want you all the time, and that’s the honest truth. I want to touch you again, I want to be inside you. I want to make you scream, and the hell of it is, I know you want that too. But don’t be witless. This isn’t love.”
She stood her ground. She felt shamed and light-headed and didn’t know if it was the sun or him or the lack of nourishment, or if it even mattered.
You will not change the future, the dragon whispered. You cannot make him care.
From somewhere far, far away, an eagle let out a single piercing cry, and another one answered it, their calls dying off against the hills.
Zane bent his head. His mouth touched hers, cool and impersonal, the kiss of a courtier, and Lia felt her heart give a painful skip.
“Is this your love?” he asked, his hands rising to her shoulders. His lips traced her cheekbone. “Is this the steady kindness you spoke of?”
Her hands raised too, clutching at the fabric of his coat. She lifted her face and closed her eyes, tilting back into the sunlight, and the world went to red behind her lids.
The coat was one from Jászberény, itchy and coarse, nothing of the smoothness beneath it: the damask vest, his hot skin. But the fact that she knew what waited beneath was enough to excite her. She’d tasted him now. She’d known him, in the depths of the night. His skin was pale without his tan; his nipples were brown; there was an old scar that slashed thin along his left ribs. His arms were muscular and his chest was sculpted. He was a man who used his body as a weapon, and with his every breath, it showed. He tasted like candy, like wine and spice and sugar, no matter what he’d been eating. He moved inside her like a demon, opening gates within her she had not known were there.
She touched a hand to his cravat. She found the knot that held the linen in place and began to loosen it, working a finger down into the folds.
“Don’t bother,” Zane said. He tore off the sheepskin and blanket, and then the greatcoat and his gloves, letting it all fall to the mud. He yanked at the buttons of his breeches and pushed her hard back from the stream, over moss and ferns and rocks until something hard pushed back: a tree trunk, digging into her spine.
His hat fell off. His hands parted her cloak and dragged up her skirts. His mouth didn’t leave hers; she felt his words against her lips as his fingernails scratched up her thick stockings.
“Is that truly what you desire? Love and matrimony, innocence and froth? Or is it this-” He stroked her beneath the chemise. He thrust two fingers deep inside her, and despite herself, Lia moaned. Pressed against her, stomach to stomach, chest to chest, his hand sliding in and out-and in-Zane gave his wicked smile.
“That’s what I thought.”
His free hand took hers and held it to his shaft. He felt both foreign and familiar, throbbing hot and stiff with his breeches falling open to his hips. She dragged her fingertips against him, exploring his shape, his heat, eager to understand this part of him, eager to know how he tortured her dreams and sent her body into night-sweat agony.
She found his smooth tip and rubbed it, following his ridges, the curves and veins and satin softness, all the way down to the curls at his base. She drew her nails lightly back up, turning her hand, rubbing her palm along his center, very gently, because it made him freeze on a breath.
Zane knocked her hand away. He grabbed her by the waist and rammed into her, and the beech tree sifted snow down around them in utter silence.
He was rough. He was uncouth. He gave her no quarter when she turned her head for a cold, quick breath, but pressed his fingers into her cheek and held her prisoner for his kisses. His beard rasped against her face.
“Scream,” he bit out, turning his lips against her throat, his teeth closing on her just hard enough to hurt. He pushed deeper into her, fire and pain, delicious heat and lust that rose through her veins. His words were a hiss against her skin. “Go ahead and scream, Lia. I know you want to.”
She buried her face in his shoulder. She felt her toes lift from the earth.
“Lia.”
She bit down on his waistcoat. She closed her eyes and opened her throat on a sound that hit the sky more urgent than the eagle’s, her body shattering around him.
He caught her to him with both hands, thrusting hard. He was as silent as she was not, a force without words or timbre beyond his ragged breath, the slap of his skin against hers, the sifting of the snow with every fierce push of his body. She felt his release. She felt him spilling inside her, his entire being shuddering, her legs spread wide and every inch of her raw to his touch.
For a long time afterward he kept his cheek to hers, winded, their eyes averted. He kept his hands at her shoulders as he swallowed and slowed his breath.
“That-was stunning. But it wasn’t love.”
Lia had no answer. Not now. She felt sore and bruised and horribly relaxed, a doll with loosened joints. Her head drooped against his neck; his hands reached up and dragged through her hair, tugging at the coronet she’d plaited tight this morning, his fingers pulling as his palms slid down to her cheeks. She smelled him and burnt pine and fresh water, more intoxicating than any wine.
With his thumbs at her jaw he tipped back her head, another kiss as his body withdrew. Then he dropped his hands and stepped away. Her dress slithered back down over her legs.
A new noise rattled the forest, not very distant. Horses. The steady squeak of wooden wheels.
Zane shoved his shirt back into his breeches as Lia stepped around the beech to glimpse the road. A coach and four-not their own-was heading down the mountaintop, gigantic brown horses picking their way down the slope, the driver’s whip primed high and loose in the wind.
Zane expelled a breath, bending to retrieve his tricorne. “Apparently, my lady, we are expected.” He turned around to jerk up her bodice, speaking grimly all the while. “Don’t look so calf-eyed. If he hasn’t already spied what we were up to, he’ll guess it in an instant by the expression upon your face.”
She pushed him away, enough to make him stagger. But he only came right back, brushing her loose hair back from her cheeks, dusting snow from her sleeves and shoulders. She reached up and yanked his hat over his ears.
Zane raised it up again carefully, examining her with a critical eye. “It’s not entirely your fault, I suppose. No doubt you can’t help being so damned ravishing.”
She could not think of a single rude response before the coach and four was upon them.