I'm sorry, murmured the new person, a male. And then:It will be swift. But it's best if you go now.
And Lia only understood what her eldest brother meant when the door closed firmly again, and the woman beyond it began to weep.
"Beloved."
Amalia came awake feeling utterly composed, as if she'd never closed her eyes, never laid back amid the cool sheets of her bed, caught in the cradle of her husband's arms. Never slept.
"Another one?" he asked, his voice a breath in her ear.
She didn't answer. She didn't need to. He knew her so well, knew all about her—just as she knew him. They'd been wed a dozen years, a lifetime. He was accustomed to her nightmares.
"Which one was it this time?"
"The tea."
"Ah."
His hand found the top of her head, began a slow stroking down her hair to her shoulder. She turned her face toward his and his lips touched her brow.
Aside from the constant low ripple of human conversation, Barcelona was quiet for a city at night, surprisingly so; the most obvious sound beyond that of a few horses and mules trudging along the streets was the pulse of the sea striking the shipyard bays, a few miles distant. When Zane spoke again, it was a bare brushing of words against her skin. She heard every one.
"Your brother was there?"
"Yes."
"And he still ."
"Kills her. Yes."
She swallowed, and swiped at her eyes with one hand even though they were dry; she was done crying over this particular dream.
"It's never changed, after all these years," said Zane, still softly stroking. "She goes back. Says she's engaged. Drinks the tea."
It wasn't a question, but she answered it anyway. "Yes."
"Snapdragon." His fingers paused. "I know how you feel about her ... but if it's meant to be ..."
"It doesn't have to be," Lia hissed, angry suddenly, sitting up. "It doesn't. I've changed the future before. I refuse to believe she has anything to do with the sanf . How could it even be possible?"
He let his hand fall to the covers, silent. His eyes met hers, a pale wolfish gleam, visible even through the gloom.
"You know her. She's meek to the point of agony, and so easily intimidated. It took a year for her to gather the nerve to hold your gaze for more than a few seconds at a time, remember? She twitches at every little noise."
Zane kept his silence.
"Well," she continued, a little desperate, "you've certainly never heard any mention of her when you're—gone, have you? Her name or—even just something about an English girl?"
"No," he answered, cool. "Not so far."
Lia stared at him for a moment, then drew up her knees and dropped her head into her palms. He was the last person in the world she should question about the sanf inimicus , the human enemies determined to destroy her kind.
He'd only become one of them because of her. Because she'd begged.
All her life, Lia'd had this unquiet Gift. Dreaming the future, hearing the future, dreading the future. No one else in the tribe suffered it. No one else in the tribe had railed against what was to come as much as she. She was not just smoke, not just dragon, but a sort of tribal Cassandra as well, barred from home with no one but the man beside her now to comfort her.
As a child she'd dreamed of a different threat to her kin, and as an adult she'd done what she had to do to defeat it. For a long while, for years after she first was married, Lia rested comfortably in the knowledge that she had done what she could to save her kind. Yes, she'd given up her family, but she'd gained true love, and in her mind, it was a fair trade. She did not dream in Zane's embrace. She just slept. And it was . heavenly.
That, of course, began to change.
They'd been living in the beach house in the Antilles when the dreams began to filter back. Strange dreams, always sightless, a confusion of voices and times and places. She could make no sense of them; they were as jumbled and nonsensical as those she'd had as a very young girl. Sometimes all she heard were screams. She would wake up cold and sweating, and it would take hours to get warm again. Even submerging herself in the beryl-blue waters of the Caribbean didn't help.
Single, repeated threads eventually came clear: Honor Carlisle.
The sanf Inimicus .
A prince of the Zaharen.
A war between the tribes.
They were all entangled somehow, destinies woven together, and even though she'd applied the most potent weapon she had to the knot—her husband, her clever and criminal husband—she still had not managed to unravel all the strands.
Lia spoke against her knees. "Don't you like her, even a bit?" "I don't like or dislike her."
Her head raised, golden hair slipping soft along her arms.
"She's fine," Zane sighed. "She's a girl. She's drakon . She reminds me a very little of you, but only when she's angry."
She looked at him more fully.
"Because her eyes go to fire and her cheeks color," he said innocently. "That's all. That's when she looks like what she really is."
"A beast," she muttered.
"Magic," he countered, flat. "And apparently a dangerous magic, at that. If the Alpha of your tribe thinks it a fine idea to drug her and execute her—I'm sorry. I can't afford to like her. If she does you harm, I can't falter. I can't let like impede me."
He knew a score of ways to kill, she understood that. He had come to her from the shadows of London, and shadows still were his trade. He slipped into locked rooms in perfect silence; he observed kings and commoners without a word, a shrewd slight smile, fingers quick and marvelous both over her body and around a knife. He was a magician, a trick of the light, vapor in the way that none of her kind would ever comprehend: human slyness and cunning and unapologetic devotion. Should he grasp for certain that their adopted daughter would do his wife harm, Lia knew he'd end Honor's life without hesitation.
With all her heart, she tried to counter that anyway.
"So, then ... you won't love her."
He sighed once more and sat up, rumpling the crisp Italian sheets, shoving a pillow behind his back. "Listen. Besides chocolate, I love two things in this world. Me, and you. That's quite enough."
Despite herself, she let out a rueful huff, not quite a laugh.
His arm shifted. His index finger began to trace a swirl along her thigh.
She glanced at him from under her lashes. "Which of us do you love more?"
"Well," he said seriously, watching his finger, "I am the prettier of we two."
"True," she agreed, just as serious.
She lay back, found the stubbled line of his jaw with her hand, an invitation that he answered by following her down. His braid became a rope, heavy and warm against her chest. Her fingers opened. She brought his mouth to hers.
She didn't want his words any longer. He wouldn't promise her anything, nor would he lie. So Lia would make no false promises, either.
But at least they had this bed, and this night. That was enough for now.
Lady Lia liked needlework. I wasn't certain why; to be honest, she wasn't very good at it. Certainly she wasn't as good as my old mother, whose embroidery had decorated Plum House with exceptional taste: cushions and samplers and even quilts, every seam perfection, every stitch utterly precise.
Josephine Carlisle would have said, in her clipped, freezing way, that Lia's efforts revealed a mind that wandered, and I'm sure that was true. Very seldom were there even two stitches in a row of the same length. She would run out of one color of thread and pick out another at random, creating swans that were half white, half green. Windmills on ponds reflecting pink and silver skies. A round moon of yellow and puce; farmhouses casting red shadows, lettering shaded every color of the rainbow.