His eyes scanned the page again, gray and unfathomable. The funeral song of Draumr groaned between us, slinking and slithering around us, and it was all I could do not to go to him to pull him close. I'd gone hollow inside. I needed to feel him, his heat. His life.
"Nothing," he said at last. He looked up at me. "It says nothing else. I think it must be the entire truth."
"It can't be," I burst out. "Thatcan't be our future! That can't be me!"
I didn't have to go to him; the prince came to me. He cradled me in his arms and pressed my cheek to his chest. I was breathing too quickly. The room began to blur.
The end, your end, the end, moaned Draumr .
"That is not going to be your future," agreed Lia, and with that single statement Draumr suspended, an abrupt, waiting hush.
"Come stand before me, both of you," she said.
Like it had never desired to be anything else, the shattered diamond song swelled back to life, wrapped around Lia's command so that we had no choice but to obey it, because now it was lovely and long and persuasive.
She looked us over with a sigh. "I've had too much a hand in this, I think. I never meant to muddle things so. It happened. I knew you were destined to be with Alexandru, that it would enrage the English, and thought to circumvent it. I knew about the cathedral, Honor, and let it be, because it was in Spain still, and I thought, well, at least she's staying here. But perhaps, in attempting to avoid the future I dreamed, I've only caused it to happen. Had I left you in Darkfrith, had I let you grow up there, or been killed there—" She broke off, biting her lip. "Maybe none of this would have occurred. I honestly don't know." A hand lifted to her forehead; she seemed tired suddenly, thin and waifish. "The future has always been dark to me."
"Can you fix it?" I asked, and even to me, my voice sounded very small. I heard in it all the years of my childhood, all the yearning to belong, for Josephine or Gervase to look at me and smile and soothe away my wounds, to take lasting note of me and all my turmoil and put it right like they never did.
Because Lia was also my mother, I realized. In all the ways that counted, she was.
"There is an answer," Amalia replied. "It is that you must never wed him. Never be with him. Never bear his child."
"No," snarled Sandu at once. He rocked forward a step but couldn't do more than that;Draumr had us fixed.
Lia transferred her dark gaze to him. "Rez cannot live here with you," she explained with awful kindness. "Rez cannot come to be. It's Rez they desire to obliterate, not you. The English will invade one way or another, my lord, but they'd let you live were she not your mate."
"She is my mate. It cannot be undone."
"I know. My dear friend, I know all about bonded hearts. So here is what will happen: You're going to leave Zaharen Yce forever, both of you. You're going to Weave ahead to the future, Honor. Far, far into the future, with him. And you'll never return."
My lips parted in dismay. There were so many things wrong with that plan, I could barely stammer out where to begin. "I-I can't! I can't Weave with another living thing! I've never been able to!"
"You will this time, though."
"No, but—"
"Honor," she interrupted firmly. "You will ."
Wiiiiiill, throbbed Draumr , swooning deep. Wiiiiiill....
There were people outside in the courtyard. I'd only just noticed them. We were invisible to them, lost behind windows, but they moved slowly, languidly, as if they too were caught in the swooning net of the diamond.
"Wait," said Sandu, strained. "Wait a moment, please." "Your Grace?"
"I . I thought I knew what love was," he said heavily. He looked at me, so dearly fierce, his face angled with light and shadow. He drew his fingers down my cheek, his gaze lost, absorbed. "If it means dying for her, I would. Gladly. Dying for them, for my people, I would. But leaving them. Abandoning them." He closed his eyes to shut me out; the lines bracketing his mouth deepened. "I'm sorry. I cannot."
Lia's tone turned astringent. "You would leave them for that love. To remain here is to doom them. If you choose that path, what lives in your heart isn't love but merely pride. I expected more from the male who won my daughter's heart."
I swallowed. The song was thick in my throat, blocking my own words, and I swallowed again.
Don't, is what I would have said, if I could have. Cowardly me, I would have pleaded Don't choose them over me. Please, please, don't choose them.
But I said nothing.
Instead, Lia spoke for us both, and she was no coward. She was merciless.
"Everyone dies if you stay. I've dreamed it. Rez's letter reveals it. Is that the future you desire?"
Sandu looked like a man who was splintering in two deep inside, silently, invisibly. He was harsh, dark, and bright, his hands working into fists at his sides. He would not raise his eyes to mine.
"The English will come anyway," Amalia tried again, as if explaining a logic problem to a very young child. "They've been planning to for years, and ultimately there will be no preventing it. But if you are gone, they will take over in peace. I know them. Without the potential threat of your rule, your tribe will be treated with respect. Their ways and traditions will be honored, as long as they don't flaunt their heritage, which may sound severe, but it's better than annihilation. The very best you could hope for if you stayed, Prince Alexandru, would be to become a puppet leader, enslaved to Darkfrith and its Council. Otherwise, I suppose a few years from now you'll fight to your death, and your daughter's death, and destine what's left of your kin to disaster. You cannot win against them. I don't believe that the child I raised would fall in love with an entirely stupid man, so I must assume you're intelligent enough to realize that."
Now he looked at me, a hot and helpless look, and Lia saw that too.
"You have a choice this morning, my lord. You have a chance to seize destiny by the throat." She lifted a hand to the blurry figures in the courtyard. "You can save them,all of them. Or not. I must wonder ... what manner of ruler are you? What matters to you most?"
The drakon behind the glass were swimming in light, picking up chunks of fountain, putting them down again.
I asked her, too afraid to hope, "You've dreamed it that way? Everyone safe?"
If only, if only that bleak Future Rez would never come true—
"I will," she answered, with simple surety.
"All right," Alexandru rasped, facing her, expelling a breath. "Damn you, and let's do it." "Turn around, both of you."
Draumr moved my feet for me. I felt Lia's hand push aside my hair, stroke the bare skin of my neck, the curve of my back that the gown did not cover. Her fingers burned like the sun.
There was a wedge of shift showing above the scalloped back neckline of Honor's gown, as well. Lia smiled at the sight of it, that girlish bit of lace against a border of sequins, a smile that felt like laughter and tears both.
The valise was at her feet. She bent down, removed the knife. It was one of Zane's, one he'd left for her protection, which was a dear and silly thought, but the edge was brutally keen.
"Don't move. You will not feel any pain." She closed her eyes, thought about it—just the right place —then pricked the flesh above Honor's shoulder blade with the honed tip.
Blood welled up, began a scarlet trickle down the slight curve of Honor's back to the edge of the gown. Prince Alexandru jerked in place.
"Be still," Lia snapped, a little appalled herself at the amount of it. She pressed a hand over the cut. Honor turned her head, made a soothing sound toward the prince, smiling up at him.