When they'd divided what was left of the wicked stone that had once been a wicked whole dreaming diamond, Lia and Zane had agreed that she would take the three larger splinters and he would have everything else, all the dust and smaller splinters and chips. Her three pieces of Draumr were narrow and pointed, almost like needles. She'd removed them from the pendant days before, torn them out atop a white limestone cliff with sensitive dragon claws, and she knew firsthand how sharp they could be. It wasn't difficult to press them deeper into the wound.
Two splinters to Honor, that diminutive creature of formidable talents. One to the prince, who'd shrugged off his coat and waistcoat and shirt without another verbal protest, only a fearsome scowl at the floor.
"No pain," Lia chanted softly, standing on her toes to reach the marbled crest of his shoulder, another small cut, another diamond needle inserted. "No pain."
She sank back to her heels, wiping the blood down the folds of her robe, faintly sick despite herself. She dropped the knife back into the open neck of the valise and took a breath.
This was the end. The edge of all her hopes for this young drakon woman, her ambitions for her, right here and now.
"Neither of you will remember those pieces are there. The song will always be with you, but it never vexes you. You'll both heal and never even see the scars, or remark upon them. Do you understand?"
"Yes," said the prince.
"Yes," whispered Honor.
"Good. Listen."
Lia was speaking. I was listening to her, admiring the serenity of her voice, that calm reassurance that had always seemed to be such a fundamental part of her. Whenever she spoke like that, in that tone, a tiny over-wound part of me deep inside began to relax, like a coiled spring easing loose.
She's so pretty, this Mama, I thought, watching her. Not because she's drakon. Just because she is.
Alexandru clasped my hand. I held the other over my stomach, and wondered why I felt so very fine.
"You will remember only what I say to you now," Amalia said. "Honor, you will Weave with your mate. You have that power. Do you feel it?"
"I do," I answered, marveling. And it was true, there was something new blooming inside me, something born of fearless Rez the dragon and my own more sensitive heart. It warmed through me, a magic stronger and better than any tug of Weave I'd ever felt before. It was potency without doubt, certainty without hesitation, a deep mighty sparkle in my bones. I was going to Weave with Sandu.
Finally, I was powerful enough to share my Gift.
"You will Weave to the future, generations away from now. You will spend the rest of your lives there, and you will never, never return to this time or any time near it. In fact, after this last Weave, you'll never Weave again. Can you do that?"
"Yes," I replied, smiling. "I can do that. Thank you."
She took a step back from us, her robe a puddle of silk around her feet.
"Your lives are ahead of you now, but don't ever regret what you had here. You will adapt to whatever the future holds, and in those years ahead, you will thrive. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Yes."
She nodded, and in her long hair and robe and the swelling amber sun, she looked a stern angel. "One last thing. You'll always be the child of my heart. Go filla. Be happy."
Something was happening to me. It was a Weave, but it was open and brilliant, shining as bright as the hammered gilt walls of the Great Room. Within it stood my mate, the prince of the Zaharen, that blue-dark and elusive dragon of my childhood dreams. Only we were both grown now, and he was mine, mine as certainly as I was his. He looked at me unafraid, and in his eyes the light pooled and swirled and became twin delicate silver spirals of infinity.
"I love you," I said to him, as the coming wave of the tide lifted his hair, dissolving indigo into radiance. "Whenever we've been, whenever we're about to be, I love you. That's our constant. No matter what, it will never change."
Love you, he mouthed back, smiling, stepping closer to me, and the only reason I couldn't hear him any longer was the song that surrounded us, an intensely soulful and beautiful song that had become more than music. It was the thread and fabric of the Weave itself, binding us together. It soaked into me, seared through me in undiluted joy.
Love you forever, river-girl, Alexandru said silently, and hand in hand we jumped the wave and swept ahead to find our fresh ending.
They melted away. It was like that, a melting, Lia thought, standing alone now in the studied sophistication of the castle parlor, her arms hugged to her chest to hold in the ache. She might have even glimpsed a flash of something like light in their final half-second before her. Better than light. It had texture, and feeling, and it had resonated of bliss.
Her very last sight of Honor had been of her blazing smile, aimed up at the young Zaharen prince.
But now they were gone. And there were, she reckoned, at least a dozen people pressed against the other side of the wooden door that led back to the main hall, holding their breaths, quiet as mice. She didn't know how much they'd heard or how much they might have guessed, but it wouldn't do to leave them unprepared. Their lives were changing soon, certain as the rising moon. Someone had to tell them.
She tightened the belt of the robe, picked up her valise, and walked to the door.
With her every step, she was bathed in yellow sun. And it felt good.
Epilogue
February 1789
Four Months Later
The ocean lapped at her dreams.
It was soft and ticklish, because the waves that hit the cove had to break through a long, bony reef of white and pink coral first, and the coral absorbed most of their force. By the time the waves broached the sugared shore they were little more than playful curls of foam, and bubbles left to swell and pop along the tide line at their retreat.
Beneath the waves would drift the sea turtles, peaceful in their rest, massive and silent and dark. "What a smile," whispered her husband in her ear, his breath also a tickle.
Lia opened her eyes. She saw first the section of oak timber crossbeam supporting the ceiling above her, a thick shadow against the paler plaster, all of it tinted pearly blue with Caribbean moonlight. Then Zane lifted up to one elbow. His hair fell across his face, and he shook it back without looking away from her.
"You were dreaming," he said.
She rubbed a hand across her lids, languorous and warm. "Yes."
"The future?"
"Yes."
"And ...?" he prompted, a single eyebrow arching, the word a deliberate stretch of sound. She reached up to capture a lock of his hair, twirling it around her finger. "It's happy," Lia said.
He rolled atop her, trim and muscled, bunching the sheets between them. The tickle of his next words transformed into a slower, more sensuous caress against her lips.
"My dearest heart," her true love murmured, smiling his rakish thief's smile. "I could have told you that." New York City, 1898
Paola and Lucy worked together at the shirtwaist factory, and had for the past nine years. Same shift, their machines bolted side by side, their heads bent at identical angles from seven in the morning until eight o'clock in the evening, scarred fingers shaping the stabbing course of the needle, Mondays through Saturdays and a half-day Sunday too, with only a single precious forty-minute break at three. They even pumped their floor pedals in mechanical unison, thump-thump-ta-thump, twenty-two shirts per girl per shift, or else.