The Dream Thief (26 page)

She was panting. She turned her
head and smoothed her palms across his hair and back, urging him closer. She
was adrift in her gown, a warm body cocooned amid feminine ribbons and
petticoats, her skirts bunched at her hips, her knees rising.

He felt
beyond himself. He felt for the first time in his adult life a shadow of fear
in his heart—fear for her, for what he actually wanted from her—and for
himself, for what he might do.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think.

She cradled him with knees and
arms. Her eyes drifted open. Her lips parted. The poison for her ate through
his blood.

“Do not speak,” he ordered,
watching her face. He didn’t want her to wake; he didn’t want her to shape the
words that would stop him. “Just feel.” Zane found her center, her folds and
damp curls, and pushed a finger slowly inside her. “Feel me, Lia.”

And he made certain that she
would.

He touched her and stroked her
until his fingers were slick, until her lashes fluttered closed and she made
the soft, restless moan he’d been waiting for, that he recognized from his best
fantasies. He freed himself from his breeches and sank into her. She gasped and
stilled, her chest rising and falling in short, staccato bursts, and he thought
he might die right then from the tight bliss of her sheath.

But he waited. Because she was
new to this, she was tender, and some ragged part of him remembered that, for
all the hunger raging through him. She was precious. Ardent and throbbing
inside her, he would make himself wait.

He dropped kisses along her
throat, up to her ear. He caught his breath and dragged his lips over her
marble cheek, to her mouth, where she turned her face to his and shaped words
he did not hear.

Lia lifted her hips. It wasn’t
much—a subtle, feminine motion—but like the tumblers turning in a lock, it
freed him. He couldn’t stop himself now; he pushed deep. He bit her neck and
reveled in it, the flowery taste of her in his mouth, the shivers of her body
around his. She made a low, keening moan that matched the agony burning through
him. He thought he might die with the pleasure of her, lustrous and wet and hot
against his skin. Even the shadows along the walls seemed to cower. And it was
worth it, every moment, every instant of suffering, because now—

They moved together. They
stretched and held and tasted each other as the fire glimmered and they found
new magic. She twined her fingers through his hair with both hands and pulled
his mouth to hers, her lips to his, imprisoning him even as he impaled her with
his body.

“Lia,” he gasped, plunging,
unable to stop.

She said something he didn’t
understand, the flowing language of the mountains, soft and urgent. It sounded
like a plea.

“Dragoste tu. Doamne iarta-ma…”

Her ankles wrapped around his
hips, taking him deep. She was satin and fire. She closed her eyes and tipped
back her head, licking her tongue along his lips. He lost himself at once, just
under the spell of her pleasure, her rapture and her flexed beauty, the heat of
her burning him to his core. He climaxed inside her, pressing down so hard it
had to hurt her, but she only held him closer with a glad, fervent sound. He
echoed it, cold white light against his closed lids, bliss and pain and
unbearable pleasure wringing through him.

When he could open his eyes
again, the world seemed amazingly the same. Shadows still lapped at the ceiling
and walls; Lia still lay quiescent beneath him, lush and cushioning,
deliciously hot.

He pulled
from her, their clothing half-demolished, and smoothed her skirts down her legs
as he rolled them both to their sides and drew her back against him.
“Lia-heart,” he whispered, hovering with her at the brink of the endless night.
His lips met her hair, golden flax against his skin. He felt profoundly
changed, a grateful ghost drifting away from purgatory. Everything was new,
everything was right.

“I want to marry you,” he
breathed, and in that moment, he meant it.

She rubbed her face against his
shoulder; her voice was a sleepy mumble over the fire.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said.

He felt her slide back into the
darkness. With the poison lifted from his veins, he followed her nearly at
once.

She was asleep. She knew she was
asleep because she was warm, and the sun was shining in molten streamers, and
the hills of Darkfrith were grassy and thick with August wildflowers. She was
speaking in a relaxed, happy voice with her mother and Joan, the three of them
seated on a blanket in the meadow by the falls. They were watching the menfolk
teach the children how to fish. Poles stuck up like boar bristles from the line
of youngsters. The older ones—Audrey’s boys— had done it all before, and their
lines whipped straight out into the deep blue pond, spreading ripples to the
shore. But it was the first time for most of them, and chaos ruled.

Lia’s father pantomimed a quick,
flicking cast, and the smaller children tried to imitate it. Rods clicked and
tangled, arguments flared. Someone’s pole was flung a little too hard and went
cartwheeling into the water.

From the middle of the turmoil,
she saw Zane shake his tawny head. He waded into the pond, thigh-deep, and
scooped the pole back out.

When Amalia looked down, there
was a daisy chain in her hands. She remembered now: she’d woven it for their
daughter.

She opened her eyes. The world
dawned both prickly cold and magnificently comfortable. She was clasped in a
firm embrace; she felt a heartbeat and heard breathing. Her face was chilled.
She gazed drowsily at the low, chiseled ceiling of the tunnel, and then at the
shadow thrown long across Zane’s chest.

A girl was standing over them
with her back to the light. Dark-haired, slender as a nymph, she met Lia ’s
look with eerie pale eyes. She wore no clothes at all. Lia’s knife rested flat
across her open palms.

Amalia bolted upright. The girl
skipped back a step and vanished into smoke. The knife she’d been holding
landed with a clatter against the stony ground.

Even as Zane was reaching for
her, Lia Turned, chasing the creature out of the cavern and up into the
flawless blue sky.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

S
he 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.