The Dream Thief (31 page)

Lia had told him already that
Imre didn’t have the diamond. No sense in stirring the waters. The sooner they
could skip this place, the better. Thank God the Roma had been clumsy enough to
get snared.

At the end of the meal Imre
caught his wife’s eye; she looked back at him tranquilly. Like Lia, the
princess had not spoken except when directly addressed.

“I trust I won’t offend you,”
announced Imre, turning to Zane, “if I suggest we forgo the English custom of
separating the ladies from the gentlemen for port. Maricara and I, we seldom
follow the strictest rules of society.” He shrugged a little. “Perhaps because
there is seldom anyone here to mind. My lord, my lady, will you join us for
dessert abovestairs? I’ve something I’d like to show you both.”

Abovestairs was not another
parlor, or an armory or solar. With the dogs trotting ahead, Prince Imre took
them up a new labyrinth of halls, up stairways that were at first marble, and
then limestone, and then wood. They climbed and climbed, Lia at his side with
her hand resting lightly atop his, the prince and his wife leading, and just
when Zane was reassessing the moment, was considering the location of his
dagger and the speed with which he could reach it, the prince stopped at a
landing.

“Here we are at last,” he said,
and pushed at the narrow door before him.

It opened without sound,
revealing a rectangle of fireglow and stone.

It was a balcony off the rooftop,
wide and open, with two towers behind and a terrace deck that jutted out over
the vast drop down the mountain below. There was a table in the middle, set
with sweets and champagne. There were braziers glowing and liveried footmen
waiting against the wall with their hands behind their backs. And beyond all
that, there was nothing but stars.

The night absorbed them from
their first step, midnight blue seeded with silver, a river of light scoring
the vault above their heads: sparkling and infinite, vanishing against the
peaks of the high mountains.

He heard Lia make a small noise
of wonder. She walked forward, all the way to the edge of the terrace, and
stood with her face to the wind.

It was impressive, he had to
admit, the contrast of heaven and earth and the starlight polishing everything
from the Carpathians to the castle elfin silver. Below them stretched air and
the dark descent of the mountainside—and up above was only air. He couldn’t
glance straight up for more than a few seconds at a time, in fact; it dizzied
him, an uneasy sensation that crawled along his senses, that warned he might
tumble free from the terrace and fall backward into the sky, lost in the
thicket of stars.

The prince joined them, handing a
glass of champagne to Amalia, then to Zane.

“Inspiring, is it not?”

“Yes,” agreed Lia, warm. “It’s
extraordinary.”

“I’m pleased you like my little
surprise. The snow has ended, the clouds have blown west. Tonight turned out
especially well.” Imre lifted a hand for his wife. She walked forward silently,
standing at his side. “Shall we indulge in a game?”

“What manner of game?” Zane asked
instantly, before Lia could speak.

“One of the imagination.” The
prince smiled at Lia. “Imagine this, Lady Lalonde. Look out at my realm and
imagine you are not quite what you seem to be. Imagine you are something else
entirely, a creature who might spring from this balcony and swoop upward,
following the wind as far as you can go. Imagine—you are a dragon.”

Lia fell very still.

“This castle, all these lands,
were said once to belong to the dragon-people of the mountains, did you know that?
No? It’s a well-known tale out here, but perhaps not in England.” Imre tasted
his champagne, his hair glossy blue, his expression thoughtful. “Legend holds
they built this castle themselves. For generations they defended it, guarding
their home and their blood. But despite their magnificence, there became fewer
and fewer of them, until there was but one left. He died alone, many years
past.”

Zane switched his glass from his
right hand to his left. He flexed his fingers, an instant from the dagger at his
waist.

“Yet it happened that this last
pure-blooded dragon was not actually the
last
dragon. There were others,
you see, spread throughout these valleys and slopes, dragon-people of tainted
blood, not pure. Would you like to hear how they came about?”

“Yes,” said Lia, facing him
squarely.

“It is
a boring story,” declared Maricara. “I’ve heard it too often. I’m cold. I wish
to go in.”

“By all
means,” replied the prince, and bowed to his wife. “We shall join you soon, my
dear.”

The girl curtsied again. As she
was rising, Zane thought he saw her dart a last look at Lia, her face a starlit
mask, but then she’d turned and walked off. She circled wide around the pair of
plumy white dogs; two of the footmen accompanied her inside.

“They were known as the
drákon
,
these creatures. They ruled this mighty land, and very well too, at least for a
while. But they had a secret weakness, one they did not wish anyone to know. It
was a mystical blue stone, a diamond. And the diamond’s name was
Draumr.
”

Zane set down his glass. He meant
to watch the prince, to follow the man’s eyes and his hands, to be ready—but he
found instead that he was watching Lia. Her expression was suddenly wiped as
empty as the princess’s had been: wooden, polite, her hair drifting free from its
coils to toss about her face.

“Once, you see,” said Imre,
“there was a princess….”

Time slowed down. When Lia’s hair
moved, it was a silky, languid motion. When she blinked, it was like she was
sleeping, like she was drifting between dreams and awake.

Zane heard about the princess. He
heard about the stone. He heard about the peasant boy who’d shattered the
rigid, icebound rules of the
drákon
and used the dreaming diamond to
steal the bride he wanted. About their children, and their deaths, and the diamond
lost to the copper mines, and he looked at Lia, awash in starlight, and
thought,
She knew.

She knew.

And all at once everything
he
had not known, everything he hadn’t been able to puzzle together, made a dark,
lucid sense. Why Rue or her husband hadn’t come themselves. Why Lia had risked
tribal punishment to steal away. Why she stuck with him like a burr no matter
how he’d tried to shake her off; her evasions; her restless dreams. She was
steeped in magic herself, a child of dragons who could close her eyes and peer
into the future. She had seen what he could not. And he’d bet his life it
wasn’t Tuscany.

A diamond to control the
drákon
.
A diamond, a physical thing, that would allow someone—
anyone,
even a
common thief—to take command of the most god-awful incredible beings on the
planet. To have them do whatever he willed.

It was more dizzying than the
stars. It was…perfect.

In that slow-moving dream on the
castle terrace, Amalia turned her face to his. Her eyes were deeper than
midnight, her skin silver-blue. She gazed up at him without words, without
acknowledging the prince or the story or anything else but him.

Zane smiled at her.

“My lady,” exclaimed Imre at
once, taking up her hand, “are you well? It’s only a legend, I promise you! I
meant it as a pleasant trifle, a little history of my home to enliven the
night.” He snapped his fingers at a footman, who hurried forward with more
champagne. “Pray do not concern yourself over it.” The prince held out her
glass; bubbles fizzed up to the brim. “There are no such things as dragons,
after all.”

She did not remember what she
said to excuse herself. She left Zane and the prince standing at the precipice
of heaven without her, a footman at her heels as she descended the stairs from
the terrace, moving from cold air to cool as the door was shut behind her.
She’d forgotten about the dogs. They’d rumbled as she went past but she had not
slowed, and before they could do more than that, she was inside the castle
again.

It seemed darker here than the
night. There were lamps, but their flames were so dim, she could hardly see
where she was going. But she had to go—she had to walk. She could not stand
beside Zane for another instant and witness that awakening upon his face.

She was glad now that her dreams
had been blind. She was glad she’d never before seen that chilled hunger as he
looked at her, that wolfish, glimmering calculation.

At the foot of the marble
staircase Mari awaited her. She stood with a hand atop the banister, gazing up
at Lia with her striking clear eyes.

“Leave us,” she said to the
footman, who bowed and backed away.

Mari crossed to a doorway and allowed
Lia to enter first, latching the door behind them.

It was a music room. There was
the harp Lia had heard hours ago, golden and silent in a corner. There was a
pianoforte at the other end of the chamber, and chairs and a carved ivory
folding screen. The rug was latticed with roses and lavender, the walls were
apple-green. Lights glowed from frosted-glass sconces. It was a feminine place,
peaceful and pretty, as genteel and contained as the night outside was not.

“Do you play?” Mari indicated the
harp, and crossed to it when Lia shook her head.

“I do. I’ve learned.” She plucked
a few notes, then stroked her fingers over the strings, releasing a waterfall
of sound. “I never told him we’d met. He doesn’t like it when I leave the
castle. I hope you didn ’t mention it.”

“No.”

“Are you still going to try to
find
Draumr
?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I have to. I’m meant to.”

Mari gave her a sideways look,
gray ringlets framing her face. “Many have thought the same. They all perished.
I can tell you what it’s like. You go down there in the mines, you fly or you
walk, and the song beats in your head like a kettledrum until you can’t think
any longer. Until you’re mad with it, and you have to leave or else lay down
and die. It won’t let you have it.”

Lia sat upon a chaise longue and
dragged a pillow to her lap.

“And even if you found it, Imre
would never let you keep it,” the girl continued. “He’s jealous of us. He’d
steal it from you as soon as he found out.”

“Jealous?” Lia repeated
carefully. “Why?”

Maricara
strummed a new waterfall. “He’s powerless. Couldn’t you tell?
He’s
the
last of the pure-blooded
drákon
—he’s the one from the story he was
telling you. But he was born without the Gifts. It’s why he took me from my
village, even though I was just a serf. It’s why he’s welcomed you into his
home. He can see us, and he can touch us. But he cannot
be
us.”

“He
said it was a game. He said it was a legend.”

“Yes,” said Mari flatly. “The
game is that he is toying with you. He enjoys it. But he knows what you are. He
knew the moment he first saw you, just as he did with me. I’m the only female
alive who can transform—at least I was, until you. Are you truly wed to the
Other?”

“Yes. Are you truly wed to the
prince?”

“Yes.” Her fingers found a
descant, floating soft and sorrowful through the room. “But he would divorce
me, I think, for you. He wouldn’t have to wait for children then.” Another
descant. “I wish you weren’t wed.”

Lia squeezed her pillow. “I wish
you weren’t either.”

Maricara gave up her standing
tune and took the stool behind the harp, spreading her skirts. She leaned
forward, her white arms stretching, and began a new song with her cheek pressed
to the gilded frame.

“They’ll come down soon,” she
said under her music. “When will you go for the diamond?”

“Tonight. I suppose—tonight.”

“It’s dark now. It’s cold. Better
to wait.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Why?”

Lia was
quiet for a moment, listening to the tiers of the song.

“I dream the future,” she said
finally. “It’s a Gift. And in my dreams, my people are destroyed. My home is
abandoned. My husband is my enemy. And it is all because of this wretched
diamond.”