The Dream Thief (35 page)

She made no noise beyond purling
water as Zane hauled her to a precipice of rock.

“Get up. Get up there! Goddamnit,
Lia, wake up—”

He climbed out first, dragging
her after him. She rolled onto the stone and retched. She was coughing,
freezing, and Zane was hanging over her with his hair dripping onto her face.

“Lia!”

She realized that she could see
him. There was a lantern chucked sideways in a pile of gravel—the same pile she
must have mired through before; there were her footprints—its light spitting
and threatening to die. But she could see him. The space of the cavern, huge
and ominous, chunks of rock and ore glistening. The rough face of the lake—God,
it was a lake—still blackly chopped, his coat and hat tossed at its brink. His
palms chafed her cheeks. His lashes were wet, he was scowling and saying words
she no longer heard.

Lia Turned. She rose up in an arc
and poured herself down to the lake, pushing hard at the thicker water, forcing
herself beneath the surface skin.

Smoke was not meant to divide
heavier elements; it took velocity and focus and great determination. It took
desperation and
Draumr
singing her on. But she knew now where she was
going. She would get as close as she could, Turn to woman, reach the diamond,
and bring it back to the air, throw it somewhere high where Zane could not
reach, Turn again—

Just a few feet under, the water
pushed her back into her human shape. She kicked downward, sinking again into
the frigid depths.

She felt, rather than heard, the
impact of Zane’s body striking the surface. She felt him above and behind her,
moving more swiftly than she.

Zane, of course, could swim.

But
Draumr
wanted
her
to win. She knew it. It was what kept her falling into blindness, and silence,
and pressure, until there was only the diamond again in her head.

HERE HERE-HERE-HERE-HEREHEREHERE!

And there it was. Even through
silt and the baleful black waters it shone, a spark of pale blue, a call and a
cast of light that drew her forward. Her arm reached out. Zane was on top of
her.

From the edge of her vision she
saw his hand, his movements barely perceptible yet matched to hers so perfectly
it was as if they had rehearsed it, a slow water dance, their fingers open,
their wrists straight, trajectory and purpose exactly aligned, and only the
split-second advantage she had over him, the fact that she was a foot lower,
meant her fingertips touched the diamond first.

Lia closed her hand over it.

Pain exploded through her,
instantly, horrifically. In a storm of silt she thrashed and screamed, her
fingers clenched around
Draumr,
and she could not let
go,
she
wanted to let
go
but her fingers would not open again—

Rue was in her garden at dawn.
She enjoyed its early-morning hush just as much in the winter as in the full
bloom of summer. Winter brought its own gifts, holly berries, dried grass that
crushed beneath her feet as fragrant as straw. She enjoyed the notion of the
world tucked asleep, of the plants holding their lives curled tight and safe
inside their stems, waiting for spring.

She walked alone this morning, a
bengal shawl about her shoulders, witnessing the salmon-pink light lift into
blue. Behind her slumbered the gilded cage that was Chasen, holding
drákon
servants and her husband and two of her children. This early in the day, only
the restless and the chambermaids were up.

Something
sparked overhead, not a dragon. She looked up and caught the tail of a comet, a
blaze of fiery gold streaked across the heavens, widening and fading, a
thousand fireflies falling to earth. For no reason at all, it sent a needle of
panic through her heart.

Amalia,
she thought.

The marchioness let loose her
shawl. She picked up her stylish skirts and ran back to the manor house.

She Turned to dragon. Right there
beneath the lake, writhing in silent fury. As a dragon Lia released the stone,
pushing past the human man who bobbled at her side, using all her might to
erupt up into the cavern, fountains of water streaming from her wings and neck
and scales. She smashed into the ceiling, unstoppable, slapped along the walls,
still screaming without voice. True dragons made no sound; she only smacked,
over and over again, against the confines of the hollowed rock.

Another man stood watching at the
mouth of a tunnel, a tiny black figure edged in light. She howled toward him,
Turning to smoke only at the last instant, raging out past him toward fresh air
and sky.

She’d struck his head with her
tail. He’d thought it was her tail, but it could have been a wing, or a leg —it
was enough to disorient him, to leave him floating too long without breath or
measure. In his daze he thought he saw the diamond drifting past him from where
she’d dropped it, rounded blue light, a crystal star trapped with him in these
dark waters. He reached for it and missed, his fingers sweeping across nothing.
The light faded.

Zane grimaced and swam after it.
He would have to breathe soon, it was hurting too much, but if he looked away
from the diamond now he’d likely not find it again. It was too dim here, the
waters too deep. It might take weeks to search the lake.

He did not have weeks. Judging by
what happened to Lia, he had barely minutes.

He began to curse in his mind,
every filthy word in every language he knew, mild oaths, dirty ones, the
crudest street slang he hadn’t let himself use in years, all distractions to
the fact that his body was dying, that his lungs were collapsing, and soon he’d
have to give it up or give up his life, because he couldn’t find it, it was
gone, and he was done, he was exhaling—

There. There it was, a glint of
blue. With a last surge of strength Zane stretched for it—and got it.

His legs worked. Pressing his
lips closed was the most heroic thing he’d ever done in his life, because every
part of him was clawing for release, for breath, for
air
—

The water broke around him. He sucked
in a mouthful of lake with the air and coughed it back out, still wheezing,
still grateful, and fumbled his way over to the ledge he’d found for Lia. He
forced his body to the rock, rolling, dragging his legs from the water, his
ears ringing and the light from his lantern beginning to die.

But…there was a diamond in his
hand. It was heavy and even colder than the atmosphere. When he could, he
lifted his arm and squinted at it, a smooth, uncut stone, breathtaking even
without facets, sending a buzzing nearly up his arm.

He had the strangely random
thought that since
Draumr
was here, the dead princess would be too. In
his exhaustion he sent up a prayer for her, just a few words, as the water
streamed from his clothing along the rubbled stone, leaking around him in
puddles and dripping back into the lake.

Thank you.

“Thank you,” echoed a voice above
him, but in French. “You’ve done what I could not. I appreciate it. I admire
your courage, my friend. Almost I regret to kill you.” The prince stepped into view,
smiling, a pistol leveled in his hand. “Almost.”

“Stop,” Zane croaked, and again
felt that buzzing in his fist. The prince paused, then shook his head.

“It’s no good.” He began to creep
down the sharp slope of the entrance, raining pebbles upon the mound that held
the lantern below. “One of the discrepancies in my blood, I think, but
Draumr
won’t work on me. Yet I have no doubt it will do very well for your wife and
mine. I’m quite eager to meet my new English family.”

The Shadow of Mayfair had a bounty
of three hundred fifty pounds upon his head, and that was only because he’d
been diligently bribing the deputy mayor not to make it more. He’d been
imprisoned twice and walked out both times with a fresh cadre of men at his
back. He owned watchmen and magistrates and three quarters of the shares of a
very respectable textile factory to cover his tracks.

He was not entirely credulous.

There were weapons hidden about
him, small deadly things concealed on his body, in his clothes, none of which
he could reach in time. But in all his plans, in all his calculations, Zane had
been certain the conditions of the tunnels were too humid for gunpowder to
ignite properly.

He’d been wrong.

He hurled the diamond at the
lantern just as Imre fired. For a fleeting second the cavern flashed white with
the spark of the pistol, then dissolved into pitch.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

S
he flapped through the air,
circling, aimless. She was the wind and the sun; in her turns and loops she
discovered her own beauty: her body was amethyst and cobalt, the deepest heart
of the sky. Her wings were pearl. Her tail was barbed with gold, and so were
her claws.

She snarled at the wind. She
devoured it. She twisted up into the heavens and celebrated herself, her
sovereignty, and the world below shrank small and unimportant.

She soared above mountains capped
with snow, and walled villages hugging sunken valleys. She ringed the clouds
and studied the sun and considered rising to it, to eat it too, but there was
something stopping her…there was something singing to her far, far below….

Lia turned an eye to the earth.
Smaller beings trembled. They hid in their burrows and hoped she would not
discover them, that she would not bother to look. And it was their good fortune
that the song rising up to her was more compelling than the hunt. It called her
name, her human name, and although she had left her human self behind, there
was an ember in her heart that lit in response, that wanted to answer it.