The Dream Thief by Shana Abe Page B

the soft sweet corners of her. He wanted to
push his hands under the coat and feel the shape of her waist, and the weight
of her breasts, and every creamy inch of her. He wanted to bite her lips and
pin her arms and be inside her, and the hot, eager lust that scorched through him
all at once was so strong, so overwhelming, that Zane did the only thing he
could do to keep himself standing where he was, dripping ale from the tankards.
    He closed his eyes and thought of
her parents, and of what would happen if they knew.
    He had seen what the drákon did to their own kind when they broke the tribal laws. He’d seen the place
where they buried their forsaken; Rue had shown him one winter night when he’d
been younger and much more reckless: the ominously bumpy field, the blackened
earth.
    This is where our outlaws lie, she’d told him, her face
hollowed by moonlight. This is where their bones are cast after the burning.
    The drákon lived by rules
coiled within rules. Their society was ancient, feudal, and he had no illusions
about his own place within that order.
    He was suffered to live because
of the marchioness. He was alive today, in this dank foreign tavern, because he
was useful, and that was all.
    You keep a great secret. You hold
fates in your hands. She’d touched his arm then, lightly, deliberately. You know our laws. Do not
forget this place.
    And he never had.
    The barkeep stumped past him
carrying a platter of bread and butter and a thick steak of cold ham, all of
which he set gently before Amalia. She looked up at the man and smiled.
    “Köszönöm.”
    “Persze.”
    Zane felt his heart squeeze back
to life. He joined her at the table.
    The keep had brought knives and
napkins too. He arranged them with ridiculous precision upon the battered wood,
all the while stealing glances at Lia—her tousled hair, the chemise, that
dreamy distraction—until he happened to catch Zane’s eye.
    Zane watched him blanch and back
away.
    He lowered his gaze, thinking of
the dead and charred bones and the face of Lia’s mother on that long-ago night,
the only warning she’d ever offered him.
    Do not forget.
    “So,” he said briskly, and lifted
his tankard. “Who would want to kill us?”
    Amalia’s head swiveled around as
he took a heavy draft. It was sour and cold and stung all the way down to his
stomach.
    “Kill
us?” she echoed.
    “You
were there, child.” She blinked at him, at last awaking. “I’d say it was grain
alcohol poured in the hall, perhaps oil. Something like that, fortified or very
pure, that burns hot. Anything diluted like cider or beer would burn too slowly.
Saltpeter is swifter but too unreliable. Still, it wouldn’t have taken much to
bring down that claptrap of a tinderbox. But you tell me, m’lady. What was it?”
    “Alcohol,” she said, after a
moment. “Not oil. It smelled distilled, but almost sweet. Definitely alcohol.”
    He nodded. The color began to
return to her cheeks; it was a little like witnessing marble flush to life. He
blew a breath through his teeth and looked away.
    The tavern was filling quickly,
the men standing outside filtering back in, other guests from the hotel,
rumpled and stunned, drifting toward the last of the empty tables. Conversation
echoed off the walls; he didn’t need to speak the language to understand it.
Everyone was talking about the fire, the sudden and devastating destruction.
    Except for Lia, who was frowning
down at her ale.
    “Have
you any enemies?” Zane asked.
    He’d meant it more to shock her,
to bring her back to this place and moment—he needed her thinking, not lost and
beguiling in her daze—but she looked so instantly guilty his senses prickled.
    Damn.
He knew better than to ignore that sensation. He hadn’t gotten where he was by
fighting his instincts.
    “What,
from boarding school?” She was shaking her head. “No one who would follow me
here. Of course not.”
    “Excellent,”
he said, pretending to focus on his drink.