Free The Dream Thief by Shana Abe Page A

rules, and culled anyone who
either flouted them or challenged him. It was how he had reached his place
today, and how he had kept it.
    In his world of violence and
sawdust and gin-soaked taverns, the scent of blood in the air didn’t even raise
his hackles.
    But Amalia’s world had been
different. However bold she acted, however mad her schemes…she wasn’t truly
like him. Not in any way. She had been raised as a gentlewoman, in a manor
house, by beasts disguised as men.
    He watched her lips turn down as
she gazed at the sign. Beneath the folds of her mantle, he watched her
shoulders square.
    “No, my lady,” Zane heard himself
say, and he moved to stand between her and that shining furrow of blood. His
arm lifted to guide her the other way, toward the park. “Look over there
instead.”
    Mist was rising from the sod,
ethereal, sweeping coils that rose up to embrace the copper-leafed trees. It
was blue and slate against the darkening horizon; the grass had blurred to
lavender and emerald and brown. Far in the distance, past the town’s steeples
and spires, a jagged hint of mountains sliced purple into the sky. The moon
hung white as chalk above them.
    Her shoulders relaxed, just a
little.
    “Over
there,” Zane murmured, “are rabbits tucked into hollows, and blackbirds coming
awake in the trees. Can you feel them?”
    “No,”
she answered, soft.
    “But they’re there. And I’m quite
certain they’d appreciate it if we moved indoors. What say you?”
    And she smiled.
    It was just as he’d thought: the
interior of the hotel presented a surfeit of gilt and mirrors, peach-painted
walls, and at least two footmen scratching at their wigs.
    Zane sighed. It didn’t bode well
for the mattresses.

    They took supper in the public
room, amid country gentry and a handful of gray-powdered nobles, seated at a
holland-draped table in a corner by a wide glass window. The skyline was fully
dark now, broken only by street lanterns and a few lonely flames set beneath
casements.
    Lia kept her teacup in her hands
when she could; the glass threw a chill, and even her cashmere shawl didn’t
help.
    They dined in near silence,
listening instead to the chatter of the room, the civil bustling of the
waitstaff, the babbled conversations among the patrons in French and Hungarian
and a few tongues she did not know. The chandelier above them flickered with
the draft; colors danced along the table and dishes, and the steam from her
soup became a fog upon the panes.
    The thief sat across from her
with a platter of creamed fish and parsley between them. She watched him
through her lashes. He ate neatly, sparingly, his hands deft, his body relaxed.
He’d undone his coat of fine biscuit wool and was gathering the glances of
every woman in the room, from the pair of dowagers in amazing high wigs to the
little serving maid, no more than thirteen, who fumbled the cheese plate when
he smiled at her.
    In the candlelight his hair shone
burnished bronze. It fell long and straight in a tail over one shoulder, the
blue velvet ribbon that held it in place knotted only slightly too loose. He
lifted a section of soft white cheese from its tray and, without looking at
her, began to slice it into quarters.
    “You do that rather a lot, you
know.”
    She blinked, coming out of her
reverie. “Do what?”
    “Stare at me. Have I a cinder on
my nose?”
    Lia took refuge in her tea. “Not
at all.”
    “What a relief. No doubt, then,
you’re merely lost in thought, considering our time and distance to this
all-important diamond—what did you name it again?”
    His voice was light, and he still
did not look up from his work, but she felt his attention fixed on her with all
the familiarity of that dark, delicious hum.
    “Draumr.”
    “ Draumr, of course. What
does it mean?”
    “I don’t know,” Lia said
honestly.
    “Where
did you hear it?” She did not reply. He slanted her a metallic-gold look.
    “You’re expecting me to take a
great deal on