The Dream Thief Read Online Free PDF Page B

freezingly polite.
    “Yes.
Abducted anyone?”
    “We’d
like you to take a journey,” said Rue, as if neither of them had spoken. “A
rather long one.”
    “To
where?”
    “To the
east.”
    “East of what?” he asked.
    Rue rose from the settee,
crossing behind it to the expanse of windows. She wore a gown of blossom pink
seeded with pearls, a French train that hissed, very faintly, against the maple
floor. With the bright, wide panes of glass stretched beyond her, she seemed
very small and slight.
    “Somewhere out there,” she said,
lifting a hand to the glass, “east of England, east of France. Somewhere as far
east as you can imagine is a stone. A diamond, we think. A very powerful one.”
Rue turned her face to his; the backlight devoured her expression. “We need you
to go and get it.”
    “One diamond,” Zane clarified.
    “Yes.”
    “How big is it?”
    “We don’t know.”
    “Where is it?”
    “We don’t know.”
    “To whom does it belong?”
    Rue smiled, apologetic. “We don’t
know.”
    “Well,”
said Zane, “won’t this be jolly fun.”
    She stepped forward from the
shadows, pink and white again. “About two years ago the first of us began to
hear it. Just a few of us. It sounded like something from a daydream back then,
soft and lovely. Nearly not there. When you tried to listen too closely, it
would vanish entirely.”
    “Back then?” He lifted a brow.
    “Yes. It has…changed. Grown
stronger. More compelling. More of us hear it now too, nearly every member of
the tribe.” She lifted her hand once more, made a small, almost helpless
gesture. “It’s difficult to explain. You know we connect to stones. You know
how we are. This one—calls to us. It’s insistent and very clear. We need it.”
    “Why not go fetch it yourself?
Send one of your vaunted hunters out to the wilds? Surely it would be quicker.”
    The marquess and marchioness
exchanged a fleet, laden glance.
    “It is impossible,” said Rue
finally. “The council will not permit it.”
    She was lying. She did it well,
unflinching and cool and without the barest hint of regret, but he knew her
well enough to register the tiny, tiny rise in her voice. And at the same time:
the subtle shift in Langford’s bearing; even seated, he became more taut, more
hostile, if that was possible.
    Interesting.
    Zane fully believed that the
council of old men that helped govern their so-called tribe would forbid a
journey beyond the Channel; the deep distrust the drákon held of anyone
beyond themselves wrapped tight as python coils around this place. What he did
not believe was that Rue Langford—or her grim-jawed husband—would let that stop
them if the matter was vital enough. She’d broken all their rules, all of them,
for years, just because she could.
    But she wasn’t going. And she
wanted to. It was clear as daylight across her face.
    Zane looked past her, out the
windows again, blue sky, bright clouds, the woods dying off in a glory of
crimson and pumpkin and gold.
    “You want me to travel to a place
unknown, to find a diamond unknown, and secure it from a person, or persons,
unknown, all at the edge of winter.” His gaze drifted back to Rue. “And if this
person does not wish to sell me his unquiet stone?”
    She regarded him in silence, her
lips gently curved.
    “I see.” He returned her smile.
“Don’t misunderstand. We’ve had some pleasant dealings in the past, highly
profitable, by and large aboveboard. But I am surprised. In all these years,
you’ve never asked me to steal anything for you.”
    The marquess spoke at last. “You
will be paid sixty thousand pounds sterling.”
    Zane felt the air leave his
chest. He felt his hands go cold. Out of instinct, out of survival, he held
absolutely still until his senses lined up again.
    Sixty thousand—
    It was a fortune—more than that.
It was damned near bloody unimaginable, and he had a very colorful imagination
indeed. If it had been anyone else in the world