“Once, maybe,” T’mar interjected softly, shaking his head in firm denial. Fiona found herself meeting

his soft brown eyes, really looking into them, and felt herself flush.

“Excuse me,” she said hastily and rose from the table, moving as quickly as she could without

attracting too much notice through the Dining Cavern and out into the still night of the Weyr Bowl.

She didn’t know what she was doing; her feet moved instinctively until she found herself in Talenth’s

lair, her head leaning on the hinge of her beautiful gold’s jaw, just in sight of her calmly whirling green

eyes.

How long she stayed there, she couldn’t say. It was only when she heard boots softly climbing up the

queen’s ledge and entering T’mar’s weyr that she realized her purpose, and with a final caress of her

beautiful queen, Fiona stepped out onto the queen’s ledge and turned left, toward Zirenth’s lair.

A noise, the sound of her shoe dislodging a rock, alerted him to her presence.

“Weyrwoman,” T’mar said, coming from his bathroom, dressed in his sleeping tunic, “you startled

me.”

Fiona’s eyes were wide, her breath rapid as she forced herself to cross the distance between them and

looked up at him.

“Talenth will rise soon,” she blurted, not saying the words she’d rehearsed before.

T’mar’s eyes narrowed as he glanced toward the queen’s weyr in alarm, then he looked back down at

her. “Not today, surely.”

“Soon,” Fiona repeated. She raised a hand to stroke his cheek and was surprised at how smooth it

felt. “I—I don’t want her first time to be . . . my first time.”

“I see,” T’mar replied softly into the silence that stretched between them. He regarded her silently for a

moment. “What about Kindan?”

Fiona shook her head soundlessly and buried her face against his chest, her arms loose around him.

T’mar drew back, raised a hand, and gently drew her chin up until she was looking into his eyes once

more. And then he leaned down, draped one arm around her waist, and kissed her.

Much, much, much later, as T’mar lay breathing softly beside her, Fiona leaned over and twitched his

chest sharply. T’mar’s eyes flew open and met hers in surprise as she leaned over him, her hands moving

toward places she had never been before. “You always say that to get it right, you must do it three

times.”

The bronze rider had only time for a startled smile before Igen’s Weyrwoman leaned heavily into him

for another kiss.

Drifting through euphoria and back to mere consciousness the words were said:

“I love you.”

“I know.”

But Fiona could never remember who said them, or if they were spoken simultaneously, or even

uttered aloud.

TWENTY

Rider, dragon, hearts be true—

To this creed you always hew:

Flame thread, protect Pern