The glittering, red, leatherlike wings spread ten feet wide on either side of my ruby-scaled body. Thunder rumbles, giving me just enough warning to swoop to the side and away from a flash of lightning. I am faster in the air, stronger.

I don’t ever want to come down.

Lightning splits the sky in three places at once. The patch of trees closest to the castle goes up in flames. The fire jumps and spreads. Soon the whole forest will be ablaze.

Below me, Lancelot and Merlin wave their arms, calling me back.

“Come down!”

“What do you care?” I shout. “You just want to kill me.”

“Not true, mystery girl!” Merlin shouts, and my eyelids flutter.

The wind whips around my ears, probably distorting the sound this high up. I steady myself, adjust my wings to remain airborne.

“Bree, please!” Lancelot yells, and just barely dodges another lightning strike at his feet.

The dream, Arthur’s dream… is changing. It’s turned on me now, like it knows my own hopes and wants me to believe them. Like a drug, it wants me to absorb the lie. It is building a new story that it thinks I will accept, I’m sure of it.

A lie in which they are here with me.

But that can’t be.

Not when their faces are still Lancelot’s and Merlin’s, men many years older than me and long dead. Men that have never met me, never will, and couldn’t possibly understand who or why I am.

“No,” I shake my head. “This is the dream. This is what trapped Arthur… rewarding him if he believed, punishing him if he questioned….”

“Do you remember what I said to you?” Merlin calls to me. “That you are the most stubborn creature I have ever met.”

“You didn’t say that to me…,” I whisper, but my subconscious has already turned toward the memory, toward hope, and I have drifted steadily closer to the earth without realizing it.

A silver cord wraps itself around my ankle—and yanks. “No!” I shout, but my wings are dematerializing without my focus. They flap against the aether rope pulling me downward, but lose strength with every wingbeat, the construct losing structure until it is flame and fire with no substance.

A final, hard pull brings me crashing to the ground, but before I can recover, aether-reinforced arms wrap themselves around my chest and pull me tight against solid armor. “It’s me—”

I scream—and my root flares outward and up. Lancelot ducks his head—helm and all—against my shoulder and waits it out.

But there is no limit to my root. I send more flames out in waves, and more still, but every time they burn his armor away, he recasts it and pulls me tighter.

I lie panting in his grip, red flames surrounding us. He does not let go, and I do not stop.