“To this place the Hunt came, it is true, my lord. On Hallows’ Night, they were riding with claws and teeth. Bad fortune it is, my lord, to be lingering. Please let us be moving on.” He glanced toward me as if expecting me to turn into claws and teeth, and rend him.

I hated him for fearing me. The frozen shell of the House was a grave for those trapped within, woman, man, and child. The ice had spared no one.

“I am Tara Bell’s child!” In the muffled night my voice rang like a shout. “That’s why I look like her! I’m your niece!”

He looked at Vai. “I have no niece.”

“Don’t you understand?” I cried. “Don’t you see who—?”

“Silence!” Vai’s voice snapped.

I dragged in a bitter breath, fighting a flood of anger and an ebb of despair. Of course he was right: The last thing I needed to do now was make them more suspicious by informing them that their worst fears about me were true.

Devyn clipped his horse forward.

In a softer voice Vai said, “Catherine, I’m tired of the cold, love. I’m exhausted, and I hurt. I need to know you won’t freeze to death. Please, let’s get out of here.”

The sight of the ice-caged ruins and trapped corpses had truly shaken me, but it was his effort to disguise the tremor in his voice that made me realize that will alone was carrying him. I rode out of the ghost-ridden clearing, for I knew he would not leave if I did not go.

As if our movement unleashed it, the moon began its slide westward.

Soon the road passed pasture walls built of peat. If there were fields awaiting spring planting, I did not recognize them. Everything was strange to me. My moorings had slipped the dock and I had drifted free. I was riding the road my mother and father had traveled. We had just ridden past the estate where Camjiata’s wife, the dragon dreamer Helene Condé Vahalis, had been born and raised and had died. The general had been here, too, back in the days when he was merely Captain Leonnorios Aemilius Keita.

Why had it all happened? How had the four of them met: the ambitious captain, the loyal soldier, the half-blind oracle, and the restless traveler? Was there ever a reason, a destiny, as Camjiata claimed? Or were the Romans right that the goddess Fortuna was veiled and blind and therefore capricious?