“Will he help you raise the baby?”

“Oh, yes, he’ll be there to guard her during her early years.”

“Can I meet him?” I asked. I was really delighted at Claudine’s happiness, in an oddly remote way.

“Of course—if we win this war and passage between the worlds is still possible. He stays mostly in Faery,” Claudine said. “He is not much for human companionship.” She said this in much the same way she would say he was allergic to cats. “If Breandan has his way, Faery will be sealed off, and all we have built in this world will be gone. The wonderful things that humans have invented that we can use, the money we made to fund those inventions . . . that’ll all be gone. It’s so intoxicating being with humans. They give off so much energy, so much delicious emotion. They’re simply . . . fun.”

This new topic was a fine distraction, but my throat hurt, and when I couldn’t respond, Claudine lost interest in talking. Though she returned to her knitting, I was alarmed to notice that after a few minutes she became increasingly tense and alert. I heard noises in the hall, as if people were moving around the building in a hurry. Claudine got up and went over to the room’s narrow door to look out. After the third time she did this, she shut the door and she locked it. I asked her what she was expecting.

“Trouble,” she said. “And Eric.”

One and the same, I thought. “Are there other patients here? Is this, like, a hospital?”

“Yes,” she said. “But Ludwig and her aide are evacuating the patients who can walk.”

I’d assumed I’d had as much fear as I could handle, but my exhausted emotions began to revive as I absorbed some of her tension.

About thirty minutes later, she raised her head and I could tell she was listening. “Eric is coming,” she said. “I’ll have to leave you with him. I can’t cover my scent like Grandfather can.” She rose and unlocked the door. She swung it open.

Eric came in very quietly; one moment I was looking at the door, and the next minute, he filled it. Claudine gathered up her paraphernalia and left the room, keeping as far from Eric as the room permitted. His nostrils flared at the delicious scent of fairy. Then she was gone, and Eric was by the bed, looking down at me. I didn’t feel happy or content, so I knew that even the bond was exhausted, at least temporarily. My face hurt so much when I changed expressions that I knew it was covered with bruises and cuts. The vision in my left eye was awfully blurry. I didn’t need a mirror to tell me how terrible I looked. At the moment, I simply couldn’t care.