Her hands! She had touched him, and not been very gentle about it. But that could only mean one thing. He looked to her with wild eyes. Her face was . . . was unpainted. The curses that had ornamented her skin were gone. All of them.

She was even more beautiful than he remembered. Her skin was clear and fair, her eyes dark pools of calm and wisdom. Her slender arms were unadorned by so much as a painted leaf.

She was free.

“Over there,” she said, and pointed at a pillar of what looked like charred wood standing in the grass a dozen feet away. As Croy watched, it collapsed in on itself, like a log burned down to charcoal and ashes. “That’s all that’s left of my father.”

“What of your mother?” Croy asked.

“I am here as well, but in far better condition.” Coruth was suddenly standing at Croy’s feet, looking down on him.

She was exactly the way he remembered her. Wild and unkempt hair the color of new-forged iron. A nose as thin and sharp as a halberd blade, and eyes that saw everything. She wore no pleasant countenance, but for that she could hardly be blamed. She’d spent the last ten years imprisoned in a magic circle. Of late she’d been a tree. Now she wore a simple black robe and had one arm in a makeshift sling, but he knew that if the kings and queens of the world could see her, they would bow their heads in respect. There was an aura around Coruth that anyone could sense, an aura of power.

“I will heal your body,” she said. “That shall be your reward. For the thief, perhaps, there will be something more.”

“I thank you,” Croy said.

Coruth looked away and nodded. Then she turned herself into a flock of blackbirds and flew away, chattering to herself with many voices.

“She’ll be back for you, don’t worry,” Cythera told the knight. “And I’ll stay until she returns.”

He reached out his left hand and she took it again.

Together they sat and watched the ruined house. Its fallen timbers smoldered and settled through the night, with occasional rumblings and groans, and now and then a loud report as a broken rafter collapsed or another piece of glass snapped under pressure. The wreckage was full of sharp barbs and unstable piles of masonry, leavened with heaps of broken glass that would shred any foot that tried to walk through them. Occasionally a bolt of green or red or blue discharged as some arcane energy was loosed from long confinement.

The ruin did not look safe at all, but that didn’t mean it was left undisturbed.