Aeslinn, now back in his normal body and buck ass nude, grabbed some clothes off a passing soldier—like literally; he stripped the guy in the middle of the courtyard. And then he disappeared again. Only he didn’t morph this time; he shifted, stepping out of space and time like he did it every day.

I stood there, feeling off balance and wondering what the hell I’d just seen.

Because, okay, I understood some of that. I knew that Aeslinn had used Zeus’s power over the byways to hitch a ride on my spell. Zeus had admitted as much, and anyway, it was the only thing that made sense. But that wasn’t the only weird thing about this picture.

Not even close.

I’d recently had a crash course on dragons, learning that there were sentient ones as well as animal-like ones. It was similar to the difference between wolves and werewolves on Earth. One was an animal all the time, with a rudimentary intelligence mostly used for finding food, while the other could adopt either human or animal form at will.

The sentient type was Faerie’s version of weres, and I’d learned a ton about them in war council meetings, because some of them had joined our side and we were trying to recruit more. They were especially good for reconnaissance, being able to fly into areas that were impossible to reach by foot, and being armored well enough to possibly get back out again. And right now, we needed all the information we could get, both about Faerie in general and about Aeslinn and his merry band of assholes in particular.

Because Aeslinn wasn’t the only one to disappear after the fall of the capital.

The king had sent his remaining army scattering everywhere, leaving us with numerous bands of soldiers to try to track down, many of whom weren’t remaining still. We weren’t sure if they were recruiting, just trying to stay ahead of our allies, or deliberately confusing us and causing us to waste resources. Or possibly all three.

Either way, they had to be tracked, before they turned into guerrilla bands and attacked our allies, destabilizing Faerie even further. And because we’d assumed that Aeslinn was with one of them, and like a game of chess, this war wasn’t going to end until we dealt with him. But now…

Well, it seemed that the king had found himself a little bolt hole in time, which might explain why he’d been so damned elusive. He’d been in Faerie, all right, just the Faerie of three hundred years ago. Not that we’d have probably tracked him down, in any case. His people were fiercely loyal; I had no idea why.