Even worse, weapons were being torn out of hands and flung about. Arrows were flying that had never been shot. Potion grenades from the spilled ammo box were tumbling around and going off at random, including several which chased a panicked fey across the camp. And then a small cooking knife, caught in a particularly violent gust, slammed into the tree right beside me.

I watched it vibrate out of the wood for a second, before scrambling up the trunk, to where the spreading limbs provided a little more cover—and a better vantage point. Not that it helped much. The wind was whipping the smaller boughs back and forth, hard enough to slap me in the face, making it hard to see.

And what I could make out wasn’t encouraging.

I didn’t know if Aeslinn was trying to land, and thus getting closer, or if the cumulative effect of his presence was stacking up, but the camp was basically disintegrating. The wind was blowing hard enough to send fey staggering into each other and to rip stakes out of the ground, causing tents to go flying. Including one in the middle of camp where—

Son of a bitch.

The tree branches slapped me around some more, but I didn’t care. Every once in a while, the universe gave me an apology for all the crap it put me through. And today was one of those days. Because two men and a goat were tied up and lolling by the denuded tent pole, while their canvass covering sailed off into the night.

They looked pretty out of it, but they also looked whole and, as far as I could tell, alive. I jumped down and started toward them, only to stop abruptly, just inside the tree line. And to curse the universe for giving me false hope.

Because the fey around the missing tent weren’t moving.

Or, rather, some of them were, racing back and forth, bringing quivers of arrows and more magical munitions to the ones firing at the dragon. But another group, at least a couple dozen strong, were as motionless as Gibraltar in a storm-tossed sea. Only their long, fair hair and the tips of their spears were whipping in the wind.

Why hadn’t they run? Were they crazy? Suicidal? Stupid?

And then I noticed: the fey in question were facing outward.

They weren’t there for the captives, who didn’t look like they required much guarding at the moment. They were there for me. Or for anybody who might try to deprive Aeslinn of his prize. The fey must have reported that they’d taken prisoners, and the news had made its way up the chain of command to the king. Who’d realized who they had stumbled across and instructed his fey to make damned sure that nothing happened to them until he arrived.