A rush of air and a keening roar made Gwen look over her shoulder, confusion and dread sweeping in. The dragon was gone. But where— How . . . ?

The ground shook with a heavy impact, and Achilles reared with a shriek of effort and fear. Gwen nearly dropped the spear, her view blocked by her horse—and then, as he regained his feet, she saw that the dragon had leapt into the air to land on their other side, cutting off Achilles’s charge. Her horse had reared to a stop just a few feet away.

And there, so large she could see herself distorted in the curved, glittering arc, was the dragon’s eye.

Gwen and Achilles both froze in the same heartbeat. She felt her horse’s body grow rigid beneath her, felt her own body stiffen, the spear only half raised, the weight of it still an agony on the injured tissues of her shoulder—and she could not lower it or drop it.

Isobelle, she thought frantically, reaching for the glimmer of light and hope that had saved her last time. Think about Isobelle.

But the instant the thought crossed her mind, a cold and irrevocable dread swept through Gwen.

Something was wrong.

In the depths of the mine, she had been able to see the dragon’s eye through the slit in her visor, had watched as its pupil searched in vain for her eyes in the darkness of her helmet. She had been able to see the dragon’s eye clearly enough, enough to be paralyzed by the horrid power of the monster. But now, she had no helmet, nothing standing between her and it.

Now, it could see her.

The huge golden eye fixated on her, seeming to swell until it eclipsed all else, blocking out the moon and the sky and the grasses all around, until all Gwen knew, all Gwen was or ever would be, was that eye.

Before, her body had gone still, but she had felt her mind thrashing wildly inside like a bird in a cage.

Now, even her soul was frozen. She could feel the dragon’s thoughts, sliding into her like some ancient, unspeakable curse. Its mind was vast and complex and alien, and filled with a cruelty as cold as iron in midwinter and as unyielding. Its eye burned, and its mind froze.

She could feel it examining her, pulling apart her soul as easily as its teeth and claws would pull apart her body. Crushing each flicker of hope or rage as easily as it had crushed her helmet. Devouring everything—everything except her fear.

She tried again to summon a thought of Isobelle—not to save herself, for she knew now that she was beyond saving, that the dragon was right to rip her hope from her. But Gwen just wanted to think of her, one more time.