Evelina flushed with pleasure. “Marcus—I like that. And you will call me ‘Evelina.’ “ She sighed and let go of the gunwale. Wrapping her hands around her knees, she leaned forward and turned her attention to him. “You look tired.”

“I’m all right,” Marcus said. He was tired, although he’d recovered his strength somewhat after exhaustion had nearly overwhelmed him at the wall. He guessed that the exhaustion had been partly due to despair—a despair that had lifted from him when he’d felt the touch of his brother’s hand.

Marcus didn’t understand anything that had happened. He didn’t understand why Ven had helped him escape the dragon after betraying him to the dragon. He didn’t understand how Ven even came to be alive. The last he’d seen of his brother, Ven was lying in a pool of blood, a knife wound in his chest.

I don’t need to understand. Not now. Now I have to concentrate on only one thing.

“You’d find the rowing to be easier, traveling downstream,” Evelina pointed out for the third time.

Marcus shook his head. “Easier, but the wrong way.”

“Where are we going then?”

“Home,” said Marcus. His objective. His only objective.

“Your home?” asked Evelina, and she sounded troubled.

“My home.”

His home, his kingdom of Idylswylde. That was why he was risking the monks in the sunken cavern. He might even find the dragon there, for that was where he had first seen Grald, the hulking human form the dragon had appropriated. Marcus was ready to risk even that to return to his home.

He could not explain this longing, but the memory came to him of another time, a time he had been away from his home for months, trapped in a world of insanity from which Draconas had saved him. When the little boy, Marcus, had seen the towers of his father’s castle shining in the sunlight, he had felt the ache of longing in his heart swell so that the towers were drowned in his tears. The man, Marcus, remembered and wanted to see those sunlit towers again.

“Watch it!” Evelina cried.

Marcus jerked his head around, saw that he was steering them perilously close to a tangle of grass and dead tree branches. He gave the oars a twitch and they cleared the hazard, though with only inches to spare.

“You’re so very tired,” said Evelina. She reached out her hand to him, bending forward still more. Her chemise slipped a little, revealing an enticing expanse of curves and shadows. “You would not even need to row if we went downstream. The river would carry us—”

“I told you back at the landing, Evelina,” said Marcus, and his tone, though gentle, left no room for argument. “I have to go home.”

Seated opposite Marcus in the boat, Evelina pouted. She was accustomed to having her own way.