“He’s my brother,” Marcus said. “And he’s your brother, too. You have to help him.”

“He killed our father . . .” said the sister slowly.

Marcus would have liked to have grabbed her and shaken her. “Look!” he said angrily and he held up the image to her mind.

The sister looked. She saw the human she had known as Grald in the tomb, the gaping hole where the heart had been torn from the chest, the man’s eyes wide in death. She saw the dragon, half in, half out of human flesh. Still, she wasn’t convinced.

“I don’t believe that our father would take a human body. That he would become one of you. Why would he?”

“To enslave us, rule us, conquer us—” Marcus paused.

He heard the sounds of wings beating and the hissing intake of breath. A shadow passed over him, chilling him. The shadow glided over him again, larger, darker.

Lysira’s colors flooded Marcus’s brain.

“Human! Maristara is coming. The dragon ruler of Seth. She knows something has happened to Grald, and she is on her way to investigate. You have to leave. Now! Go back to your little room and shut and bolt the door. No more drunken reveling.”

“If the dragon finds Ven, she’ll kill him,” Marcus argued. “She will finish what Grald started!”

“There will be no need for her to kill the dragon’s son. He will be dead by the time she arrives.” Lysira returned. “Now, go! Quickly! Before she catches you!”

Marcus stepped into his little room, but he did not close the door.

“The next time you see Ven,” he said to Sorrow. “He won’t be Ven. He’ll be the dragon. Ven will by lying in that tomb—”

The shadow of the wings covered him. He cast one last, pleading look at Sorrow and then slammed shut the door.

Ven lay stretched out, his body relaxed, in his cave in the forest. A sliver of twilight, about to be extinguished by night, trickled into the cavern’s entrance through the heavy foliage of the trees that surrounded the cave. Ven heard Bellona’s voice calling him, but he didn’t move. She had no hold on him now. None of them did.

He heard the flap of dragon wings outside the cave, but that didn’t matter. When the dragon arrived, he would be gone.

The little girl walked into the cave. She squatted down on her haunches beside him, peered into his face.

“Go away,” said Ven wearily. “I did what you wanted. I did what they all wanted.”

“So now you’re going to give up and die, is that it?”

“What do you care?”

“And what about Marcus? You asked him for help and he gave it. He and his kingdom are in danger.”

“That’s his problem,” Ven returned. “He has two human legs and a pretty human face. Someone will help him—”