Ven sat up and shoved her hands off him. His head ached and he felt sick to his stomach, but he was alive.

“You will live,” said Sorrow coolly. “How long you live depends on your answers. Lucien is incredibly strong. He once tore a human apart limb by limb. He can do the same to you.”

Ven didn’t look at them, either of them. He stared at the carcass of the dragon. Scaled flesh, clawed and mangled. Bones exposed. Blood running in rivulets into the chinks and cracks of the stone floor. Ven’s body was sticky with the blood. His sister’s hands had blood on them, from where she’d reverently touched the body.

“Why did you kill our father?” she asked again, her voice breaking.

Ven looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time. He saw that she was terrified.

Grald had kept his children isolated, segregated. He kept them dependent on him. A good plan, for the dragon had never imagined leaving them. Dragons live for centuries. Grald would see his children age and die, see many generations of children die before he did. But he was dead. His children were alone and they couldn’t cope.

Ven understood Sorrow’s fear. He recognized it as his own. In that moment Ven, who had always felt sorry only for himself, felt pity for another.

“Why?” Sorrow shrieked, and she flung herself at him, striking him on the chest. “Why?”

He said nothing, for there was nothing to say. She knew the reason; he’d seen the images in her mind. Her terrible “why” had nothing to do with Grald’s death. It had more to do with her own life, her own reason for being. She was asking herself for the first time the question Ven had been asking all these years.

She wouldn’t like the answer, but he couldn’t help that.

“Sorrow,” called Lucien. He stood by the tomb, staring down into it. “Come look at this.” He sounded shaken.

Sorrow glared at Ven a moment longer, then, her back rigid, her legs stiff, she walked over to the tomb. She cast one glance inside and then turned away.

Ven stood up, slowly and painfully. He limped over to the dragon’s carcass and stared down at it. Finding what he sought, wound around the dragon’s bloodstained talons, Ven removed the golden locket and carried it over to the tomb. Opening it up, he displayed the heart within. The heart had stopped beating. With the dragon’s death, the enchantment was broken.

He thrust the locket in Sorrow’s face.

Sorrow averted her eyes. Lucien started to gag and was sick on the floor.

“You want the truth. Then look at it,” Ven insisted.