“Your father and I decided that we should send the Lady Izabelle back to her home in Weinmauer,” said Ermintrude. “The lady, it seems, refuses to go.”

Anora glided over to stand beside Marcus. Her skirts whispered around her ankles. She looked into his eyes. “Do you want me to leave, Your Highness? As you are soon to be my husband, I will be guided by your decision.”

She could see in his mind the red of his struggle to escape her, and she caught hold of that color and wound it around and around the bobbin of her magic.

Marcus mumbled something and sank back into his chair and closed his eyes.

“He wishes me to stay, Your Majesty,” said Anora. “I love him. I do not want to leave him.”

“So be it,” Ermintrude said. She touched the young woman on the cheek. “I will be proud to call you ‘daughter.’ “

“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Anora curtsied.

“I will sit with Marcus awhile,” the Queen continued. “You should go rest before dinner.”

Anora curtsied again to the Queen and left her alone with her son. Anora’s thoughts were focused on her plans for the night, when, traversing a narrow spiral staircase, she was aware of someone coming up as she was going down.

The two women met in the center and stood regarding each other in the flaring torchlight. Anora recognized the human—a female with blond hair named Evelina, who had tried to barge in to see the Prince. The Queen, Anora recalled, had been most upset. The female was of lower ranking than Izabelle, and she should be the one to stand aside so that the lady could pass. Evelina did so, after a moment’s pause. Anora gathered up her skirts and squeezed past the young woman. Evelina did not curtsy as she should have done. She stood upright and stared quite boldly at the lady. Happening to glance at Evelina as she went by, Anora saw the human’s mouth curl. The glint of baleful enmity in the eyes would have chilled any human to the bone. Anora had no care for humans, however, and she thought nothing of it, except to be annoyed at the inconvenience of having to deal with these hoops and the yards of silk, and a weak and fragile little human body.

The Lady Izabelle had been fifteen years old when the dragon had waylaid her entourage in the wilderness, killed her escorts, and dragged the screaming and terrified young girl into a cave, there to tear out her heart and steal her body. Anora had left the girl, still horribly alive, sealed inside the cave, blocking the entrance with a heavy stone, so that none should find her. Anora placed the girl’s heart in the golden locket, hung the locket around her neck, and proceeded on the journey, creating her own knightly escorts out of illusion.