He panicked, throwing off his blanket and hurriedly pulling on his boots, looking everywhere at once as he did so. Once on his feet, he shouted her name, heedless of who might hear, and was relieved when she called back. He followed the sound of her voice to a break in the trees that allowed a clear view of the valley south and found her sitting on a grassy patch looking out over the countryside.

“Don’t do that again!” he snapped irritably. “I didn’t know what had happened to you!”

She gave him a wan smile. “Sorry. I just couldn’t sleep anymore—or even pretend to sleep—so I got up and came here to think. I forgot that you would be waking up.”

She looked so beaten down that he instantly regretted his words. “I just got frightened, that’s all. It isn’t your fault.”

“That’s about the only thing that isn’t.” She looked away again. “I really messed us up, Pan.”

The way she spoke the words was troubling. She sounded as if she had given up. “You did what you had to do and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you hadn’t killed him, he would have killed us. You know that.”

“I keep thinking that if I could have wounded him…or used the knife on his arms or legs and just…”

He put his arm around her and hushed her. “You could have tried to do a lot of things. But any one of them would have gotten you killed. You did the one thing that would save us both.” He paused, trying to find something more to say, to speak the words that would reassure her. “You did what the King of the Silver River asked you to do. You protected me. And yourself. You didn’t mess us up.”

She shook her head in denial, but said nothing.

“He was too dangerous to keep around anyway. I should have gotten rid of him earlier. I should have taken him into Arborlon and let the Queen have him. He wasn’t going to help us anyway. He was sent to kill us, and he meant to do exactly that.”

She nodded, but still said nothing.

“You know he wasn’t going to let you go. Or me. You know that, don’t you?”