Prue stared at it in disbelief. She had thought she would never see it again. Yet here it was, returned out of nowhere. It perched quietly on the branch, its sharp little eyes fixed on her as if watching to see what she would do. Prue was afraid to move, worried she might frighten it away. She badly wanted it to stay where it was so she could look at it, the only color she was allowed in her sight-impaired world. She wanted to look at it forever.

But at the same time she was admiring it, she could not help wondering why it was there. Why had it come back? Why now? She had thought it lost to her forever, once she found Pan.

Once she found Pan, she repeated.

And now she needed to find him again.

Go where you are led…

She heard the words of the King of the Silver River whispering in her mind, her memory of them clear and sharp. She stifled a gasp of recognition, still staring at the bird. It was the scarlet dove that had appeared to her when she was alone in the wilderness and had first discovered her sight was diminished. It was the dove that had shown her the way home—and to Pan.

She knew at once it wasn’t a coincidence that the dove had returned.

She couldn’t help herself. “Do you know where he is?” she whispered. “Beautiful thing, have you come to help me?”

The bird lifted off, flew a short distance away, and landed on a different branch. Prue walked toward it slowly, trying hard not to hurry, not to frighten it. “Are you taking me to him?”

When she was close, the dove flew to another branch, this one a little farther away, and landed once more. Prue stopped questioning whether the bird might be leading her to Pan. She knew that was exactly what it was doing. She rushed after it, no longer trying to hold back.

The bird flew swiftly, and soon she was running to catch up to it. She had gone all the way to the boundaries of the Ashenell when she realized she was being taken a different way than she had come. If she continued, she would leave the cemetery without passing Xac Wen.

Which would mean, of course, he would not know where she had gone, only that she had disappeared like Panterra and Phryne before her.

She almost turned back, but the fear of losing sight of the scarlet dove kept her from doing so. It was more important to find Pan than to explain herself.