“Can you imagine the stories they will tell about this?” Tenerife bent close to kiss her forehead. She could see the warmth reflected in his eyes. “You were so brave, Princess.”

“I feel so cold.”

“Tasha, we’re losing her! Hurry.”

Phryne closed her eyes as they entered the narrows of the defile and passed out of the fading daylight and into the darkness beyond.

IN HER DREAMS, she was flying again, borne on the back of the dragon, his great wings spread out beneath her, his body undulating as it soared over acres of countryside all lush and green with new growth amid blue rivers that tangled and twisted like silken threads. She felt the wind in her face and the sun on her skin, and the world was fresh and clean once more.

Beautiful creature, she called to the dragon, and he glanced at her with his lidded reptilian eyes and she felt his love for her.

You will always be mine, she told him. And I will always belong to you.

She lay forward against the rough plates of the beast’s scales, feeling them press against her face, and she rode the air currents toward a peaceful sleep.

HAREN CRAYEL, captain of the Elven Home Guard and commander of the Elven Hunters warding Aphalion Pass, stood apart with Tasha and Tenerife in the aftermath, their heads bent close, their hard eyes fixed not on one another but on the ground at their feet.

“What do you want to do about this?” he asked quietly.

Tenerife looked at him. “You already know the answer to that.”

“Do we have your support?”

“Would it matter? Has it ever mattered? Just tell me how much time you need.”

“We could leave at once. Be there by dawn.”

Tasha shook his head. “No, I want to be certain that it happens in the right way. I don’t want any mistakes. Give us until tomorrow night.”

Tenerife hugged himself, kicking at the earth. “That should be time enough.”

The captain of the Home Guard nodded. “Someone may get there ahead of you, tell them what’s happened here. It won’t be so easy then.”

Tasha grunted. “It won’t be so easy, anyway.”

He glanced over to where Xac Wen knelt beside the carefully wrapped body of Phryne Amarantyne. His brother and Haren Crayel followed his gaze, and then looked at each other.

“What we need,” Tasha said softly, “is an experienced trickster.”

Chapter Thirty-one