“You understand why I’m doing this, don’t you?” he asked her suddenly, as if reading her mind. “Why I’m going?”

“I do,” she assured him.

“I don’t want to leave you,” he added. An uncomfortable silence settled in place between then. He squeezed her hand gently. “If there were another way, I wouldn’t.”

She looked up at him with her milky eyes and smiled. “Stop apologizing, Pan. You don’t have to keep reassuring me about this. I know I can’t go with you. Not like this. You can’t be out there worrying about me. You have to do this without me, and I am at peace with that.”

“I just feel bad about it.”

She would have felt bad, as well, in other circumstances. Terrible, in fact, if not for what she had been told by the King of the Silver River. If Pan survived his battle with the demon hunting him, his destiny was to guide the people of the valley to a new safehold in a new country in much the same way as their ancestors were guided here five hundred years earlier. She believed it was so, and if it were to happen Pan must return from his search. It might take him months, but eventually he would come back. When he did, he would take her with him to wherever he was going. She was certain that was how it would happen.

“Where are we meeting them?” Aislinne asked suddenly, walking a discreet distance behind the couple.

The Orullians. They were coming down out of Arborlon to make the journey with Pan. It had been their idea, in fact. With the people of the valley now fully aware of the dangers lurking without and splintered in ways that might never be repaired, thoughts had turned anew to striking out for distant territories. The Elves had always wanted to go, foremost of all the races to wander and resettle, and now they had both their incentive and their chance.

Tasha and Tenerife had made the decision weeks ago, not long after Phryne’s death. With the old order wiped out, the Amarantynes forever gone, they had little connection to those who now struggled to determine how the new order would be shaped. Better to be elsewhere while things were being sorted out, Tasha argued. To be among the first to find another place where those who might be dissatisfied with life in the valley could resettle, Tenerife added.

They had asked Panterra to come with them, and he had agreed.