She caught herself crying again and brushed the tears away roughly. This was not the time or place. She’d had her cry. She was bigger than this, stronger. Pan shouldn’t have to see her cry anymore.

When they were finished and had shouldered their packs, they took a moment to look around the cottage, ostensibly to determine if they had missed anything, but on a deeper level to consider the possibility that it might be the last time they would ever be here.

“Don’t worry,” Pan told her, as if needing to voice a response to what they were both thinking. “Now that we’re back together again, we can handle anything that comes our way.”

Prue nodded, smiled encouragingly. It was the right thing to say and the right attitude to take. “Anything,” she echoed.

Moments later, they were out the door and walking through the predawn darkness.

HIDDEN DEEP within the trees where there was virtually no chance of being discovered, Bonnasaint watched them depart the cottage. They did not turn south toward Hold-Fast-Crossing and Hadrian Esselline, as Skeal Eile had insisted they would, but north toward Arborlon. Bonnasaint smiled. This was why you never put your trust in others, not even someone who normally could be depended upon, but only in yourself. If he had listened to the Seraphic, he would already be miles away from where he should be if he was to carry out his assignment, wasting his time looking for someone who was never coming.

The Seraphic hadn’t been right about the boy being alone and the girl being gone, either. It made him wonder what he had been right about, but he left that question alone. What he had been right or wrong about wouldn’t affect how successful Bonnasaint would be with the task he had been given.

It never was.

He stayed where he was, watching until the boy and the girl were well out of sight before leaving his cover. He would not attempt to shadow them, although that might be the easiest way. He knew something of their reputation as Trackers, and he respected their skills enough that he wouldn’t risk getting caught following when he could just as easily and more safely wait for them to come to him. He knew they would go to Arborlon because that was where they would find their Elven friends. So he would go on ahead of them, taking a different route entirely, find a suitable place where they must pass, and wait.

Sooner or later, they would appear. When they did, he would put an end to them.

Chapter Nine