Then, when her Black Widow grandmother had been dying, Alexandra had been given what she came to think of as the riddle. What you dream for will come, but if you’re not careful, you’ll be blind until it’s too late.

So she had waited. She had watched. The dream hadn’t come. And she would not, could not, believe that a disturbed, eccentric child had been the answer to the riddle.

4 / Kaeleer

As he stared out the window, he reached inside his shirt and fingered the slim glass vial that hung from a chain around his neck. The High Priestess of Hayll had assured him that she and the Dark Priestess had woven the strongest spells they knew to keep him undetected. So far, they had worked No one sensed he was anything more than another escort Alexandra Angelline had brought with her. He was just a bland man, almost invisible. That suited him perfectly.

It had sounded so easy when he’d been given the assignment. Find the target, drug her so that she would be complacent, and then slip her out of the Hall to the men who would be waiting just beyond the boundaries of the estate. When he’d seen the size of the place, he’d thought it would be even easier.

But, despite its size, the Hall was crawling with aggressive males, from the lowest male servant right up to the High Lord. And the bitches never seemed to be alone. He’d lingered in corridors for hours without so much as a sniff of either one of them.

He shuddered as he remembered his one glimpse of the golden-haired bitch. He’d been told, repeatedly, that she was his primary target, but he had no intention of getting anywhere near her because something about her spooked him, and he wasn’t sure the spells would hold up under that sapphire stare. So he would snatch the other one, the sister. But he would have to do it soon. He could only dodge just so long around so many bristling, suspicious males.

Maybe he would escort Wilhelmina Benedict all the way back to Hayll. Once he got her out, what difference did it make if he was found to be missing?

And it would make no difference to him if Alexandra was left behind to explain her granddaughter’s disappearance—or was the one who ended up paying whatever price the High Lord chose to extract.

5 / Terreille

The rage twisted inside Dorothea like a choking vine. The brief report dangled from one hand.

“You’re distressed, Sister,” Hekatah said as she shuffled into the room and took a seat.

“Kartane was gone to Kaeleer.” She couldn’t draw a deep enough breath to give her voice any strength.

“Gone to see if any of their Healers can cure him?” Hekatah thought about that for a moment. “But why now? He could have gone anytime in the last few years.”