A smile played on his lips. Naturally charming. Naturally charismatic. That’s what Cŵn Annwn were. Yet I saw his smile and it was like being back on the horse, all my doubts melting. I gave Ioan my hand, and he laid it on Brenin’s head.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

I did.

“Now I’m going to take your other hand. Feel it?”

I nodded as his fingers encircled mine.

“All right, then.” Brenin, go!

Ioan’s last two words resounded in my head, and I flew off my feet. I hit the ground, knees and feet and hands smacking against it, and all I could see was the black blur of Brenin’s fur as he dragged me through the cemetery.

I tried to let go, screamed for Brenin to stop, but the hound ignored me. My hand seemed grafted to him, as if he were a kelpie, dragging me to my doom.

I’d been tricked.

Of course I’d been tricked. Fae lied. The Cŵn Annwn were just better at hiding it.

Ioan claimed he didn’t know he’d been dealing with the sluagh. More lies. He’d set me up from the start, and I’d been stupid enough—

A wall loomed up in my path. A solid brick wall. Brenin swerved around it, and I headed right for it and…

And nothing. I passed through the wall without even a bump.

That’s when I realized I really wasn’t feeling anything. I was apparently being dragged by a hound running full out, and I felt the speed and the turns and the leaps as he bounded over obstacles, but it was like riding a sleek new steel roller coaster, without so much as a jerked neck, much less the skin-peeling I’d have gotten if I really was being dragged over the ground.

I managed to look back and caught a very distant glimpse of…myself. Crouched beside Ioan, our hands extended, as if resting on a hound that was no longer there.

Brenin leapt again. I felt the jerk of it and twisted and saw another wall coming straight for my head. I shut my eyes and—

I slammed into the wall. I felt the blow this time, yet it wasn’t the blow of physically hitting a brick wall, but a jolt, like being thrown against my seat belt, and with that jolt, the wild ride smoothed out even more.

I opened one eye…and saw a darkened corridor. The scene bobbed, as it had when I’d seen the world through Lloergan’s eyes. Then Brenin stopped. He let out a low growl and my field of vision swung left and then right.

To my left, I heard distant voices. My nose lifted, nostrils flaring, and a scent wafted in, one that made my hackles rise as I stifled another growl.