“Because …”

She faded further, a memory disappearing. He struggled frantically to find the words he needed to say, but they eluded him still. The sense of urgency returned, quick and hard. The danger to the sylph became real once more, as if somehow resurrected by his indecision. He tried to reach out to her with his hands, but she was too far away, and he was too rooted in place.

“Because …”

The shadows were all about, cloaking him now in their blackness, smothering him in their endless dark. He was drawing back out of himself. Dirk was gone. Willow was little more than a patch of light and color against the black, fading, fading …

“Because …”

Willow!

He came awake with a start, jerking upright from his place of rest, his underarms and back damp with sweat. Night shrouded the eastern wastelands in silence. Clouds masked the skies, though the rain had ceased to fall. Ben’s companions slept undisturbed all about him—all except Bunion. Bunion was already gone, his search for Willow begun.

Ben took a deep breath to steady himself. His dream of Willow was still sharp and certain in his mind. He exhaled.

“Because … I love her,” he finished.

Those were the words he had searched for. And he knew with frightening certainty that the words were true.

He was awake for a time after that, alone with his thoughts in the dark silence of the night. After a while, though, he tired and dropped back off to sleep. When he awoke again, it was nearing dawn, the eastern sky behind the valley rim brightening with faint streaks of gray and gold. Bunion had not returned. The others still slept.

He rolled over on his back, glanced about the storm-dampened campsite, and then blinked in surprise. Edgewood Dirk rested comfortably on a thick bough of the fir just a few feet above his head, paws tucked under his sleek body, eyes squinched closed against the light.

The eyes slipped open as Ben stared. “Good morning, High Lord,” the cat offered.

Ben pushed himself up on his elbows. “Good morning, nothing. Where have you been?”

“Oh, here and there.”

“More there than here, it seems!” Ben snapped, a great deal of pent-up anger coming quickly to the fore. “I could have used a little help back there in the Deep Fell when you so conveniently disappeared! I was lucky the witch didn’t do away with me on the spot! And then I was dragged off to Strabo’s den and offered to him as a snack! But all that made precious little difference to you, did it? Thanks for nothing!”

“You are quite welcome,” Dirk replied calmly. “I would remind you once again, however, that I signed on as a companion, not as a protector. Besides, it appears you have suffered no harm in my absence.”

“But I might have, damn it!” Ben couldn’t help himself. He was sick of the cat appearing and disappearing like some wraith. “I might have been fried in dragon oil for all the good you’d have done me!”