“The fire would have killed him anyway.”

“He was the Lord of Fire. He might have controlled it enough to escape it. I didn’t give him the chance.”

Ari looked at her for a long time, then said softly, “As you will, so mote it be.”

Morag leaned over and kissed Ari’s forehead. “Get some rest.”

As she reached the bedroom door and opened it, Ari said, “Morag?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

Morag stepped into the hallway and found Padrick leaning against the wall, waiting for her.

“Is she all right?” Padrick asked quietly.

“I’m the one who killed Lucian. I took a spirit from a body that still lived.”

“From what Glenn told me, the fire would have killed him anyway. You’re standing on one side of a line that’s no more than a hair’s width of difference.”

“Perhaps,” Morag agreed. “But that hair’s width of difference is one Ari can live with.”

She stood beside the cradle, smiling at the babe who stared at her. As she leaned over, pudgy hands waved in the air, trying to catch strands of her black hair. The babe made gleeful sounds, kicking its feet against the blanket that covered it.

She raised her hand to brush her finger down one round little cheek…

…and saw another hand reaching to do the same thing. A dark hand with leathery skin and talons at the ends of its fingers.

The enemy’s hand. Right beside her.

No. No!

She threw herself to one side, intending to shove the enemy away from the cradle, to put herself between this destroyer and the babe. The hand lashed out and disappeared.

There was nobody to shove against, no enemy to fight.

However, the movement turned her toward the doorway. Ari sprawled there, her eyes Death-blind, her torn body empty of life and spirit.

Spinning around, she looked into the cradle and saw what those cruel talons could do to a small body. Empty of life. Empty of spirit.

It had taken everything. Everything!

But where was the enemy? Where?

A last exhalation, a death rattle from someone already gone as Ari said, “As you will—”

I don’t want this! I don’t will this!

“—so mote it be.”

NO!

Morag’s hands shook violently as she pulled on her clothes and boots. She had nothing else to take with her. Her tack was in the stable, along with the canteen for water.

She’d had one brief hope that the dreams would end now that Lucian was dead, that the dreams had been a nightmarish warning about his coming here. But he wasn’t the only enemy after Ari and Neall. There was another one. A far more deadly one.