“Come, my love,” he whispered. “We must go. It’s been nearly two hours.”

Rain drifted from the cloudy skies. Iome looked around. The tree above them provided surprisingly good shelter, but Iome marveled that no rain had spattered her or wakened her earlier. She wondered how she’d slept at all, but recognized now that Gaborn had used the power of his Voice to lull her to sleep, speaking softer and softer, in a singsong cadence.

Her father sat beside her, wide awake, reaching out to grasp at some imaginary thing. He chuckled softly.

Catching butterflies.

Iome’s face, hands, body all felt numb. Her mind was waking, but not her limbs. Gaborn helped her rise, unsteadily. She wondered at how to best care for her father. Raj Ahten has turned me into an old woman, filled with worries, and my father into a child, Iome thought.

Fiercely, she suddenly wished that her father could stay this way, could hold on to the innocence and wonder that he had now. He’d always been a good man, but a worried one. In a way, Raj Ahten had given her father a freedom he’d never known.

“The horses have rested,” Gaborn said. “The roads are getting muddy, but we should make good time.”

Iome nodded, recalled how she had kissed Gaborn a few hours ago, and suddenly her mind was awake, swimming once again, and all that had happened yesterday now seemed a dream.

Gaborn stood before her a moment, then grabbed her roughly, briefly kissed her lips, convincing her she recalled everything from this evening only too well.

She felt weak and weary, but they rode through the night, let the horses run. Binnesman had left them a spare mount from Raj Ahten’s men, so they stopped to change horses every hour, letting each beast take a turn at rest.

They blew through villages like the wind, and as they rode, Iome had the most vivid memory of a dream she’d dreamt as she lay in Gaborn’s arms:

She’d dreamed she stood on the aerie tower north of the Dedicates’ Keep in her father’s castle, where the graaks would land when skyriders sometimes came in summer, bearing messages from the South.

In her dream, Raj Ahten’s armies moved through the Dunnwood, shaking the trees, flameweavers clothed only in robes of living fire. She could glimpse the armies only in flashes—nomen with black hides creeping in the shadows under the trees, knights in saffron and crimson surcoats riding armored chargers through the wood. And Raj Ahten stood, so proud and beautiful at the edge of the trees, gazing at her.