It was a nice change to wake up warm and comfortable. Iris shifted, pulling the blanket tighter around her as consciousness slowly came back to her. This wasn't her bed. It was too soft for that, and Kayla wasn't cuddled up to her. The blanket was too thick, too.

"Morning," Char's voice said, somewhere across the room.

Suddenly, Iris' heart was racing all over again. She lay perfectly still, hoping he wasn't talking to her.

He yawned, and then he said, "She's still asleep?"

"Yeah," Rath said, his voice much closer to her. "What a lightweight. One glass of wine was enough to put her out cold."

"She's been running since Sunday," Char replied, his voice stretching and changing as if he were physically stretching. "Probably hasn't gotten much sleep since then," he added, sighing contentedly as the stretch ended. "What do you want for breakfast?"

"Anybody but you to make it," Rath said sourly.

Char snorted. "As if you're any better at cooking. Come on. She's not going anywhere."

A chair groaned as Rath stood up. His footsteps crossed the room, away from Iris, and then she couldn't hear them anymore. He and Char were still talking, but they were in another room, their voices muted.

They didn't sound so frightening this morning. They sounded like brothers, actually, and they looked like them, too. Iris sat up carefully, tucking her hair back behind her ear as she scanned the room. Without furniture, it was just a cave. But it did have furniture. Aside from the sofa underneath her, there was a coffee table before her, two lounge chairs across from her, and a bookcase up against a wall. Rath must have been sitting in one of those chairs, watching her. A chill ran down her spine at the thought. She was a prisoner. Someone was probably sitting there all night watching her, and they were probably discussing her right now. She needed to get out of here. She forced her eyes from the chair across from her and continued her visual search of the room. Three doorways broke the smooth stone walls, two open, one sealed with a large stone. That one was probably the exit, she thought, disappointment settling in her gut. She didn't allow herself to focus on it, though, continuing her perusal of the room. There was no visible light source, and yet everything was well lit. She twisted around to look behind the sofa and saw another open doorway. The voices were coming from that room. She slipped off the sofa and crept quietly to the wall next to the doorway, hugging the stone until she was close enough to hear.

"You dragged me into it, and I'd like to know what's going on before we report back and both get in trouble," Rath was saying angrily. "This was supposed to be a simple mission. Check out their numbers and their defenses, get back to us with the information, and move in for a surprise strike. So what went wrong? And no dancing around the truth. I want a straight answer."

Char sighed, irritated. "The mage wasn't supposed to be there." Something was sizzling in a pan, filling the air with a savory aroma that made Iris' stomach growl. "That changed everything."

"It didn't have to. You could have reported back, and we could have hit that night or the next morning, before he had a chance to get organized."

"The goal was to hit fast and hard, weakening the army while minimizing civilian casualties. He was staying in an inn in the middle of town. How do you think the humans would have liked us razing a town with our first move? The rumors are already painting us as bloodthirsty monsters."

"Fair point," Rath grumbled. "Okay, what about slitting his throat? That should've been easy enough."

Iris' stomach twisted.

"As if it were that easy," Char said derisively. "He had a barrier up at his door. I took a huge risk just staying in the inn."

Rath sighed. "You took too many risks. Period."

"The king's mage coming to a little town just before the start of the war? It seemed off to me. The soldiers were only there because it's the westernmost habitation, and he wasn't even staying with them. He was looking for something, and I figured we should know what it was."

"And you think that girl was it."

"Yeah, I do," Char confirmed. "There was something off about her, too. She was a barmaid at that inn, and when she took him dinner that first night, she felt the magic at his door."

"How could you possibly know that?"

"I picked a seat where I could watch the mage's door. She wasn't flighty or nervous at all up until that point, but she stopped in front of that door like it scared her, and she was inside too long. When she came out, her face was white. He did something to her, I'm sure of it."

Iris vividly remembered the snapping and crackling of the air in front of that door, the way it got worse inside the room, the way it made her skin burn. She knew Mr. Tumes was watching the door. It hadn't occurred to her that Char was watching it, too, but now that she thought of it, his seat by the fireplace offered a perfect view of that door.

"Maybe he just raped her."

The casual way Rath said that made her stomach clench painfully.

"She wasn't in there that long," Char replied. "He didn't do anything else that night, but he had men asking around town about her the next day, so I decided to do some digging, too. From what I gathered, she's just an orphan, left on the church doorstep when she was a baby. Nobody knows who her parents were or where she came from."

He was following her. When she saw him in the marketplace, he was following her. And the mage was asking about her, too? None of this made any sense.

"And it turns out she's a mage," Rath concluded.

"There was a bar fight Saturday night, and she was right in the middle of it, so I grabbed her and pulled her outside, figuring the noise would bring the mage out of his room. He put a stop to the fight with magic, and she sensed it before it even happened. Before I even sensed it. If the mage had seen that, I'm pretty sure he would have taken her that night."

"Why?"

"I don't know," Char said, frustrated. "But I do know she didn't have that amulet the last time I saw her on Saturday night."

Iris' heart was pounding. Everything made even less sense now. Her world was crumbling around her, and there was nowhere safe for her anymore. Not back in town, where the mage was looking for her for unknown reasons. Not here, where any apparent kindness had an ulterior motive. Char hadn't pulled her out of the bar fight to help her. He did it to keep the mage from getting his hands on her. That was why he wanted her at the river during the attack, too. He was probably planning on snatching her up after battle to bring her back to the dragons so they could figure out what to do with her.

If he can use her, so can we.

"Somebody's been eavesdropping," Rath said, his voice suddenly right in front of her. She looked up at his hard blue eyes just as his hand closed around her wrist. He yanked her after him into the next room, shoving her down into a chair. This was a kitchen. Char was setting the table in front of her with dishes, his sharp green eyes as hard as his brother's, and the incongruity of a normal breakfast scene in a kitchen with these two men who looked like they wanted her dead made her head spin.

"Time to start talking," Char said coolly.

"I'm sorry. I don't think I can help you," she said quietly, dropping her gaze to the plate in front of her. Meat of some kind, eggs, bread - it looked and smelled delicious. Her stomach was churning, though, and she didn't think she could stomach it.

"Where did you get the amulet?" he pressed, his voice low and threatening as he took a seat next to her.

"Father John gave it to me."

Rath scoffed, taking the seat on her other side. "Yeah, right. A priest gave you a powerful magical artifact. How dumb do you think we are?"

She winced at the venom in his voice. "But he did give it to me," she said softly, curling her fingers into her skirt under the table. "He said it was left with me at the church."

"When you were a baby?" Char asked.

She nodded.

There was a brief silence. She didn't dare look up at either of them. They weren't touching her, but they were close enough to do so easily, and she had a feeling the wrong answer would end up with somebody's hands around her neck.

"Have you ever encountered magic before this?"

She shook her head. It felt safer to speak as little as possible.

The sigh came from her right, from Char. "We have to take her with us."

"What? No. Absolutely not. I say we just kill her and take that amulet," Rath replied emphatically. "That's where the power is, right? What do we need her for?"

"We don't know how it works. It might be useless without her," Char replied.

"Then we'll leave her here and report back. I don't want to be flying around with a mage in my talons. Who knows what she'll do to us?"

"The king's mage may be tracking her."

Rath groaned. "Great. So, we lead him straight home? You're losing it, Char."

"She got here in, what, two days? If he finds her trail, he'll be here before we get back, and then she's as good as his, and that may be worse for us in the long run. The shields are stronger back home. It'll be harder for him to track her there," Char argued.

"I don't know how this human magic works," Rath grumbled.

"Did he ever touch you?" Char asked Iris.

She hadn't moved since the last question was asked of her. Rath's recommendation to kill her, given nonchalantly in between bites of breakfast, had frozen her in place. Even her fingers stopped curling into her dress. Maybe if she held perfectly still, it would all stop. But she'd known that wouldn't happen, and she nodded hesitantly. "Friday night, he...was upset about the ale I brought with his dinner." She swallowed nervously. "He thought it might be poisoned, and he made me drink a little first to prove it was fine. He grabbed my wrist."

"What else happened?"

She bit her lip nervously. He wanted to know about the magic the mage used on her, but she wasn't quite sure how to describe it in words. "The air...was snapping and crackling outside his door, and when I went inside, it stung. It got worse the longer I was in there, until it felt like I was on fire."

"And he never said anything to you except about the ale?"

She shook her head.

"What about your name? He didn't ask your name?"

"I told him my name when I came in," she said, finally venturing a nervous look up at Char. His green eyes weren't angry or hard anymore. They were troubled. "I always do."

He frowned. "So, he can track you. We need to go. Now," he said, pushing back from the table.

"Hey, I'm not finished eating!" Rath protested, his words garbled by a mouthful of food.

"Thought you didn't like my cooking," Char said dryly.

"It's better than nothing," Rath muttered. "Are you going to eat that?" he asked, pointing at Iris' untouched plate. She shook her head, but Char snatched it away.

"We don't have time," he said insistently.

"What, so now you're an expert in human magic, too?" Rath complained, standing up and yanking Iris to her feet again. Iris hadn't taken a good look around the kitchen, and she only got a glimpse of it as Char headed into the living room with Rath dragging her along behind them. The counter, sink, oven, stove, and cabinets all seemed to be carved from the stone wall, with wooden doors to cover the cabinets and the little wooden table and chairs.

"The snapping and crackling are his signature," Char explained, crossing the room to the stone-covered doorway and shoving it open with ease. "He was using a probing spell, searching for somebody with magical ability. Pick her up. We can't have her slowing us down."

Rath threw her over his shoulder again before she could protest, not that they would have cared about her protest, anyway. She squeezed her eyes shut and wished for what seemed like the hundredth time this was all a nightmare.

"It was a constant spell he had up around him, which was why I couldn't get close. Using that spell, along with establishing physical contact and a person's name, gives him limited tracking ability. It only works if he's close enough, so we should be fine once we get to the mountains."

"How close are we talking?" Rath asked.

"I don't know, exactly, and I don't want to find out," Char replied coolly. "Saturday night. The bar fight. What did you feel then?"

Answering questions while dangling over Rath's shoulder wasn't really comfortable, but they were descending the staircase into the dark, and she knew he wasn't setting her down anytime soon. She squeezed her eyes shut and thought back to that night.

"I felt the sizzling and crackling again, and then I heard a loud, high-pitched sound, and I felt the ground shake from an explosion."

"You covered your ears before the sound. How did you know before it happened?"

"I...I don't know," she said, her voice faltering.

"I'm not carrying her when we fly," Rath said firmly. "If you want to risk getting yourself killed carrying her around, that's on you, but I'd like to make it home alive."

They were already on even ground again, their footsteps hurried, and Rath wasn't making any move to put her down yet. She would slow them down in the dark, she thought miserably.

"Why didn't you stay at the river like I told you?" Char asked vehemently, ignoring Rath and addressing her again.

"You didn't tell me," she replied, frustration creeping into her voice. "And it doesn't sound like it would have done me any good, anyway, even if Kayla hadn't taken off."

"Kayla?" Rath asked. "Was that the stupid little girl running across the battlefield?"

"She's not stupid!" Iris exclaimed, anger suddenly surging through her veins. "She just can't fathom that anybody would try to hurt her."

"That was a pretty impressive shield," Char commented.

Iris didn't respond. Her eyes stung, picturing Kayla's blonde hair streaming behind her as she ran excitedly to the church, a tendril of flame chasing after her.

"And that's another thing," Rath suddenly said, his voice angry. "You could have gotten yourself killed when you pulled that dive."

"I didn't," Char replied coolly.

"The explosion just missed your tail!" Rath continued. "If you were going to pull a dumb move like that, you should have just grabbed her then."

"Then the mage would have shot at me instead of her, and I would be dead," Char retorted.

"He was shooting at you!" Rath shouted insistently.

"He was aiming at her," Char replied. "We're close enough. Give her to me and get out of here. I'll be right behind you."

"You better be," Rath said threateningly. He threw Iris at Char, whose arms wrapped around her and pulled her back as the temperature suddenly dropped. It was too dark for her to see anything, but she sensed the change, felt the shift in the air of a massive creature looming in front of her. Talons scraped across the stone, heading toward the crashing of the waterfall, and a sudden rush of wind would have knocked her to the ground if it weren't for Char's grip around her waist.

"Iris," he murmured, his voice suddenly soft as he tightened his arms around her waist and pulled her flush against his chest. "I'm not letting anybody kill you."

The change in his voice, the way he held her, made her heart race for a completely different reason than had been the case thus far. But she couldn't forget his unforgiving grip last night when she thought he was going to suffocate her - when he nearly did. She pushed back on his chest to put space between them.

"I don't believe you," she said coolly.

He tugged her back and caught her chin, tilting it up and sealing her lips with his before she could react. The suddenness of his kiss took her by surprise. It was warm and tender, and it made her already aching heart throb painfully. She shoved away from him again.

"D-don't do that," she said, her voice trembling.

The temperature dropped again, and a chill settled into her bones as she stumbled back in the dark. Cold, hard talons wrapped around her, and then she was lifted off the ground, helpless in the dragon's grip. The roaring of the waterfall was getting closer. She squeezed her eyes shut and managed to work one hand up to the amulet, holding on tightly as water misted her hair and skin. Her stomach lurched as they launched into the air, the powerful strokes of his wings tossing her hair in all different directions as he climbed higher into the sky. She was getting lightheaded. The cold tore the lingering warmth of his kiss from her lips. She didn't want it there, and she didn't want to think about it, either. Darkness was pulling at the edges of her consciousness as the air thinned. She welcomed its embrace.