She recoiled, dropping her brush. Slowly she realized the flash was not from the sword of her dream. In her mirror was a gleam of reflected sunlight.
Una turned on her stool to look behind her. There, more brilliant and beautiful than anything she could have imagined, a sunbeam shone through her window, cutting through ash and smoke, and fell in a pool on her floor.
She tripped over herself rushing to the light. She collapsed on her knees and lifted her face and hands, gazing at the whiteness that seemed to wash away all the filth. Tears ran down her cheeks, cool and cleansing. She let them fall on her hands and watched them gleam in the sunlight.
Far away a silver bell-like voice sang. She recognized that voice, the first she’d heard from outside since her imprisonment: the voice of a wood thrush. Clear as the sunlight, its song washed over her heart. Una rushed to open the window, hoping to better hear the thrush.
But smoke rolled in, and she heard instead the Dragon growl from somewhere on the castle grounds, “Is that you, little mouthful?”
She shut the window. The light was buried once more in gloom and shadow, but Una returned to her vanity, a smile on her lips. Words formed in her head, and she whispered:
“Beyond the final water falling,
The Songs of Spheres recalling,
We who were never bound are swiftly torn apart.
Won’t you return to – ”
She broke off, her breath coming unevenly, swallowing smoke. “He will come,” Una told her reflection. “I trust him.”
She buried her face in her dirty arms.
–––––––
If there was one thing Felix had learned in all his years as Prince of Parumvir, it was that being a prince brought no advantages whatsoever.
“Stop!” he cried, reining in his horse when he and his escort were no more than six miles outside Dompstead.
“No, Your Highness,” Janus said, slapping the rump of Felix’s horse and startling it back into motion.
“I say!” Felix grabbed a handful of mane to keep his balance. “Stop, I say! I cannot go any farther.”
“Your Highness, we have scarcely begun,” Janus said, showing no sign of halting. “You cannot yet be tired.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Felix snapped. “I cannot go a step more away from my father. I cannot abandon him in this hour.”
“Obeying and abandoning are hardly one and the same,” Janus said. “Keep up, Your Highness.”
“He’s my father!” Felix protested.
“And he’s commanded you to go north with us.”
“I’m your prince!”
“Whom I have been commanded to escort safely.”
“Without my father here, I am your superior.”
“Yet your father’s word is superior to your own, Your Highness, whether he is present or not.”
So they continued, and Felix lapsed into silence, hating every step that took him farther from Oriana Palace, from his father, from Una.
Where is Una? He thought of her trapped in the palace, surrounded by dragon fumes, and tears sprang to his eyes. He sniffed and wiped his face, hoping none of the soldiers could see him weep. How long could one be exposed to dragon smoke before it took serious effect? His father seemed to be recovering – he’d certainly not lost his force of will. But he’d been in the smoke for only a few minutes. How many hours now had Una been trapped in the palace?
Assuming she was still alive.
Felix felt as if it had been years since the Dragon had come to Oriana, and he himself seemed much older than he had been. Certainly too old to be sent away north like a useless little child.
“Captain Janus,” one of the men said, “there are riders coming quickly up behind us.”
Every man slowed and looked over his shoulder. Felix squinted into the mostly set sun and, sure enough, saw a cluster of horsemen galloping toward them up the road.
“Are they ours?” Janus asked.
“Cannot tell from this distance, sir.”
“You,” Janus said, pointing to one of the men at his side, “reconnaissance. The rest of us will continue. Come on.”
Felix could hear urgency in the captain’s voice, though it never once rose in pitch. His heart rate sped up as he nudged his horse into a joggling trot behind Janus, and he kept looking back over his shoulder to watch the approaching horsemen and the one soldier riding back toward them. The fourth or fifth time he looked back, he saw the solitary soldier pull up his horse, wheel around, and start galloping headlong after them.
“He’s coming back!” Felix cried.
“They’re after us,” Janus shouted. “Fly, men!”