When the voice became a bird’s strange, inhuman song he could not guess. Or perhaps it had always been so? But as the sound washed over him like rain, the flames in his head died, the poison in his breast ebbed away. Lionheart blinked open weary eyes and for a moment saw a face he had never before seen, a beautiful one, young yet ageless, with golden skin and great silver eyes. The face of a princess.
He fell at last into a natural sleep.
Daylily sat beside the prince’s bed in a darkened chamber. Her face was paler than usual, yet no other signs betrayed the harrowing journey she had just experienced.
Six days she had traveled without food, walking beside the fevered Lionheart slung over the back of her black gelding. They’d found little water along the way, and most of what they’d found was spoiled by the horrible smoke that filled the countryside. No one met them on the road. Everyone had fled at the Dragon’s approach, and the land was as barren as an old battlefield. And always that iron-gray sky oppressed them.
Daylily may have been the darling of the royal court, but she was also the daughter of a baron. She could bear hunger and thirst and an endless trek down an empty road.
What she could not endure was the fear.
The fear of being watched. That compulsive need to look over one’s shoulder or to search the heavy sky. The way one’s eyes couldn’t help but dart to any shadow that moved across the ground, expecting to see the spread of wings. Nearly a week of this life would drive anyone mad, and Daylily’s careful mask threatened to break with tears on more than one occasion.
All that kept her going was Rose Red.
Daylily could not see behind the veil. She could not tell how the smoke, the subtle poison, or the bone-weary journey affected the maid. Perhaps she too was crumbling. Perhaps she felt nothing at all. More than once Daylily longed for a veil to hide her own weakness. She could not let this person—this goat girl—see her break.
So Daylily went on, sometimes leading the gelding, sometimes allowing Rose Red to lead while she put a hand on Lionheart’s leg to support him in the saddle. He was terribly hot to the touch, and several times she thought he must die, the fever was so great.
But at last they saw a sight more welcome than angels: the dust of horsemen riding their way. The Baron of Middlecrescent, the moment word had reached him of the Dragon’s coming, had set out to see that his daughter was safe.
Now at last they were hidden in Middlecrescent, many long miles from the Eldest’s City and the site of all that destruction. Lionheart was tucked into a bed, where he periodically burned and froze, tossing and moaning and talking to someone unseen in his sleep. Daylily rarely left his side.
Neither did Rose Red.
When Lionheart finally came to himself, the fire was mostly gone. All that remained was a dull burn in his chest, but even that seemed to fade as he returned at last to the waking world. His vision was blurred, a haze of colors and shadows. He blinked, and it cleared some; blinked again and he saw Daylily’s face surrounded by her cloud of red hair. It looked like fire.
He sat up sharply with a gasp, then grimaced as his head whirled.
“Hush! Hush!” Daylily spoke softly and put her arm across his shoulders. They sat thus a moment, stiffly. Then gently, almost motheringly, she drew him to her, and he rested his head against her shoulder, his eyes closed, breathing in her scent.
“Where are we?”
“Middlecrescent. Do you recall nothing?”
He shook his head and breathed again deeply. She smelled of lilac soap, like his mother and courtly ladies. She smelled of one who had tried to scrub clean from a deeper, fouler stench.
Beneath the clean, there lingered yet a breath of smoke.
He pulled away from her, shaking his head again and opening his eyes. He looked up into her face. “Tell me.”
“We traveled north,” she said, her arm still about his shoulders. It felt an ineffectual weight, but he did not shake it off. “We left the House grounds and circled around the Eldest’s City. He . . . he did not stop us. My father met us on the road late the sixth day and brought us back here. Lionheart.” She put her other hand against his cheek, a tender gesture, but her hand was cold. Still, he did not pull away, for her sake if nothing else. “Lionheart, I thought you would die!” Her voice had never been so full of feeling. It scarcely sounded like Daylily.
Lionheart gulped, but his mouth and throat were so dry they hurt, and the muscles moved without effect. He wanted to ask for water. Instead when he spoke next, he said, “My parents?”