“Come. Sit up, Highness. I have brought you something to eat.”

The prince reached out blindly, then hesitated when he felt what Eolair had put in his hand. He peered at it suspiciously. “What is it?”

“Bread, of a sort. Flavored with honey. It’s quite nice. And there’s a stream of fresh water just below the rise, over there.”

“We’re really here,” Morgan said a moment later with his mouth full, looking around him. “With the Sithi. I didn’t think it would feel like this. It’s so strange . . . !” But this home of theirs was not anything as grand as Morgan had imagined—that was certain.

“It has been more than thirty years since I first saw the Peaceful Ones up close,” Eolair said, “and I am still astonished each time.”

While the young prince tended to his morning needs, the count sat on a toppled tree in the warm sun and watched the morning life of the Sithi camp. It was both a smaller and less organized gathering than the Zida’ya war camp he had visited all those years ago outside Hernysadharc. At first glance everything seemed chaotic, with exotic figures coming and going from the small valley and many others engaged in quiet work, although Eolair could not always guess what they were truly doing. By daylight he could see that the hill and its hidden valley stood high above the surrounding Aldheorte. Anyone down among the forest trees would find it almost impossible to see even the valley’s campfires at night, because the trees and the bulk of the hill would hide their glow.

“It seems only days since I saw you last, Eolair of Nad Mullach,” someone said behind him.

Eolair turned to see Jiriki standing a short distance away at the top of the rise. His hair was long and white, like his sister’s, but like her he did not look an hour older than at their last meeting. “Days to you, perhaps,” the count told him. “To me, it has been a weary length of years. But whatever the length of time, it is good to see you again, Jiriki i-Sa’onserei. I heard you and your company return just before first light. I heard them singing.”

“We came a long distance,” the Sitha said, then sprang down the hillside as lightly as a deer. He reached Eolair’s side in a moment, and looked him over with a slight frown. “Your face shows pain. Have you been wounded?”

Eolair smiled. “No—well, yes, I was, but that is not the cause of my discomfort now. My hip aches. It is what happens when we mortals age—our bodies do not last as long as our wits.”

Jiriki’s face remained serious. “I wish that were true for all your folk, but some appear to lose their wits very young, or never to have them at all.” He shook his head; his fine hair, caught by a morning breeze, momentarily obscured his features. Something about Jiriki was different, Eolair thought, but not in the way he looked. He was being kind and courteous, but the count could feel a subtle chill in his manner. He would never claim to understand the Sithi well, or to be able to read their thoughts in their faces, but he had been a servant of many mortal rulers and had bargained in many courts in many lands; he recognized the signs that something was wrong.

“How is the woman we brought—Tanahaya, if I have her name right?” Eolair asked. “Our mortal healers did all they could for her, I promise you. If you remember the Wrannaman Tiamak, he and his wife struggled to save her in every way they knew.”

Jiriki nodded slowly. “I can tell. And they have my gratitude for that. It is hard to say whether she will survive.” He looked down the rise to where Morgan kneeled, scooping water out of a stream and drinking deeply. As they both watched, the youth dunked his red-gold head into the water, then pulled it out again with a gasp of shock.

“Bloody Tree, that’s cold!” he shouted.

“And is this truly the grandson of Seoman and Miriamele?” Jiriki asked. “No, do not answer. I can see them both in him, bones and breath. What an awkward creature Simon was when I first met him!”

“I thought the same,” said Eolair. “But there was always more to him than showed on the surface. Miriamele too. I suspect it will also prove true with the grandson.”

“We may hope.” Something in his tone made Eolair look at him again, trying to fathom what might lurk behind the placid, high-cheekboned face. “Bring the young prince back to the fire circle when you are ready,” Jiriki said at last. “There is much to talk about. Not all will be to your liking—or mine, for that matter—but this has waited too long already.”

Jiriki turned away, leaving Eolair to wonder what he meant, but fearing the answer.

•   •   •

As he led Morgan up the slope toward the fire circle, Eolair was surprised to see that a fire burned in the wide pit even on this bright, warm summer morning. Several Sithi waited there, including Aditu, who sat beside the fire as if she hadn’t moved since the previous night. This time she wore a long, hooded robe dyed in many shades of blue, from pale sky to deep near-violet, modest garments completely different from the way Eolair remembered her dressing in the past—something he had never forgotten, even after so many years. In fact, every occasion on which he had met with Aditu no’e-Sa’onserei remained nearly whole and perfect in his mind. It was not just her golden beauty that made her memorable, although she was very beautiful, even to one who was not of her kind, but the lightness of her spirit—light as smoke, light as drifting ash. To be with her was to feel an odd peace. It was only after the last time they had met that Eolair had realized that Aditu seemed to have no fear whatsoever. To be in her presence, even in the most frightsome times, was to find a light in a dark place.

As they approached her, Eolair also remembered that Aditu had told him the night before that she had changed, but other than her more decorous clothing, he could see nothing different from the first time he had seen her, near the end of the Storm King’s War. So what could she have meant?

Almost as if she heard his thoughts, Aditu turned and smiled. She was the only Sithi the count of Nad Mullach had ever met whose smile seemed as natural and reassuring as a mortal’s, and by the undemonstrative standards of her people, Aditu smiled often and broadly. As they approached she stood up, and in doing so, let fall her blue-hued robe. Beneath it she was dressed more like the old days Eolair remembered, partly naked like a child and unconcerned with the discomfort it created for mortals. But that belly of hers, that round, golden belly as big as a sugar melon, was something decidedly new.

Eolair stumbled a little and was furious with himself, afraid that it would look like the feebleness of age. Aditu was with child. What did that mean? Did it have any bearing on the years of silence between the Sithi and the Hayholt?

By the time they reached the fire pit she had pulled on a short, flimsy jerkin that covered her down to her hips, making it a bit easier for Eolair to look at her without feeling discourteous. He took her hand in his, as he wished he had done the previous night, and brushed it with his lips.

“It is good for my heart to see you again, Lady Aditu,” he said. “Or is it ‘Princess’?”

“You should not call me that, Eolair,” she said, but her tone was gentle. “It is not a word we use or even truly an idea that we have. That was only a bit of Yeja’aro’s unhappiness coming out.”

The way she said it, the suggestion that she apologized for Yeja’aro, caught Eolair’s attention: it seemed he meant something to her. Could he be the father of her child? Eolair realized he knew almost nothing of how the Sithi dealt with such things. Did they marry? “Then at your insistence,” he said, “but to my pleasure, it will be Aditu and Eolair.” He smiled, simply because looking at her again after all these years made him want to smile. “It was good to see Jiriki, too. I thought he was going to join us here.”