"I gave up my magic to protect Winsor. Do you think it would be as easy as sneaking him out of town and killing him?" she snarled, her finely painted lips spitting the words. She shook me again, and I only resisted enough to keep the back of my head from hitting the wood hard. I went wide-eyed and innocent. "Do you understand me? He is a child; even if he treated you badly there is nothing—" She slammed her other palm on the wood paneling of the wall furiously. "-Nothing that justifies the risks you put him in tonight."

"It was his idea. I only followed his lead," I bleated. She had been an Avalon and her voice quaked with authority. But now she was something else. Something animal and instinct driven. A parent. I had never gotten this mad for Mallow safety, even when it was called for.

"If he had... If we lost him again." Her eyes went dark. She grabbed my wrist and dragged me toward the final door in the hallway. I tried to resist, but the carpet burned my already weary feet. Confusion flooded me.

"Where are you taking me?" She had stopped shouting. She wasn't saying anything at all, setting one tall heeled foot in front of the other as we reached the door at the end of the hall. This worried me. "I must insist. I'm running an errand, and I need to—"

Her fingers curled into my arm, and I yelped. I pulled but her strength won out. She hadn't been entirely unathletic since she ceased being an Avalon. She opened a door and threw me in. I tripped across a wooden chest and went tumbling into a desk chair. She slammed the door behind her.

"I don't know who you are. I don't know why you had my son out there, but I do know that you are not going to put him at risk ever again," she said. The chair I'd been tossed into stopped rocking as I steadied my feet against the plush carpet. Only a sliver of fading flame illuminated the dark room from the fireplace. A... bedroom? Yes, in the corner, a tall four poster canopy bed, stacked high with pillows so neatly arranged I knew a servant had done it, not the actual person who slept there. On the walls there were paintings.

A fair haired young man with a thin mustache posed standing over a slain bear, grinning. A dark haired child asleep on a book, a full figured woman leaned over him to pick him up. A man and two sons preparing a potion together, ingredients tumbling from baskets in front of them. A family of four, the same man, the same woman, and the same two sons on a beach. Although the colors were flat and the shapes simplified, I knew it was the Reglars, the current family. Bernard, Winsor, Divinis Wenrick, and his wife.

"I didn't try to hurt Winsor; I brought him back to get healed," I said.

Light silhouetted the woman from behind. The door to the room opened, and soft steps followed.

"Naobe?"

Naobe had her attention drawn back to the door frame. I kicked the chair backward. The back crashed against the footboard of the bed. I launched off, landing atop the neatly folded comforter. I saw two figures standing in the light straining through the doorway. Over my nervous breaths, I heard a deep voice chanting. The woman lunged for me again. I reached behind me blindly to the night table topped with a row of uneven shapes. My fingers wrapped around something cool and metallic. I swung it forward, a candle stick. The harmless, cold wax candle went flying off, but the sharp circle that caught the melting wax clipped her wrist. Naobe yanked her hand back, holding the tender spot with her other fingers, her face unreadable in the shadow. I heard chanting, louder now. How many words had he gotten out? Three? Five? Winsor usually wrapped up his simple spells in eight. I had only a second. I could attack, but if I missed...

Desperate, I grabbed at the blanket and tossed it in front of me, hiding the two shadowy figures in the doorway from me, and thus, them from me. Breaking the line of sight worked, the voice broke off.

"Leave, Naobe. He's dangerous."

"He's the one Winsor came back with," she said. I kicked the blanket one more time, throwing it up higher in the air. The canopy draping on either side from the tall pillars helped shield me. While the blanket hovered heavy like a storm cloud, I slipped down on the floor. I hit the ground and crawled under the bed, hoping it would be too dark down there to see me. If he couldn't see, he couldn't cast... though he could just stab me.

It smelled clean down here. Good servant worked in this house, even remembered to clean where no one saw.

"Azark?"

"Who?"

"The others, they said he came back with Azark. That's what Shician Lars told me his Assistant said. And I've met Azark," His voice trailed off, the blanket had settled onto the mattress from the lack of rustling sound.

"Where did he go?"

"Maybe he's Enchanted."

"Either way, you shouldn't have been alone with him Bea."

"I shouldn't have left Winsor alone with him. I saw them in the hall, Winsor and Avark—"

"Azark."

"Winsor and that man talking, and I thought it was a little suspicious, but... Oh I wanted so much for Winsor to have a friend, I should have known it was an assassin."

"Naobe, you really must go somewhere safer. I will handle this. Go, be by our son's side again."

"He's sleeping so deeply... what if he doesn't...."

"Go be with him. Even if this man meant to harm him, you can do more good with Winsor than he can do harm to him. This is a matter that needs resolved calmly."

"You're right. I... I... I'll go."

Her pointed shoes patted on the ground. The door hinges shifted. I could go now. I could push past her and escape. But as I crawled forward, I knew I wasn't fast enough to emerge from the bed before Divinis Wenrick could chant something. Maybe he meant what he'd said. Maybe he didn't want to harm me.

The door slammed shut.

"So on its contents I needn't ruminate, every corner of this room illuminate."

The room beyond the overhang of the bed sheets lit up. It was so bright, it made my eyes water. I screwed them closed. I squinted. Tears began to run from the corners of my eyes. There were no shadows, light bouncing from every surface beyond the curtains. The Divinis coughed and then walked.

"Although history is not in my favor, perhaps this time, you can be reasoned with, Azark," The Divinis said. Why did he know my name? Mallow's, maybe, but why mine? "My wife is brave and beautiful, but you must realize in the light of the horror of what's transpired—"

A splintery crash of wood slamming against wood. I hadn't seen much of the room. It reminded me of opening my inn room wardrobe too quickly. "-that she would be beside herself with concern for our son—" A smaller door opened, to a closet or a water closet. "He is everything to us, you must understand. Or maybe you don't. You don't have the heart to understand how a parent suffers." The words went from honeyed to bitter. Why? What the hex had I done besides make sure Winsor made it back here? "You're nothing more than a criminal and a con man, or so the Avalons told me." The door to the closet closed, softer than it had opened. His steps were heavier. He threw aside the mountain of pillows. There was muffled thumps as they hit other furniture in the room. "Love is often beyond the comprehension of your sort. But maybe you understand something else. Not love, no. Not from your previous behavior. But anger? Revenge? Did Winsor anger you, Azark? Even animals understand anger."

These people were icicles! I didn't hurt Winsor. I had planned on it, sure, but only to get Mallow back! Why would I randomly want to hurt a sorcerer? That was worse than suicide... Had Winsor told them I'd hurt him? After I'd worked so hard to rescue Thessa with him?

There was pain in my chest; I hadn't realized I cared about the lie that Winsor had been spinning, about his acting like we were friends. I knew the entire time he'd been lying to me as I'd been lying to him. And yet, this being the moment that he finalized his plan to be done with me stung. I wasn't ready. I didn't want it to end like this, killed by his dad under yet another deception. He could have at least killed me himself, the brat.

But no... I didn't want that. I... wanted what was mine and to move on. I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to be here waiting for Divinis Wenrick to lift that bed skirt and kill me. I didn't want to die. Not like this. Dying like this, shoeless and alone and scared with no one left to miss me, made the hundreds of victims whose savings I'd spirited away with sweet deceptions meaningless cruelties. Was that all my life was? An arbitrary string of abuses of trust and hope? Is that all? I could have died shoeless and scared and alone decades ago and the world would have been better...

"Did I anger you, again?" Soft. What was he talking about? I hadn't been angry in the dungeon last time we met, and he hadn't seen me at the circus.

No. Not everyone would have been better off. Mallow. Whatever she was, monster and girl, whatever she felt, isolation and jubilation, she had loved her life. I had done something right when I had walked away from that sorcerer who wanted to imprison and hurt her. Not perfect. But right. And she was relying on me to do the right thing again. I couldn't let him kill me. I had to save her. I had to save her. I couldn't die here.

He stopped walking. Sweat beaded on my forehead. He was looking at the bed. I couldn't see him, but I knew it. I knew he was looking at the bed. He had to be. He was going to peer at me and then what? I'd... punch him? Ha! I couldn't get the momentum in this position... but maybe, if I could stop him from speaking and he didn't consider stabbing an option, I'd have a chance. I reached down and began to untie my sash, each bump of my elbow against the floor or bottom of the bed a potentially lethal betrayal of my quiet desires.

The bed skirt fluttered.