And Dragos could learn to give in sometimes, in some ways, but there really was only so far he could bend.

This was not going to be one of those times.

This was the time to make a real victim out of that son of a bitch.

Dragos cloaked himself with a spell so tight, not a mouse would have sensed his presence. Then he strode between Constantine and Aryal, into the howling gale, and he walked into the enthralled army.

As he hunted through the sea of hollowed eyes and empty faces, one by one he filtered everything out. Carling and the other magic users. The God Machine.

Everything but that last thread of Power, the blood of his prey.

When he located it, he did not try to push against it or fight it. Instead he followed it, tracing it back to its source.

Unlike Gaeleval, he did not have a God Machine to magnify his abilities. He needed to draw close to his target for what he meant to do.

When he had gotten close enough, he curled his own Power around that singular thread, and he began to whisper a beguilement that brought him into an almost perfect alignment with it. Then he slid his intention into it obliquely, as if by accident.

You are the bringer of the end of your days, he whispered. His enemy was very near, gathered behind a knot of strong Elven warriors. This is the final note in your song. It was set in motion at your beginning. You have forgotten that Death himself is part of your whole. You have done your job well, and you can let go. Let go. What you wish for is here, your ending. Now you can fall into silence.

Others like Gaeleval might share a talent for beguilement, but no one could beguile quite like the dragon, who could whisper death with such gentle purity that it marked the soul for which it was intended.

Even still, his prey could have fought him, and might even have had a chance against the beguilement if his survival instinct had been strong enough, except that Dragos used what Gaeleval wanted most against him.

The singular thread of Power dissolved. He almost imagined a sigh of relief as it dissipated.

His eardrums pounded as the howling gale died.

Gaeleval’s army staggered to a halt.

Wyr shouted to each other and to him, while Ferion and others who had been left on the bluff raced toward them.

Several minutes later, searchers came upon Dragos standing over Amras Gaeleval, who was dead. The Elf sat in a lotus position, his empty hands in his lap. Like Calondir in the painting, Gaeleval looked as though he cupped something immeasurably precious.

Dragos stared at Gaeleval in silence for a long moment before he turned away.

• • •

Even as Pia and Eva had come close to the High Lord, Pia had known Calondir was gone.

Still, as she struggled to get past the restrictions of her leather armor and her stiff, sore body to kneel beside him, she knew she had to try. While Eva leaned over to shield her with her body, Pia slit her palm and let a few drops of her blood fall between the Elf Lord’s parted lips. Of course nothing happened. Her blood could heal, but it couldn’t bring back the dead.

She couldn’t do anything else for him, so she sat with him until Ferion, Sidhiel, and others plunged into sight. When their faces broke apart into fresh grief, she held out her hand to Eva who helped hoist her to her feet. They walked away to give the Elves a measure of privacy.

After everything that had happened, the rest followed so fast it was disconcerting.

Dragos came to find her. “Gaeleval’s dead,” he told her. She merely nodded. She couldn’t stop staring at the sea of catatonic people. He put his hands on her shoulders and tilted his head until he caught her attention. “Are you all right?”

She nodded and wiped at her eyes with the back of one hand. It was not quite a lie. “Did you find the prayer beads?”

He hesitated, then said, “There weren’t any prayer beads, Pia.”

She said dully, “I suppose that means the God Machine has turned into something else. I wonder where it has gone now.”

Dragos took in a deep breath, then shook his head sharply. “We can talk about that later. Pia, listen to me. If I don’t remove the beguilement soon, Gaeleval’s entire army is going to die. When I do remove it, many of them will still die. The rest of this is going to be horrible and tedious. You are bruised all over, and you have to eat something. Now will you go home?”

“No,” she said. She braced her aching back. “But I will eat something and go back to Lirithriel to help get in supplies of, well, everything. Medical supplies, food, clothing, shelter. Dragos, the survivors need to be sent back through the passageway as quickly as possible. It’s too cold here. As many as you think might die when you take off the beguilement, we’re going to lose more when the sun goes down.”

He clenched his jaw, and she could see he hadn’t had a chance to think that far ahead. “You’re right,” he said.

They parted with a quick, hard kiss.

Even though Carling kept deeply swaddled with her cloak, Rune was anxious to get her safely to shelter, either inside a building or under the cover of night. He flew Carling, Eva and Pia back through the passageway. They discovered that the time slippage between the Elven Other land and Lirithriel Wood had remained constant. Daytime in the Other land meant nighttime in South Carolina.

As soon as they cleared the passageway and the gryphon landed in the clearing, Carling drew back her hood and summoned Soren, the Demonkind Councillor and head of the Elder tribunal. Moments later, a cyclone whirled into the clearing and solidified into the tall figure of a white-haired Djinn with a roughly hewn face and starred eyes.

They told Soren quickly what had happened. He called in more Djinn to help. After they arrived, he blew away to inform the rest of the Elder tribunal. With dizzying swiftness, tribunal Peacekeepers began to arrive, along with doctors, other medical personnel, and all manner of supplies.

Pia had lost track a while ago of where her pack had gone. As soon as the first boxes of bottled water and emergency food supplies came in, she crammed an energy bar into her mouth, drank some water and threw herself into work. Eva never complained and never left her side, but worked alongside her, as did Rune and Carling. After a frantic explosion of activity, three large triage tents were set up and ready by the time the first of the injured Elves trickled through the passageway.

Pia was thrilled and relieved, and also incredibly saddened, when she saw that Beluviel was one of the first ones to come through. Graydon carried her close to his chest, his face drawn and jaw tight. The Elven woman, no longer the consort, was semiconscious and wrapped tightly in a cloak.

The trickle quickly became a deluge, and then word came back through the passageway along with the sick and injured. When the Lord of the Wyr had removed the last of the beguilement from the enthralled Elven army, over a third of the Numenlaurians had died. Everyone in the clearing fell into a stricken silence.

It was too much to take in. There were too many people coming over. There was too much to do. There was always some task right in front of her, until suddenly the next thing that stood in front of her was Dragos himself.

“Oh, hi,” she said hoarsely. She had gone numb a long while back.

He looked at her grimly, his mouth set. Then he pulled her into his arms and said, “Enough.”

Closing her eyes, she rested her head against his chest. She knew better than to argue with that tone of voice.

She was already half asleep when he picked her up in his arms, so she might have dreamed the next bit when Dragos called Soren over to him. Dragos said to the Djinn Councillor, “You have wanted to get me in your debt for some time. Now is your chance. Take us back to Cuelebre Tower, and I’ll owe you a small favor.”

Soren smiled, and his starred eyes turned calculating. “What a very precise bargain you offer.”

“My jet is fueled and sitting on the tarmac at the Charleston airport,” Dragos told him. “You are a convenience, not a necessity. Small, Soren.”

Soren’s smile widened. “You knew I couldn’t resist.”

“I was fairly certain,” said Dragos.

Then a cyclone swept them up, and for the first time in too damn long, they went to bed together in their own bed. Pia was too tired to wash, and they were both filthy, and none of it mattered, because they were together, and they were home.

Dragos helped her strip out of her clothes and held the covers back for her as she crawled between the sheets. A few moments later he joined her. He pulled her into his arms, and she rested her head on his chest.

“The Freaky Deaky,” she mumbled.

He lifted his head off the pillow to look at her. “The Freaky Deaky?”

“The Woo-Woo.” She couldn’t keep both eyes open at the same time, so she gave up and kept them closed. “You know, the Oracle’s prophecy. It’s all over now, right?”

He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Almost. There is one more thing to do.”

Almost? What did that mean? What else needed to be done? And please God, could it wait until morning?

Before she could ask him, the questions melted into darkness and she plummeted deep into sleep.

• • •

Dragos made contact with Grym to let the sentinel know that he and Pia had returned. Telling the sentinel about what had happened in the Elven demesne could wait until later. It was too big of a story to share in a quick telepathic exchange.

As soon as Dragos was certain that Pia had fallen deeply asleep, he slid out of bed, dressed again in his dirty clothes and strode up a flight of stairs to the Tower’s rooftop. The winter night was bitter cold, and lit with a massive spray of colored lights. He could sense Soren’s presence lingering, but he ignored the Djinn for now.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the God Machine.

No longer a string of plain wooden prayer beads, the Machine looked like a perfect cut diamond, the largest and most sumptuous diamond Dragos had ever seen. It shone like a beacon in the darkness, the only true light in a world filled with uncertainty and shadows. Power burned in his hand, an eternal black lotus.

A perfect jewel, and Power.

They were his two most favorite things in the world, aside from Pia and the baby.

“No, you don’t,” he said to Taliesin’s seductive Machine. “You cannot influence me that way.”

He changed into the dragon, launched and flew out over the water. Past the New York harbor to open sea, and still further, flying strongly while the wind burned in his lungs and the stars overhead in the velvet night sky outshone everything on Earth.

Finally he reached a point where he was surrounded with nothing but dark ocean, sky and wind. The Djinn had wisely stayed back in New York, and he sensed no creature below the ocean’s surface.

He threw the Machine as far as he could. The bright diamond/black lotus flashed in the night as it arced through the sky. It worked its magic on him even as he let it go and watched it fall. When it disappeared into the water, he yearned to dive after it.

But another lodestone drew him, the memory of Pia, soft and warm and sleeping in his bed, and his yearning for her was even stronger than the lure of the Machine. He didn’t hesitate as he wheeled in the sky and flew back to the city, back home.

He landed on the roof and changed, more tired than he had been in a long time, and that was when the Djinn Soren chose to reappear, materializing in front of him in the figure of that tall, white-haired man with a craggy face, and shining, starred eyes.

“Do not ask me for that favor right now,” he growled at the Djinn.

“Are you sure?” asked Soren, with a bladelike smile. “It is a small favor, after all, quickly asked and granted, and then you will be debt free once more.”

Dragos gritted his teeth at the bait the Djinn so adroitly dangled in front of him. He snapped, “Ask.”

“Last year, my son Khalil told me the details of the Oracle’s prophecy,” Soren said. “He and I agreed that it posed some interesting questions.”

Dragos’s expression shuttered. He turned away from the Djinn’s intensely curious gaze and stood with his hands on his hips, watching the New York skyline. “Careful, Soren. You get just one answer.”

The Djinn walked over to stand by his side. “The prophecy talked about you along with the other primal Powers, not just as a beast but as Beast.” Soren asked softly, “Why did you never cast a God Machine into the world?”

Dragos remained silent for a long time as he looked out over his city. New York was such a magnificent teeming brawl. As solitary as he was by nature, he still loved living right here, squarely immersed in the middle of all this rich, messy life.

He said, “I never felt the need.”

EIGHTEEN

The next morning, the Sentinel Games resumed.

Pia was incredulous when she heard the news. Her head was under her pillow—her own pillow in her very own bed, rapture, joy, joy—and Dragos had just lifted up a corner of it to whisper good-bye to her. She grunted and lifted her head to peer at him, her rapture rudely interrupted.

He was showered, shaved and dressed in black jeans and a black T-shirt, and he looked so tired. He never looked tired. Their bedside clock read 6:42 A.M. She hooked her fingers into a belt loop of his jeans.

“Really?” she whined. “Nooo. I mean, really? Why?”

“Because when shit happens, it doesn’t take a day off,” he said. He sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her back. “The relentless pace of the Games is as much a part of the weeding process as anything else. If someone doesn’t like that, it’s better that they back out now before they run into real trouble as a sentinel, trouble that won’t slow down or go easy on them just because they’re having a bad day.”

Heh, yeah, she got that, but she didn’t have to like it. “They didn’t almost die,” she whispered. “You did.”