Perl slumped in a corner, motionless. She hadn’t spoken since the trammeling and everyone had wisely left her alone, even as they had tested the magic.

“Protect me, Perl!” Leo had commanded. She made no sound, didn’t even glance his way, but he nodded and beckoned to Reuth. “Now, Reuth. Come.”

Tentatively, then with more and more force, Reuth tried to stab the king. Leo had laughed the loudest of all when the blade slid away, time after time.

“Now do you see, Marth?” he raged, pacing the small hut, puffed like a mating raker bird, swelled with his importance and invincibility. “Now we have our king, we have our weapon, we have our means to simply break free of the shackles of the barbarians.”

“Perl,” Reuth tried. “You did it. And now we can be free.”

“You maybe, Reuth, but not I. I am more of a prisoner than I have ever been previously,” she said, her formerly distant gaze suddenly viciously focused.

Leo threw her an offhand look of disdain. “Stop bleating, Perl. This is war. And I need you.”

“So much for the famed Valisar magic,” she sneered.

Reuth looked at her, aghast. “He’s the king, Perl. Show some care.”

“Why? What do you think he’s going to do to me? Hurt me? Kill me perhaps? Make my life miserable? He’s already done the worst he can and now I have to protect him anyway. So no, I don’t believe I have to show care at all toward our merciful Valisar king!” She spat on the ground. “You have no magic to speak of of your own and if I wasn’t your true aegis, I could have evaded you entirely but not the others.”

Reuth, still looking shocked, blinked. “Others?”

“Loethar and the halfwit child,” Perl said matter-of-factly.

“Be quiet!” Leo warned, taking more notice of Perl now.

But Reuth couldn’t let it go now. “Loethar isn’t Valisar.”

“Isn’t he?” Perl asked, looking around at everyone. “Why do you think he’s trying to shut me up?” she said, nodding at Leo with her own measure of disdain. “Loethar is Valisar, you poor fools. Look at him, look how angry I’ve made him.” She laughed, genuine delight creasing her face. Reuth had never seen her so animated.

It was Marth who was most intrigued, though. His face had grown heavy with concern. “How do you know this, Perl? Er, no,” he said at Leo’s attempt to interrupt. “I need to hear this. I told you, while you may be Penraven’s heir, you are not my king. My king is dead. And while I am loyal to the Set and thus the Valisars, I will still satisfy myself.”

Leo’s scowl intensified. “So what if he’s Valisar. He’s not the rightful crown bearer. I am!”

Reuth gasped, genuinely shocked.

“You knew?” Marth asked, sounding angry and confused.

“He’s a bastard son. Darros must have idly cast his wild seed on the plains and promptly forgot about the bitch he lay with.”

“The bitch being Dara Negev, presumably?”

Leo shrugged. “She deserves no title but to be remembered as the old whore who treated my mother—your queen, Reuth,” he said, pointing an accusing finger at her, “like scum. My mother didn’t have to steal a throne, she didn’t even need a Valisar marriage; she was a royal in her own right!” His voice broke with the emotion fueling his rage.

Reuth nodded. “We all understand how you feel, majesty. But you are relying on us to win you the throne. The least you can do for us is honesty. You should have told us the truth about Loethar.”

Marth still looked dumbfounded. “He’s Valisar. How can we be sure?”

“The magic doesn’t lie,” Perl snarled. “I know, I live with it. When I was taken to the palace, we were led to some rooms in a far wing and we saw the man that I later learned was the self-proclaimed emperor cross one of the courtyards. My reaction was instant.”

“You swooned, that’s right,” Reuth said, wonder in her voice as she recalled the memory of many anni previous. “Hedray and I helped you.”

Perl nodded. “If it was just one of them I might have caught my reaction in time but not two of them.” She smiled maliciously at Leo. “Truth time, your majesty,” she said, pronouncing his title in a tone loaded with derision.

Leo regarded the stares of inquiry and shrugged. “Then she knew long before I ever did.”

“What?” Marth demanded. “What is Perl alluding to?”

“She’s enjoying her knowledge that my brother, Piven, who we all believed was adopted, is in fact a blood brother.”

“Clovis was right,” Reuth said, bewildered. “I never believed him but Clovis was right. He knew that lad from the south was the prince.”

“Well, Reuth, I was going to spare you this but since we’re on this pathway of honesty now you might as well hear it all. It was Piven, my true Valisar brother, who slaughtered your husband, Clovis.”

The blood drained from Reuth’s face. “What?” she whispered.

“Clovis was unarmed, Reuth. He simply wanted to talk to Piven. And here’s another truth for you all: Piven is no longer the halfwit everyone believes him to be. He is now whole and what’s more he’s on a killing spree. He has his aegis and he is crazed with his new-found power, hellbent on revenge.”

“Revenge?” Marth asked, his face a story of his own series of shocks.

“Yes, revenge on Loethar, revenge on me, revenge on anyone who stands between him and the throne of Penraven. He has simply replaced one form of madness with another. And now he has the capacity to kill at will whomever he chooses.”

“So do you,” Perl snarled.

“I am rational, Perl. I am returning order to Penraven and ultimately the Set. General Marth here will be able to reinstate the royal bloodline of Barronel—I will help him to do just that. My intention as king is to return all the realms to their rightful royals. I do not want to rule an empire.”

Marth sighed. “Well said, majesty. Despite the shock, I think we know we’re doing the right thing. Perl, it is done now. I am sorry for your suffering but it was for the greater good, not just for the Vested or the royals but for all the people of the Set.”

“And with Marth and Reuth as my witness,” Leo said, “I give you my word that I will do everything I can to make your life pleasant. You may live as far away from me as you can stand; you will have all the comforts and wealth that you desire, or don’t . . . as you wish. You will lead your own life, Perl, as much as the magic will permit. I will make no further demands upon you once we have won back the throne. Do you all hear me?”

Reuth nodded, and saw that Marth did too. “We hear you,” they repeated.

Reuth touched Perl, looking amazed by her clean scalp; the birthmark that anointed her as an aegis had disappeared with the trammeling. “He’s being fair. Can’t you move past your despair and be optimistic; help us to help yourself?”

Perl had been jingling her runestones in her pocket and now she cast them on the table nearby. “I will consult the stones.”

Reuth sighed and looked up at the others, shaking her head. “So what now? We know you are invincible, Leo, but how do we now take on the barbarian army? Perl can presumably protect some of us but what can a few of us achieve? We are still vulnerable to their arrows, their swords, their numbers.”

“How many people are in the camp here?” Leo asked.

Marth shrugged. “Around four hundred Vested, including children and infirm.”

“So perhaps two hundred and fifty useful bodies?”

“I’d say that, yes,” Marth agreed.

“None of them fighters,” Reuth qualified, glaring at Marth. “Farmers, bootmakers, tanners, bakers . . . They can’t wield swords and wouldn’t anyway.”

“Think about the magic that is here, though,” Leo tried. “Think hard. Does anyone have a magic that we can use against the barbarians?”

Reuth shook her head. “Unless it hasn’t been declared or discovered, the most intriguing is someone like Tolt who can correctly predict events. The rest is all practical but harmless magic like weather reading, water divination.”

Perl smirked. “I can assure you that half of the people here probably possess more interesting powers but won’t admit it. I have seen it in the stones.”

“Why haven’t you ever said anything?” Reuth asked.

Perl touched her damaged ear. “Because people are not good to one another if they know too much.” She stared at one of the stones she’d picked up, blood from her fingers wetting it, and suddenly laughed mirthlessly. “The solution is staring at us.”

“What did you just see?” Reuth said, grabbing the pebble from her friend’s hand. “Tell us.”

Perl was still smiling. She shook her head. “Why should I?”

“What do you want?” Leo asked, his voice betraying his frustration with her.

She shrugged. “What every girl wants I suppose.”

Everyone looked at her slightly befuddled. And then Reuth scoffed. “Perl, you’ve never shown any interest at all,” she claimed, staring around at the men.

Perl’s expression became uncharacteristically petulant. “Well, maybe now I do. Why shouldn’t I ask for this? I’m giving my life for it anyway. Who deserves it more?”

“What in Lo’s name does she want?” Leo asked. “If you have a solution for how to make us all safe, Perl, please share it with us. I will grant you now whatever you want, if it’s within my power.”

She laughed and clapped her hands. “Oh, it’s within your power, your majesty,” she said, again adding a snide tone to the royal title. “Where is Father Cloony?”

“Father Cloony?” Marth repeated.

Leo looked between them in consternation. “Why do we need a priest?”

“So we can be married immediately, majesty. I’m going to be Queen Perl as of today,” she declared. “And then you will be as trapped as I am,” she snarled.

Evie sucked in a helplessly deep breath and then even though she didn’t mean it to happen, a small ecstatic shriek escaped her. Kilt Faris clung to her, rigid. She felt the pulse within her and forcing her eyes open she saw her lover grit his teeth as he began to groan. It was partly the pleasure of his release, she knew, but mostly terror of the final imprisonment as she sensed a pain rip through him and the bonding process begin.

“It’s happening,” Kilt murmured, still in the midst of his ecstasy but plummeting fast into the trammeling.

And then she too was lost. She could feel her heart pound and was sure she could feel his heart hammering above her chest. They clung to each other as Evie heard strange words enter her mind and without any control she began to recite them in a language she didn’t recognize. Meanwhile, Kilt, his mouth pulled open now in a silent scream that looked nothing akin to pleasure, held her tight, and then tighter still until she was sure she could no longer tell their bodies apart; they felt as one.

And as one they became, their ardour spent as their connection to one another was no longer physical but mental and indeed spiritual.

“That’s like no other finish with a woman I’ve ever experienced,” his voice murmured, muffled, near her neck. “Was it good for you too?”

She laughed helplessly despite the gravity of their situation. She knew also that even though she was now magically shackled to Faris, he would be very hard not to love. His charm, his manner, his ability to amuse her even in dire circumstances only made her feel even more drawn to him.

“Genevieve, I know you’re new to this but you’re not meant to laugh,” he groaned, reluctantly withdrawing from her. “You’re meant to now be telling me that I am the best lover you know.”

Her amusement increased. “You’re the only lover I know.”

“We shall be keeping it that way,” he said. Then he lowered his head to kiss her tenderly again. “I am entirely yours now . . . body, mind, soul,” he added, his arch tone gone.

“Kilt, I can hear your heartbeat,” she whispered, wondering if his pain was over.

“And I can feel you, without having to touch you, although touching you is a very special bonus to this whole aegis arrangement.”

She grinned again, feeling like a loon. “I’m not using any healing power. Has the pain stopped?”

He nodded. “Gone.”

Evie hugged him. “Suddenly coming here doesn’t feel so bad.”

“I hate to spoil our tender moment,” he said reluctantly. “We should be languishing in a tangle of naked limbs instead of partly dressed and in quite such a hurry, but I think we do need to get back.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” she replied, hurrying to straighten her clothes. “All these fasteners,” she complained and then looked at him, imagining how to explain buttons, let alone zips. And then she let it go; easily, let everything about her former life go. Suddenly all that mattered was Kilt; she didn’t care at all about being Valisar or claiming thrones or righting the way this world should be. She was in love, she realized, and she felt deep within herself a private glow at finally giving up something she had always thought precious and had begun to wonder whether she would ever relinquish.

“I should tell you I think we were seen,” Kilt admitted sheepishly.

“Who?” she said, spinning around. “Corbel?”

“No, another fellow. He doesn’t realize I glimpsed him.” He shrugged. “Habit,” he admitted, “ever cautious. Anyway, it wasn’t de Vis but neither was it my friend, Jewd.”

“Barro probably,” she said. “He’s traveling with us. How much did he see?”

“Only us disappearing into the orchard.”

“Then he can’t tell Corbel anything.”

“But we must,” he warned. “He deserves that much.”

“I plan to, but, Kilt, after what you’ve said about Corbel, can you let me tell him, please?”

He nodded. “It’s not something I relish telling any man, so go ahead. But it has to be done immediately.”

She nodded. “How do you feel?” she asked, unable to help the doctor in her.

“I don’t think any aegis could ever feel as fortunate as I do.”

She nodded gravely. “Me too; I feel very lucky. I’m so glad Loethar didn’t get you.”

“Indeed. He doesn’t have such great tits!”

Princess Genevieve’s delighted laughter filled the orchard.