Lei’s thoughts were in turmoil as they rode through the sunset fields. Kin led them toward the sunset. There was no path to follow, and they pressed on through wildflowers and weeds. The emissary had been waiting for them at the front gate, with final gifts from the faerie queen: backpacks of oiled leather with golden buckles, filled with food, drink, and healing salves; and five horses, beautiful black steeds with silver manes, and white spots scattered across their flanks.

Her mind drifted back to their departure, the final words of the queen.

“If you wish to leave, I shall not delay you any further,” Thelania had said. “Farewell, Daine. We shall not meet again.”

“And what of Darkheart?” Lei said. The dryad’s voice—Free me!—still echoed in her thoughts, and she had to ask again.

“Her destiny is still bound with yours, Lei,” the queen said. “Her fate is in your hands, not mine.”

Then Daine had pulled Lei away. As soon as they’d left the chamber, he’d demanded an explanation of the queen’s words.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” she’d said, shrugging off his hands. “Not now. Not here. I just want to get out of this place.” The battle with the Woodsman, the wonder of Dusk, the luxury of the palace had helped Lei push the visions of the river to the back of her mind, and she’d been all too happy to forget. The queen’s words proved beyond any doubt that this was no dream, that she would soon have to face her past.

Kin promised a swift journey. “The portal we seek lies by the Bier of the Sleeper,” he said. “It’s not far from here—we’ll be there by nightfall.”

“Does night ever fall here?” Daine said as he mounted his horse.

“No,” Kin said. “Still, it’s not far.”

For a time they rode in silence, and Lei had set aside all thought, simply soaking in the beauty of the fields. Her companions had other ideas, and soon Daine and Pierce dropped back to ride alongside her.

“Lei,” Daine said, “I know this is hard for you. But we need answers.”

“You need answers?” she snapped. “You need answers? Do you think I don’t want answers every bit as much as you do?”

“So you have no idea what she was talking about?” Daine said. “Your bond with the staff? Hearing voices of dead giants?”

“I—” Lei shook her head.

“My lady,” said Pierce, “I do not wish to add to your distress, but there is some logic to this claim. You asked why Lakashtai struck at Daine, when she truly wished to manipulate you. If what the queen said was correct, she could not touch your dreams. Daine was the only one of us she could threaten.”

“Well, that makes me feel so much better,” Daine grumbled.

“Beyond that, I have have been thinking about Harmattan,” Pierce continued. “Perhaps there were other reasons he did not kill you. In Karul’tash, he called you sister—”

“I know,” Lei said. “He spoke to me, while you were scouting. It is not your fault you were forged of flesh instead of steel, he said. I thought it was a metaphor. I thought he’d say the same thing to any human. But now …”

“I don’t understand,” Daine said. “What are you?”

“What am I? I’m the woman you kissed this morning, or have you already forgotten?”

“No,” Daine said, grasping for words. “I mean—”

Lei’s rage had been building, and now the walls came tumbling down. It wasn’t truly Daine she was angry at, but she needed to unleash her anger, her confusion. “What, am I some monster now? I’m flesh and blood, Daine, and I don’t know what this means any more than you do. When I fell into that river, I saw my parents—I saw my parents talking about killing me, as if I were some failed experiment.” She reached back, placing her hand on her dragonmark. “I saw them brand me!”

Now Pierce spoke. “So your dragonmark is fal—”

“I don’t know!” Fear, fury, and insecurity came to a point. All her life she’d defined herself as a child of Cannith, one of the youngest to bear the Mark of Making. This question of humanity was one thing, but it was so broad, so alien, that it was hard for her to grasp. Her dragonmark was her very identity. She whirled in the saddle to face Pierce, and in that moment all her anger burst out of her.

Pierce convulsed, his body shaking and then going rigid, and he fell from the saddle. Lei’s anger melted away into panic.

Did I … what have I done?

She reined in her horse and leapt from the saddle. Daine was the better horseman, and he was already kneeling at Pierce’s side.

“Pierce!” he cried. He looked up at Lei. “He’s inert. I don’t see any damage.”

“It’s internal,” she said. Even as she knelt over him, she knew what had happened. As her anger had grown, she’d seen Pierce’s lifeweb in her mind, felt that pattern, and thrown the full strength of her rage against it. Such a thing was impossible. She should have had to touch him to cause this sort of damage.

She knelt next to Pierce, but she did not touch him. Instead, she tried to visualize his lifeweb, to find his spirit as she had during the battle with the Woodsman. The pattern resolved itself in her mind, and she was shocked to see the damage within him.

“What are you waiting for?” Daine said. “Fix him!”

Lei blocked out his voice, forcing all the noise and chaos from her senses. The pattern of Pierce became her world, and she carefully bridged the gaps and wove the strands together. Then it was done. The world came back to her, Daine shouting, Xu’sasar and Kin watching quizzically.

And Pierce sat up. “What happened?” he said. He paused, no doubt listening to his inner voice. “You attacked me,” he said to Lei.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said. “I don’t even know how I did it, Pierce. There’s a bond between us. I can feel you.”

“How is this possible?” Pierce said.

Another memory flashed through Lei’s mind: the vision she’d had when she first attacked Pierce, of a series of linked lifewebs, of her parents comparing patterns. “I think Harmattan was right. We are family. I think we were created at the same time, and that this bond … my parents must have done this.”

“This is insane,” Daine said, reaching out and taking her hand. “Lei, I’m sorry. I’m not good with words. None of this has come out the way I want. You’re not a monster. And that’s just it. You’re not … you’re not warforged. You’re human. This woman is playing games with you, like Lakashtai did with me.”

“No, Daine,” Lei said. “Someone’s playing a game with me, but it’s not Thelania. You heard that serpent. I said that I was born in my mother’s womb, and it told me I was wrong. And it showed me the truth.”

“It showed you something,” Daine said. “How do you know it was true?”

“I just do,” Lei said. “It all adds up. That sahuagin, Thaask. Harmattan. The visions from the river. That time I almost died … I could feel my wand of healing, even while I lay dying. I should have been unconscious, but somehow I activated the wand. I brought myself back.”

“You don’t know that.”

Lei looked at her hand. Her little finger, removed by Harmattan in the jungles of Xen’drik. “Give me your dagger,” she said.

“What?”

She reached out and pulled Daine’s dagger from his belt. Before he could stop her, she drew the edge across her palm.

Blood welled from the wound. “See,” Daine said. “Blood. You’re—”

Once again, Lei shut out the sights and sounds around her. This time it wasn’t Pierce she was looking for. This time she looked within. Once she’d had a dream of her mother, in what she now knew to be the hidden workshop in Blacklion. Aleisa had stood over her, studying Lei and comparing her to a pattern she held in her hand. Now Lei reached out for that pattern …

And she found it.

It was like no lifeweb she’d ever seen before. The warforged contained matter in the form of wood and roots, but they were inanimate objects given life through magic. This pattern … the body was flesh and blood, but the magic was still there, spread through every vein and every muscle.

How did this begin? she wondered. I was a child. I grew within the house. Was I born? Or did they make me from raw matter? She remembered the words of her mother, in the final moments of her river-spawned vision: Let my blood flow into you once more.

She studied the pattern more closely. There! It was so small she could hardly see it, but there was the cut on her palm. Concentrating, she sought to restore the design to purity. Repairing such minor damage to Pierce would have been the work of a moment. This was a struggle. The web was stranger than anything she’d every dealt with. Yet slowly, ever so slowly, it came together.

She opened her eyes. “… bleeding,” Daine was saying.

The cut was gone, with only a few drops of blood on her palm to show that she’d ever been injured.

“Lei,” Pierce said. “How did you do that?”

“It’s all true,” she said. “I’m not human.”

The words felt empty. Her anger had faded away, and all she felt was exhaustion. She fell to her knees, wildflowers brushing against her chest.

“I don’t care.” Daine dropped to the ground next to her, turned her chin to face him. “Warforged, human, dragonmarked or not … I don’t care if you’re a goblin, Lei. I doesn’t matter what you are. I only care about who you are.” His hands were on her shoulders. “I love you, Lei.”

She kissed him, and in that moment, he was the world. When they broke apart, she felt tears welling. “I don’t know what this means,” she said.

“We’ll find out together,” Daine replied.

She nodded, and the tears flowed freely. She looked up at Pierce and held out her hand. The warforged pulled her to her feet. “Pierce, I don’t know what to say.”

“Nothing need be said. Daine is correct. It seems we both have mysteries to unravel. Whatever the future holds, I will be by your side.”

Lei nodded, wiping at her cheeks. “Thank you, brother,” she said to Pierce. She turned to Daine, and the words of the dryad came back to her. You have life. You have love, if you have the courage to seize it.

“This is very touching, but the future won’t hold much of anything if you all stand here blubbering,” Kin said. “The bier is just beyond the hill. Lords and ladies, do you think you can contain your emotions until you’ve saved your world?”

Lei ignored the guide, her gaze still on Daine. He was smiling, and there was a joy in his eyes she’d never seen before. “Daine …” she said.

“Hush,” he said, taking her hand and leading Lei to her horse. “There’ll be time for us later. Right now, Riedra awaits.”

For the first time that day, Lei felt as if her burdens were truly lifted. Yet even as her heart soared, a memory rose to the surface, sending a chill through her mind. Her father, deep in the heart of Blacklion.

She is the most dangerous thing we have ever created.

What did he mean?