My huge thanks and general worship to: Takishia, LifeSucksWithoutVamps, the anonymous one, Silvia, Izzy, Anterrabae, Lunair, CalliopeMused, Bex Drake, yukatalamia, Shelli, and the lovely Lethe.

As you can tell, I adore hearing what you think. Comments, criticism, thoughts, opinions, challenges all very much welcome!

Lyrics come from Wonderwall by Oasis. I hope you enjoy reading this!
- Ki

Ripples Part Twenty One

Back beat, the word is on the street that the fire in your heart is out
I'm sure you've heard it all before but you never really had a doubt
I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now...

Celia hadn't gone far. It was mere moments before the soft, human scent of her drifted across the air, tainted with salt.

His sister's husky prophecy echoed in his mind. She will break, you know, one way or another – and you'll have only yourself to blame.

Riose had thought her fatalistic. Now he was very afraid that she was right.

Celia was sat on a wall, shoulders hunched, folded in on herself like a withered flower. Her face was in deep shadow, but her maimed hand was all too visible.

He paused, hesitant. "Cee?"

Her eyes were pure liquid under the streetlight, her lips parted. Then she gave a ragged laugh, the tears yet held back, her control formidable as she herself was formidable.

"I thought you'd come to rescue me," she said in a hopeless, shaky voice.

He flinched. "You don't know how much I wish I had. I'm sorry."

"It was so easy," she said dreamily. "I didn't know it could be so easy. He just reached out, and I felt my bones break. And he enjoyed it."

"He'll pay for that," he swore.

For a moment, he was a creature of the Furies again and their will possessed him as surely as it ever had, rising up with whispers of bloodlust and reprisal.

"I don't need revenge, Ri." How dreadfully tired she sounded. "It won't help."

Confusion made him hesitate. "What will?"

Silence, her eyes bright reflections of the long-set sun. A shiver wracked her – sunlight spilled out onto her cheeks like gold rays, and for a moment, she was strange and beautiful until he realised that it was not sunlight at all but tears.

He could stay still no longer. The space between them vanished, unimportant, unnecessary as he scooped her up into his arms and held her to him as if he could ward away all that happened. She was light as a fallen leaf, and terribly brittle, terribly cold. Her tears were the warmest thing about her, damp on his neck.

She didn't wail or rage, didn't do anything except weep with so little fuss that he could only marvel at her dignity. Her broken hand was limp in her lap, she curled across his body. As the tears left her, she stilled, and lay in the cradle of his arms, her breath a soft wash on his throat.

"I need to be safe again," she mumbled, "But that won't happen - no, it never happened, did it? I was never safe. The monsters were always there, waiting. I just didn't see them before because they looked like people. It was an illusion."

He closed his lips over a confirmation.

"And what about you, Ri?" Her voice was unexpectedly bitter and angry. She reached out and turned his face down to her so she could see his expression. "Are you just a monster who looks like a person?"

"Sometimes," he answered honestly. The distance between them was so slight, so intense.

"As long as I know you, I'll never be safe." The measured pace of her words did not lessen their impact.

"I - I know."

"I could walk away," she threw at him, words like stones. "I could leave tonight and pretend I didn't know you, I could make other friends. I could forget all about the Nightworld, and eventually, it'd all just be a bizarre memory of some people I knew once."

"Yes."

One word. It hurt.

She took a deep breath. "Would I be safe?"

"Probably," he said, unwillingly. "Safer than if you stay."

But she would never know what happened. She'd never hear a mermaid sing again, or see a witch juggling with fire. No one would show her the secret ways through the wood, or play hopscotch in the moon-shadows with her. All that was dark and subtle and dangerous would be kept from her, and the night would become nothing more than the absence of sunlight.

She would be safe, but she woud never know what it meant to be truly human, truly alive.

"I thought so," she said. Her hair fell across her face like black bars, and for an elusive instant, she seemed caged. "I don't know what to do, Ri. It would be smarter to go."

He remembered a conversation in a gentler night than this, when he had been afraid and she offered solace.

If I do ever run...promise you'll come after me?

"Yes," he said softly. "But please don't."

"I'm scared," she said simply.

Riose met her eyes. "So am I. I don't think there's been a day when I haven't been afraid that the Furies will come back for me – or worse, they'll come for one of you. I'm afraid I'll wake up one morning and be a monster again. I'm afraid I already am and I just don't know it. And if you go...who'll keep me from being a monster, Cee? Who'll keep me human?"

"You don't me need for that."

"Yes I do." He touched her hair, lightly, timid. "You taught me how to be human."

Her eyes were puzzled, still wet and gleaming. "What could I teach you?"

"Fun," he said, the word less strange than it had been when he was a child and had first heard it. "Games where winning didn't matter. Sunshine and mud and cookies. Hugs. Jokes. Truth or dare and catch and I Spy. Super special triple chocolate sundaes. Caring about someone for no reason at all. How to be friends."

The last, he left unsaid, but it lingered in his mouth as fresh and sharp as mint.

Love.

"You didn't get all that from me," she said, sounding astonished.

"I did." He took a deep breath. "But I'm still never sure that it's enough – that I won't wake up and it'll all be a dream. It doesn't stop me being afraid."

She touched his cheek, very gentle, a seed of the girl he knew. She was weighing her words, deciding, and the time while he waited seemed a taste of eternity.

"Then maybe we can be afraid together," Celia offered. She tried a fragile smile. "You protect me from the monsters, I'll make sure you don't become one of them."

"So...you'll stay?"

Relief was so intense that he closed his eyes, forcing himself to be still. It seemed to him the merest movement might send her fleeing like a faun.

"Of course," she sighed, and he dared to look at her tremulous smile. "Do you really think I could leave any of you?" She lifted her damaged hand ruefully. "It's only a couple of fingers, right?"

Her flippancy didn't disguise the flash of fear in her eyes.

"You need healing," he said, all too aware that he had taken Phi to be healed only a couple of weeks before. And suddenly a thought clicked into his mind with unerring accuracy.

That injury had been caused by Don. And Don had had the waft of dragons about his newfound power. Riose didn't think there were any running around Ryars Valley right now, but he knew there were two people who had stolen dragon powers, two people who had meddled in this whole tangled affair and who were inevitably found on opposite sides of any argument.

Out of Chatoya Irkil and Bane Malefici, he knew which would support Don Ivan. By default, a healer and a potential ally was waiting for them.

"And I know just the person to do it," he said, and stood with her in his arms.

"I can walk," Celia protested.

"We don't have time for that," he told her, and then added grimly, "This is going to hurt your hand, Cee, but I wouldn't unless I had to. Hang on."

With that, he was running – faster than any human, fast enough for her to gasp and wince against him. The wind streamed by, time streaming with it, and he prayed that he was right. It was Celia in his arms: yet it was Phi in danger now, Phi in desperate need of help.

X - X - X - X - X

They crashed through the woods. Sensations spun by like flashes of a nightmare: the spiky black shapes of branches, her feet scratching and dragging in the dirt, her hair clumped in her mouth and her eyes.

His arm was tight about her throat, squeezing until her vision was greyed and disintegrating. Barely conscious, Phi was reduced to soundless fear inside her body, which became no more than a percussion instrument: hollow, noisy, fragile.

Relentless, Don Ivan dragged her into the shadows and the secret places of Ryars Valley. The worst of it was his scent – lake water and musk and sweat, all-pervasive. She inhaled his cruelty with every breath. Time was fluid, rolling between her fingers – she was sixteen, she was eight, she was six and ten and thirteen, she was breathing him in and trying to hide, she was sixteen, she was eight...

X - X - X - X - X

The woods were unfamiliar to her – a vast dappled world that seemed new and dreamlike. Phi was used to water, to crowds, to noise that was constant and public. Here, every sound seemed an intrusion on the subtlety of the silence – the rustle of leaves, the crackle of the ground underfoot. Voices were vulgar as a scream in a cathedral.

It was almost like being underwater – murky, green, full of shadows and half-hidden shapes, but without the press of water, she felt lonely. A little scared. She clung to her father's hand as if it were a lifebelt.

Around them, Don ran and darted, chattering eagerly. Others of the pod elders drifted in and out of her memory – adults murmuring of adult things, but the fraught atmosphere was unmistakable.

Then the walk ended: new figures, strange-smelling, entered. There were discussions and long pauses and then her father sent her and Don to play in the woods.

She hadn't known him well enough to dislike him then. Instead, she followed him and waited silently at his side while he talked to some of the Pack boys. She didn't like their snarling voices, their swagger, but she answered when they spoke to her; she tried to be her father's daughter.

"Is it true about the pit?" Don had said, his voice eager.

The wolves had been a little older – eleven, twelve, the age gap enough for them to be condescending. "Depends what you've heard," one of them said with a smirk.

"I heard there's spikes at the bottom," Don said. "I hear you keep prisoners there, and you torture them, and I heard that someone died there." The last rushed out with ghoulish enthusiasm.

They neither confirmed nor denied the rumours; one of them offered, "We could show you it."

Don's eyes lit up.

So she found herself tramping after them until the adults' voices were a burr, then were swallowed up by the silence of the forest. They walked until her legs ached and she was sticky and hot and tired. Then one of the boys pulled aside a rotten wooden cover to reveal a long, narrow well.

"There it is," he said proudly. "That's the pit."

Phi tottered as close to the edge as she dared, and peered into it. "It just looks like a big hole to me," she said dubiously. "I can't see any spikes."

"Well, they're all rusted from the blood on 'em," one of the boys said. He didn't sound too pleased.

"It smells disgusting," she announced. It was just a silly story – probably it was an old well, and they'd made up the tales to sound cool. The reality, though, was disappointing.

"Well, it would!" a wolf said indignantly. "It's the pit."

"It's a stinky old hole," she retorted. "My dad's got bigger holes in his yard."

"Has not!"

"Has too!"

Throughout the exchange, Don was circling the pit, his eyes fixed on it. From every angle, he peered in, his fascination seemingly that of any small boy confronted with a gruesome story.

"Has not! It's the pit."

"It's the pits," she mocked. With unerring diplomatic skill, Phi continued this line of argument until the wolves stormed off in a rage.

"Now how are we going to get back?" Don demanded. He was squinting into the dark hole, face screwed up in thought.

"It's not that hard," she said defiantly. "If dumbos like them can manage it, it'll be easy for us to get back. We're pod, aren't we?"

He didn't answer her for a while. When he did speak, he sounded abstracted and remote.

"You're right, I can't see the spikes," he said. "D'you think they were making it up?"

She shrugged. "We could throw in a rock or something. We'd hear if it hit them." She was beginning to get bored of the Pack's mighty pit. The woods, she decided, were kind of creepy.

"Not if it missed," he muttered.

"Let's go back," she said. "It's boring."

He glanced up – and though she saw the strange glitter of his eyes, she didn't understand what it meant. "Hey, I think I see a skull. Come look!"

She was stupid. She fell for a trick that Wile E Coyote would have snubbed: she went over, interest briefly reawakened and peered in-

Although later no one would believe her, she felt the hand on her back – she felt the shove. She woke from nightmares feeling it, toppling down, down, down into darkness and waking to tangled sheets and a thundering heart.

She fell, she flew – for a moment, she couldn't tell, time dragged down with her by ruthless gravity, by the call of the pit. Smell of decay, death, ordure-

Pain broke into her leg like a wild animal, tearing, cruel. She managed only a thin wail, hands scrabbling to the source of her agony, shock black, swamping her...

Before she passed out, she knew one fact: there were spikes in the pit. One of them was in her leg.

X - X - X - X - X

It must have been moments before she came around again, sobbing. The pain was still there, big and overwhelming and harsh.

She gazed up into the circle of light. As long as she lived, the sight would haunt her: Don leaned over, and it was as if he had torn off a mask to reveal the Halloween monster beneath. His eyes were hot, hungry, drinking in the sight of her in the gloom.

"Get Daddy!" she pleaded between tears. "Don, please, get Daddy, I'm hurt."

She didn't understand him, even then. She thought it had all been some awful accident: that he would be sorry, run and fetch her father and it would all somehow be okay. But he didn't.

He stood, watching her, that expression of glee and desire plastered on his face.

When he spoke, his voice was tremulous and excited. "Does it hurt?"

"Yes, please, get help!"

Her eyes were adjusting to the gloom. Her nose was full of the stench of old blood and mud and rot. In the corner, she saw a pale, long shape – another, clusters of them, and when she reached out for one in her daze of pain and confusion, she saw that they were bones. Bones with gnaw-marks – she flung it away, moaning.

Mud and blood and bone. People had died down here, and she was hurting so much, and the darkness seemed to be closing in, swallowing her...

She screamed, screaming until her throat felt like it was dangling in tatters. She begged to him, towering over her like a golden angel, knowing that she was alone except for him, that he was the only one who could help her.

She truly thought she would die, pinned upon the pit like a butterfly.

And he watched her. For what felt like hours he watched, drinking in her pain and fear, and when she heard his laughter as she flitted in and out of consciousness, she tried to scream again, but had no voice left.

There, in the dark, she learned his true nature. She never forgot the lesson, even when he grew bored of her and went to find adults. Even when she was lifted out by soft hands, when her father cuddled her as praises showered on Don for being so brave – coming back alone, making his ways through the woods like that.

Tears glistened in his eyes as she pointed at him through a haze of painkillers, accusing. Of course no one believed her in the face of his scraped hands, of how fast he had run, his own tears. It was a virtuoso performance.

And she never forgot what he had taught her in the pit.

X - X - X - X - X

When Riose put her carefully on her feet, Celia was dizzy with pain. No matter how he had tried, the run had jolted her hand until she felt sick. For a moment, she clung to him as the only safety in a treacherous world, and he was warm, solid, folding around her like he could protect her from all the world.

Wearily, she drew away. He'd deposited them in front of someone's door. "Where are we?"

In answer, he stepped up and rang the doorbell.

They waited in terse silence. She heard the sound of scuffling eventually, and the door was flung open by Chatoya Irkil. Celia knew her – she was one of Aspen's friends, if one he treated with something close to wariness, and she'd seen the witch with Mr Jubatus too. She was dressed for bed, her hair falling in a dark cloud about her, her green eyes soft and curious.

"Can I..." Her eyes dropped to Celia's hand, and she said in an entirely different tone, "Who did that?"

"Don Ivan," Riose said, voice almost neutral. Almost. "He's got Phi."

The witch's mouth drew tight. "I hope you haven't come to try and guilt-trip me, Riose."

"I came to see if you would heal Celia." There was unexpected ice in the words. "I'm not stupid enough to expect anything more. You made your views on Phi's predicament very clear."

Confused, Celia looked from one to the other.

"Take care," warned Chatoya. "Even I don't have unlimited patience."

She heard Riose draw a harsh breath, and she was expecting one of his cool put-downs, then he let it out and said, "My apologies. Please – I need your help."

"The question is," said a smooth voice, "what are you prepared to pay for it?"

She'd never seen Riose move so fast. Suddenly he was in front of her – protecting her, she realised, tense as a cat waiting to pounce.

"Not enough," Riose snapped.

"It's okay, Ri," she said, nudging him aside. "I know him."

Riose was looking at her as if she was mad. Blue Malefici, on the other hand, was wearing an amused smile that she'd seen a dozen times before. He was one of Aspen's friends – one of the few people Aspen seemed genuinely easy with – and over the years, they'd run into one another often enough for her to know a few things about him.

"You've met me," corrected Blue. "I'm not sure that counts as knowing."

She knew Aspen liked him, even though he feared Blue too. She knew Vaje hated him. And she knew two secrets about him.

"Well," she said softly, her heart hammering, "who really knows the Demon Fury?"

Now she knew one secret about him.

The silence was vast as the sky. She dared meet his eyes and had to look away – something dark yawned there, opening out into emotions she had never seen and could not even qualify. She could not help but be aware that she was human, frail, infinitely breakable.

She had been afraid of Don. It was nothing to the terror that gripped her now.

"Don't hurt her," she heard Riose whisper. It was a plea, not a command.

"I had no idea you knew." Blue sounded...thoughtful. "Martin's carelessness, I suppose."

"Someone's carelessness," she answered, cautious. "You helped Phi."

"If you want to call it that, yes."

"Why?"

He shrugged, a languid, graceful gesture. So might a tiger shrug, settling before wounded prey. "She was willing to pay."

"And if we're willing to pay again?" Her voice was husky, she realised, frightened. The pain was throbbing in her finger. She felt old, tired, as if she was dealing away her soul piece by piece.

"No." The clipped word was spoken in unison – Chatoya and Riose stared at one another, then the witch said quietly, "I won't let it happen."

"I fail to see how you can stop any of this," Blue said calmly. "They need help; I'm willing to provide it."

"For a price." The bitterness in Chatoya's voice startled her. "All your help has a price."

"A fair trade." His smile was thin, serpentine. "Or do you really think they'll let Don Ivan kill Delphine? That is how it will end. She defied him in front of the entire pod. He won't let such humiliation pass. And mark me, he will want to shame her as badly as he feels she has shamed him."

Chatoya was pale except for the two bars of scarlet on her cheeks, still as if his words had frozen her.

"He knows how to make her weak," he continued softly. "After all, he has done it before. He knows the power of darkness and pain and despair – and love. He will use it to make her docile, to break her piece by piece until all she knows of love is how deadly it can be. And when he tires of her, when she is his completely and nothing remains but shreds and madness, he will kill her."

"As if you care," Chatoya said, but her voice was tremulous.

"For her, no. For the gain I can make here?" He turned to Riose and his face was imperious, icy. "What will you give me for her life, Riose?"

Riose shook his head, but Celia could see him deciding.

"I have something to offer you," she said quietly.

Riose grabbed her, holding her as easily as if she were made of feathers and string. "No."

"And what might that be?" Blue purred.

She avoided his eyes, but her voice was surprisingly steady. "My silence."

"About what? My other identity? The silence isn't for my safety."

"Not that."

"Then what?" He spoke idly, but his stillness was that of a predator lulling its prey.

She knew one secret about him. Just one. And once it was gone, nothing would keep her safe.

"Enough." The strain was raw in Chatoya's voice. "I'll help you. No price. No debts. My help, this once."

"Why?" Riose asked, unexpectedly suspicious.

"Because I'm tired of seeing people who should know better throw themselves at the Furies. Because if Don doesn't kill you, he will later." Her fists were clenched. "Give me your hand, Celia."

"We need more help than that," ventured Riose.

Chatoya's grip wasn't gentle: Celia gasped as magic rushed into her fingers, and her bones rearranged themselves in a blur of black pain.

"You'll get it," Chatoya said flatly. "I've called someone. She swore to protect Phi – she's on her way."

"Who?"

"Ask her when you see her." She bit out the words as if every one was a curse. "Bandage that hand when you get home. If you get home. And don't ask me for any more favours, Riose. I swore I'd keep the Furies out of Ryars Valley. You made me break that promise."

"I didn't make you," he said curtly. "We would have paid Blue."

"Then you're an idiot," she said, and slammed the door on them.

Celia let out a breath she hadn't know she was holding. Her hand was now swollen and bruised around the knuckles, but the pain had subsided to a dull ache. It felt wrenched, no more.

"Why did you do that?" Riose asked, and she turned to see him staring at Blue with nothing short of astonishment. "You knew what was going to happen."

"Don't you have a friend to keep from a grisly death?" Blue said breezily. "I'd run if I were you. With a temper like hers, she's liable to provoke Don Ivan beyond any hope of reprieve."

Riose grimaced, then said, "But-"

"Ri," she said. She could see it in his eyes – the hunger, the need to unravel a mystery, to dive back into the cryptic politics of the Furies. Some part of him still belonged to them, she was sure.

But it was her job to keep him human.

He let out his breath. "It'll be quicker if I carry you."

It was only moments before they were gone. She didn't glance back. Instead she huddled down into Riose's grip, into all the safety remaining to her and didn't dare to think how close they might have come to disaster if Chatoya hadn't intervened, if...

But help was coming. That was all that mattered.

X - X - X - X - X

Chatoya leaned back against the door. There was no mistaking the tension in her body, born as much of despair as of anger. She closed her eyes; for a moment, only a moment, and he wondered what images taunted her in the darkness of her thoughts.

"You did what you had to," Cougar said quietly from where he was sat on the couch. Common sense had kept him out of sight; now he got up, not sure if she would welcome comfort.

"I did what they made me do." Her voice was ragged. "I did what he wanted."

He eyed her, then said carefully, "You did the right thing, babe."

Her eyes flew open: wild, turbulent, they belonged to a stranger. The girl he had always known had been so serene, able to find a pool of stillness in herself even when all the world was crumpling about her. No more. The years and the Furies had changed her.

"Then why has it all gone wrong?" she demanded. "I tried to keep Delphine Thetis away from us, and now she's Blue's, heart and soul, same as all the others. If I hadn't meddled," the word tripped off her tongue coated in acid, "he'd have Riose and Celia Slone to play with too."

Heart and soul? No, he didn't think that was right. Delphine Thetis, it seemed to him, had a lot of both, but she didn't belong to Blue, no matter what his half-brother had tried to take from her. As for Riose, he'd wrested free of Nightfire long ago, and wasn't so stupid as to fling away his freedom. And Celia – well, she was a Slone. He suspected that even Blue wouldn't want to explain his darker deeds to her mother.

Whose heart and soul was she really so afraid for?

"It hasn't gone wrong," he said. "if anything, it sounds like it's starting to go right. You've deprived that bastard of his pickings for tonight – you've helped Phi Thetis, you've helped Celia and Riose. Where's the problem?"

"I'm trying to keep the Furies away from Ryars Valley!" she snapped, and shoved herself away from the wall as if she might fly at him. "I've spent so much time trying...and he's won again."

"Won?" he echoed softly, astounded. "When did this start being about winning? I thought this was about doing what was right."

She stared at him, bewildered, silent. Then something fractured in her face, and she was trembling. "What's happened to me, Cougar?" she whispered. "I don't even know who I am anymore."

Nearly a Fury, he thought. Nearly lost.

"You're not who you were, Toya," he said quietly.

She looked past him, eyes elsewhere. "I can't be who I was. Do you think I could survive the Furies if I was?"

"Yes," he answered, honest, needing her to see what the rest of them had seen so clearly and been unable to speak of. "I think you could. You're so strong, maybe stronger than anyone I've ever known. You used to care about what was right. You were going to change them – but somewhere along the way, they changed you. I've never seen you turn your back anyone – but you left Phi Thetis to that slimy son-of-a-bitch like you didn't care. You sent her into Blue's arms! Christ! She's a kid, a scared kid and you sent her to him."

"I...I..." She crumpled – she was falling, and he couldn't see her face because it was lost in the mesh of black hair and white fingers. "I thought it was what was right."

He knelt down, but didn't dare touch her. Somewhere, she had become distant, separated by her secrets. "No, babe. It was what you wish someone had done for you."

Her laugh was choked with tears. "That obvious, huh?"

"Little bit, yeah," he muttered. "To people who know you."

"What am I going to do?" Her voice was forlorn.

"Be yourself," he said. "Kick some ass. Do some good. Stop regretting." He brushed her arm; her eyes gazed at him like a trapped creature. "Come over to Jepar's tonight and talk to some people who know damn well who you are."

Her smile was flickering and unsure. "I could do that."

"Good." He blew her a kiss, and left her there. The rest was up to her. And he hoped, god, he hoped, that she would come back to them. "See you later, then."

X - X - X - X - X

Finn had to stagger to a stop as a stitch bit into his side. Jo had streaked off ahead long ago and only her terse stream of directions kept him on her trail. They had to keep back to make sure Don didn't notice them, but Jo knew Phi's scent well enough to follow her through hell.

Riose burst into his head, radiating cold purpose. We're coming back to you. Help's on the way.

It had better be powerful help. We've just found out who's behind all this.

Yeah, I thought it was the Furies, but looks like I was wrong. Who's pulling the strings?

Finn still could hardly believe it himself. It seemed like a fairy tale. Avarice ap Sangager.

Oh…shit.

My thoughts exactly.

Well, the Furies have sent us some help. Someone who swore to protect Phi, apparently, Riose said.

Finn sincerely hoped they were someone big and bad enough to take on Avarice ap Sangager. He had only heard a few stories about her, but none of them had been pleasant. Anyone who'd managed to give their name to a personality trait like that wasn't going to be.

And then a new voice broke over them like a waterfall, feminine and ancient yet strangely gentle. That would be me.

He could sense Riose's surprise. And you are…?

Ryar ap Sangager. Who should I be heading towards?

Finn recovered himself in time to say, Err, me. Are you really Ryar ap Sangager – didn't you make the mer?

Yes and yes, and on my way.

The contact broke: he and Riose were left in a puddle of stunned silence.

You know, Finn said thoughtfully, I think we might be okay after all.

Riose sounded more cheerful. Yep. If there's one person you really don't want crashing in on your grab for power, it's got to be your incredibly powerful and pissed-off younger sister.

Barbecue at mine after? Dish of the day: tuna steaks.

He felt Riose's amusement, grim but there. Let's get Phi before we start planning the victory celebrations.

Pragmatist, Finn muttered sulkily.

He broke the contact – and started. A woman was waiting for him, a woman as willowy and graceful as a twist of smoke. He wondered if he should bow, but settled for gawping at her. How had she moved so fast?

He'd expected some kind of wild beauty. Once the shock of her was past him, he saw she was slight. Her face held no great wisdom, nothing but an uncertainty that he hadn't expected at all, despite the weight of power in her gaze.

"Um...hi," he said weakly. Not perhaps his most eloquent moment.

Ryar ap Sangager raised an eyebrow. "Shall we go?"

"This way," he muttered, picking up Jo's trail again.

He was walking with a legend. Yet in the faded light, she looked frighteningly ordinary.

X - X - X - X - X

Phi could not say how long she floated amidst memories, besieged by her terror. Time and again she tried to master it, only to have it master her. She was beaten down by the bar of his arm across her throat, by her feet scuffing on the ground, by the silky threats he hissed in her ear.

It seemed that past, present and future met and meshed and he sat at their center, the only certainty left in her life: Don Ivan.

And suddenly, his grip was gone – she slammed into a stone floor, and only gazed at it stupidly for a moment. Free of the scent, the feel, the sight of him, some of her fear slackened. She could think again: she was somewhere cold, stinking of smoke.

Phi raised her head. What met her eyes made no sense. The vast cavern, lit by coughing torches, she could understand. Directly in front of her was a throne made of stone, that too made sense.

But what was in it...

It couldn't be alive. Nothing that looked like that could be. It was so decayed that it took her long minutes to see the shapes of humanity – those blind white globs had been eyes, and the sloughing, grey-green matter was skin. The curled, brittle twigs were fingers, oozing blood where the knuckles divided; slowly she divined nose and lipless, sneering mouth, then she saw the hitch of the chest, and recoiled.

It was alive. Whatever this pathetic thing was, it lived.

Then she heard Don, his voice full of reverence. "I have brought her."

The voice that spilled over her like poison was surprisingly strong, melodious. It shouldn't have belonged to something like that. And Phi stopped pitying the creature, and began to fear it.

And she will be yours when I am done with her. How small she looks. I expected...more.

"Who are you?" she whispered, needing confirmation even knowing the answer.

And the laughter that rolled from it was rich, sleek, satisfied. Surely you know that much by now. Or did my burning one truly keep his promise? How – unlikely.

Even the allusion to Zeke was excruciating. Phi fought for calm: she found only fear.

It leaned forward – no, she, she leaned forward. Tell me who I am, she demanded, and Phi heard a savage need in that voice. Say my name!

"Avarice," she said helplessly. "Avarice ap Sangager."

And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I would like to say to you
But I don't know how

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