She had not expected an answer immediately. She had no idea, after all, how far this message would have to travel, or how many times it would be debated in the Elven councils before a reply was vouchsafed her.
She had most definitely not expected a
So when she sent the message out, and sat for a moment with her mind empty and her hand still clasping her bracelet, it was not with any expectation of something more than a moment of respite before T'fyrr emerged from his bath.
But she got far more than she had reckoned on.
The spell of music and message she had sent out had been a delicate, braided band of silver and shadow. The reply caught her unawares and wrapped her in a rushing wind, spun her around in a dizzying spiral of steel- strong starlight, surrounded her with bared blades of ice and moonbeams, and sang serenely into her heart in a voice of trumpets and the pounding sea.
And all of it, a simple, single word.
YES.
When T'fyrr emerged from the bathroom, he found her still shaking with reaction and the certainty that if their reply had been so ready and so simple, there must be a reason. So she sat, and trembled, and she could not even tell him why. She could only smile and tell him it was nothing to worry about.
She moved through the day holding onto each moment, savoring every scrap of time with him_but trying her best to act as if nothing had changed between them. He knew there was something wrong, of course, but she was able to convince him that it was only her own fears getting the best of her. She told him that she would be all right; and she bound herself up in the rags of her courage and went on with all their plans.
But when the blow came, as she had known it would, it still came as a shock.
He had spent the night at the Palace, hoping for a summons from the High King, but not really expecting one. She was expecting him in midmorning, as always; she sensed his wild surge of delight as he took to the air, and went to the roof to await his arrival.
She shaded her eyes with her hand and peered upwards into the blue and cloudless sky, even though she knew she would never see him up there. It would take the eyes of an eagle to pick out the tiny dot up there; if she'd had a hawk on her wrist, it
But she always looked, anyway.
She was looking up when the blow struck her heart, and she collapsed onto the baked surface of the roof, breath caught in her throat, mouth opened in a soundless cry of anguish.
It was pain, the mingling of a hundred fears, a wash of dizziness and a wave of darkness. She could not breathe_could not see_
She blacked out for a moment, but fought herself free of the tangling shroud of unconsciousness, and dragged herself back to reality with the sure knowledge that her worst nightmare had come to pass.
They had taken T'fyrr, snatched him out of the sky by magic.
And there was nothing that anyone could have done to prevent it, for the sky was the one place where they had thought he was safe.
T'fyrr was gone.
'You're sure?' Tyladen said for the tenth time. She bit her lip, and said nothing. She'd already told him everything there was to say, at least three times over.
But Harperus, who had a listening device of his own, growled at both of them from his room in the Palace, his voice coming through a box on Tyladen's desk. 'Of course she is sure, you fool! Didn't I just tell you that he left here an hour ago? He went straight from my balcony_and he was going directly to Freehold! If Nightingale says he was kidnapped, then you can take it as fact!'
'B-but magic_' Tyladen stuttered. 'How can you kidnap someone with something that doesn't_'
'These people believe that what we do is magic, child,' Harperus interrupted. 'If you must, assume it's a different technology; for all
