'I see you,' he rasped. 'You cannot hide.'
The nameless elf tore her gaze away, but everywhere she looked, there he was. Every demon wore Gestal's laughing face, Gestal's burning eyes, Gestal's broken grin.
'Shadows cannot hide you,' the faces said. 'We know your lies.'
Gestal surrounded her, his madness beating at every corner of her will.
'No,' she growled. 'No!' The demons surged around her, and she slashed, tore, and cut, but there were so many-too many. She slashed at them and ran them through again and again, but they kept coming. Claws tore and rent her clothes.
'You fear,' they all said, out of bleeding mouths and broken jaws. 'You fear being stripped of your shadows- fear being nothing-fear knowing your lies for lies.'
'They're not lies!' she lied. The claws and fire tore at her clothes-her flesh froze, even though the flames rose and rose around her.
Claws wrenched the gray rapier from her hand and they caught fire. Their blackness burned away before her eyes, stripped and peeled like thick paint on a flawed canvas. White gleamed underneath-white like bone-and she screamed and shut her eyes. The darkness was not an escape-the demons followed her.
'You're alone,' they said. 'A lonely child-a fool child. A child.'
'I'm not a child!' she lied. She staggered and finally knelt, exhausted, naked, and surrounded. 'I'm telling the truth!'
'No, you're not,' a familiar voice said. 'You are nothing alone-without your steel, without your lies. Nothing.'
Then a loving, gentle hand-Liet's hand, she thought-reached out of the chaos.
Against all her instincts, against the demand of her will, gods help her, she wanted to take it-needed desperately to take it. She needed to let her mind go, let her heart take her fully, let the dream become her world.
'Come with me,' Liet's voice whispered. He was there, welcoming, inviting. 'Run-leave your pain and your lies. Accept what you are.'
They were all gone. Every man or woman she had loved. Her father, Nymlin, Neveren-all of the hundred or so creatures she had loved were dead. Lilten had abandoned her. Liet was gone. She had no one to call upon.
'Where are you wandering?' Liet smiled so sweetly. 'Come. Walk with me.'
She reached out to take Liet's hand.
Then there was a sound, from somewhere in the depths of madness roiling around them, somewhere beyond the gray emptiness that stretched forever.
A child's laugh.
Reality shifted, the nameless elf hesitated, and an olive-skinned hand reached out and slapped his hands away.
And Ilira, for she remembered that Ilira was her name, screamed.
The elf woke, lying on her stomach, into silence.
There was nothing in the world but stillness and herself. It was a pregnant silence, so tangible a sharp knife could shave off a bit to keep locked in a box, and so inexplicably sad that it could only live in a lady's heart. One arm pillowed her chin, the other hung at her side. A whisper of breath tickled the small hairs across her exposed back. She did not know if the dream had ended, or if it endured.
Twilight felt a presence and she froze. Slowly, as though any tiny shift would lead to horror or pain, she looked at the plain-faced elf she somehow knew knelt there.
Any Tel'Quessir who looked upon him would see a face like a reflection, but an elflord's face all the same. A moon elf would see pale skin and midnight hair, a sun elf bronze flesh and a golden mane. The skin would seem copper to a wood elf, aquamarine to a sea elf, deep brown to a wild elf. He would be so unremarkable as to be extraordinary-neither handsome nor ugly, old nor young.
But Twilight saw something different. She saw herself, stripped of her lies and fabrications-naked, alone, and helpless-and she saw him.
Fingers traced the sunburst tattoo at the base of her spine in a way that sent chills through her body. Whether it was a sensitive spot or something else, she did not know. In the other hand, he dangled her amulet-the Shroud.
He smiled, and she felt something like courage.
'I…' Twilight pursed her lips. 'Are you… are you who I think you are?'
No reply.
'You are.'
The smile widened a little, as though its owner laughed at a jest she had made.
'I see.' Twilight shifted. She realized that the touch on her back was much more soothing than she imagined it could be. 'I… I'm sorry for all the… all the lies I've told… about you.' She bit her lip. 'About me.'
Then his eyes danced with laughter and turned away. His face slipped so subtly the elf barely noticed. His fingers tapped a rhythm on her spine and he rose to leave.
'One… one question?'
He paused and the eyes went to hers. The irises shifted, like a rainbow-red and blue and green and gold.
'When I wake… will those lies be true?' she asked. 'Are you you, or just me?'
He grinned and held up two fingers, which he used to close her eyes. In that darkness, he kissed her on the throat, and the world turned only for her.
Breathless, Twilight opened her eyes, but he was gone. The star sapphire gleamed against the pale skin of her breastbone.
She let blessed darkness come, and wondered if she would find Reverie.
It occurred to Twilight that she might have asked if he loved her.
Foxdaughter lay unmoving on her back, eyes wide but empty. The black blanket contrasted sharply with skin paler than the whitest Gargan had ever seen on a living being. The amulet sparkling on her chest did not seem to rise and fall.
'I wonder why it sits by her,' Mehvenne said to the tent walls. 'She is not dead, but neither does she live. She is lost.'
'She dreams,' Gargan said. He could not speak the tongue of the goliaths in that place, for a watcher might think he broke the laws.
Mehvenne inspected the back of her hand. 'It fools itself,' she said. 'All my herbs and potions are for naught. The elf-child will die.'
Gargan shook his head. There was nothing that would dissuade him.
'I did not agree with the tribe's decision,' Mehvenne said to her pots as she stirred two at once. Her emerald stripes sparkled in the half light of the rothe candles.
'Not their decision,' Gargan whispered, inaudible outside the tent. 'Mine.'
That caught Mehvenne's attention, and she turned ruby eyes on him. Gargan felt something in the air strain, as though it would break.
Then she looked away and it returned. The distance between them that would always remain-would remain between Gargan and any goliath-until the day he died.
'The Stoneslayer lost his way, and thus he became the Dispossessed,' Mehvenne said. 'He is blind. This is not his destiny, no matter what he believes. Not this doe.'
'Fox,' Gargan corrected. 'She is the fox.'
Then the elf squeezed his hand.
Gargan looked at the soft skin stretched over delicate features. Her eyes blinked-red-rimmed, shot with
