"I thought she was with your mother," Og said.

"She was until she did the unthinkable." And Lara explained what had happened.

"She undid the prince's spell?" He was amazed.

"Undoing it was the easy part for her. She got into difficulties because she could not reweave it back together," Lara replied.

Og could not help but chuckle. "What a minx the lass is," he said. "Reminds me of a certain someone not so long ago."

"I certainly never did anything like that," Lara said. "She had no right to do what she did, and now I must begin again with the Hierarch because Anoush is gone."

"I will befriend the lass," Og promised. "It would appear she is amazingly talented as Dillon was. She will make you proud one day."

"She is so eager, Og. But she has been forbidden the use of magic until she gains self-discipline. Marzina is so anxious to be grown. Perhaps because she is the youngest of my children she feels a need to be taken seriously. But for now she needs to be diverted. Will you help her to find a horse?"

"Aye," he promised. "Some wild little thing that needs training. That will keep her busy while she is here. Especially if she can't use magic."

"Thank you, my old friend," Lara said. "Now I must be going, but you need not put me down. I'll just transport myself from your hand." And her words hadn't even died when she was gone.

Lara reappeared in Cam's privy chamber. He had fallen asleep as he sat at his worktable, his head upon his arms. She touched him gently. "Awaken, Nephew," she said softly, but as he tensed beneath her hand Lara knew he was now awake.

Cam raised his head. "What do you want?" he asked her.

"The Darkling has stolen Anoush away. Do you know where she is?" Her faerie green eyes looked directly at him.

"Nay," he answered. "She would not tell me. All she would say was that she had Anoush now, and if I ever expected to make the faerie woman's daughter my bride I would obey her every command."

"Do you see now, Nephew, the evil of this creature? Or are you still not certain if your ambition is greater than your love for Anoush?" Lara said.

"Why can I not have the power and the woman I love?" he wanted to know.

"Because you are not worthy of both," Lara said candidly. "You are a mere mortal, Cam, for all of Ciarda's plans. Had she not chosen you to be her cat's paw you would be herding Sholeh's cattle in the summer meadows of the New Outlands now."

"And would Anoush be my wife?" he asked her.

"Perhaps," Lara said.

"And perhaps not," he responded.

"I have not lied to you," Lara told him.

"Nor I to you," Cam replied. "I am torn, yet whatever choice I make I would like it to be my choice and not one that is forced from me for expediency's sake."

"I find the fact you struggle with the choices before you oddly encouraging," Lara said to him. "In anger I said I should not return to your side, Nephew, but it would be easy for me to leave you to the darkness. However, I cannot do that. I have made a hard choice. Now you must make one."

"I love her," Cam admitted. "But I love the feeling that power gives me, too."

"Use this masquerade to help the people of Hetar, Nephew," Lara encouraged him. "Go to the Lord High Ruler Jonah, and stand by his side. I will make the magic that you need if you do. And when this battle is over I will do as I previously promised you. The Darkling underestimates my powers, for she is young, ambitious and foolish."

"She will kill Anoush if I betray her, Aunt," Cam said, and his eyes were fearful.

"Think, Nephew! What did she say when she told you she had Anoush in her power? She had to have said something," Lara prompted him.

His brow furrowed as he sought to remember the conversation with Ciarda. Then Cam said, "She told me she had hidden your daughter in the one place you would never consider looking. She was almost gleeful as she told me."

"I will find Anoush," Lara said firmly. "For now, Cam, do nothing. If she gives you a task, do it so slowly that it takes forever to get it done."

He nodded. "But I cannot deny her forever, Aunt. The Darkling is no fool. If I demur too greatly she will suspect something."

"Then do what all men do when they seek to avoid an issue," Lara instructed him.

He cocked his head questioningly.

"Give her pleasures, Cam," Lara told him with a small smile, and then she was gone from him in her green mist, and it seemed he heard her tinkling laughter faintly in the air as she vanished.

He considered her words. Was it possible that she could find Anoush and retrieve her, bringing her to safety once more? He had been surprised that Ciarda had managed to gain possession of his love, especially given that she was protected by not only her mother, but a powerful Shadow Prince. He should have asked Lara about it.

He would ask Ciarda about it, although he suspected she would lie to him or evade his questions. If his aunt could aid him with her magic bolstering his persona as the Hierarch, and he actually helped Hetar's ruler, could he, having tasted power, be content to disappear into anonymity and return to the New Outlands? Could he be happy being just a propertied member of the Fiacre clan family? A man with a wife he loved, and children? Again there was no easy answer to his questions, and no help for him. It was he who must make the decision. Cam didn't know if he wasn't ready to make it, or if he simply couldn't make it.

When Ciarda appeared a short time afterward needing to take pleasures with him, he made certain that they were both well satisfied before the pillow talk that invariably followed their passions. The Darkling was never truly at ease, as if she feared to show a vulnerable side to her nature. Cam knew she relaxed a little if he brushed her long black hair, and so, taking up a brush, he began to do so.

"Anoush is safe?" he asked. "You are certain of it?"

"Of course she is safe," Ciarda said impatiently.

"I am amazed that you were able to destroy the spell put about her," Cam murmured.

Ciarda giggled. "It was not just my magic," she admitted to him. "And my half brothers aided me in spiriting her away. They now possess the Twilight Throne that was once our father's. In the Book of Rule, which contains our history, past, present and sometimes future, there are spells to be had. None of us individually has the real power. We are too young. We used the power of three to gain your Anoush. Together we are powerful."

"Powerful enough to break a spell cast by a Shadow Prince?" he queried her.

The Darkling cocked an eyebrow but neither confirmed nor denied his question. She just smiled mysteriously.

Cam could not help but wonder whether the power of three was stronger than the power of a Shadow Prince. It wasn't something with which he had a familiarity. When his aunt came again, and he was certain she would, he would ask her. He had to be very careful of the path he chose lest he be destroyed, for he stood haplessly between two forces of magic, and he wasn't certain which held the real power.

Lara had returned to her privy chamber in the Dominus's castle. The windowless chamber was quiet, and she was able to think without distraction. She considered carefully what Cam had told her. The Darkling had told her nephew that Anoush was hidden in the one place that Lara would not consider looking. Where was it? Where would she not consider looking? And then it came to her in a burst of certain clarity.

"No!" She heard herself say the word aloud.

You must go, Ethne, her crystal spirit guardian, said.

I cannot! Lara answered her in the same silent magic.

Would you leave your daughter in that dark place?

I barely escaped with my sanity and my soul last time, Lara cried. Perhaps she is not there. I am surely mistaken.

You cannot know for certain unless you go there yourself, Ethne said.

The Dark Lands. The castle of the Twilight Lord. Lara had spent many months a prisoner in that terrifying place. Memories of Kol assailed her, and she struggled to push them back. Kol had been handsome and he had been seductive. His rapacious appetite for pleasures had been legendary. He had stolen her memories and stolen her to be his mate. Lara shuddered. She remembered every moment of the time she had spent with him, even those minutes when she had no memory of who she was, and he had fabricated lies to make up for the loss.

And then Kaliq had gotten her memories restored, and Lara learned that everything that had happened had been carefully planned by those in the magic realm of light, including Kaliq and her own mother. Planned so that she would birth twins sons, causing chaos in a line of rulers who traditionally only birthed one male a generation. And it had all come about as they had planned it.

She was pregnant with her husband's son when the Twilight Lord had caught her upon the Dream Plain. He had taken the powers of a succubus, and he had violated Lara, planting his seed in her to grow along with Magnus Hauk's son so that when her time came, she birthed that boy, and she had birthed a daughter, Marzina. No one knew Marzina's true sire but Kaliq, Lara and Ilona. Kol had been imprisoned in a hidden place for a thousand years. And her life had once again moved in a straight line. Until now.

She couldn't go back. She couldn't! But if Anoush was imprisoned in the castle of the Twilight Lord as she once had been, Lara knew she would have to go back. She couldn't leave her oldest daughter helpless to...to...Lara gasped. What if they had awakened Anoush? What if Kolgrim and Kolbein had told her who they were? What if despite their blood tie they had violated Anoush? Kolbein thought nothing of taking pleasures with his Darkling half sister, Ciarda.

She had to know if Anoush was in the Dark Lands. And Lara knew that she could trust no one else to learn the truth of the matter but herself. She began to weep, and hated herself for the weakness. When the shock of what she must do had subsided, she bathed her face in a basin of lavender water that she conjured. Then she poured herself a cup of bobble-berry Frine. Finally she stood, and, going to a small cupboard, she drew out fresh clothing, re-braided her hair and stripped off her pale green silk robe.

She would wear the garments in which she had always felt the strongest. She donned an ivory silk shirt, tucking it into the soft cinnamon-colored leather pants she loved best. Next came a pair of silk and wool foot coverings, and the well-worn but comfortable brown leather boots that came to just over her knees. Lara wrapped a dark green sash about her waist. It contained several hidden pockets filled with herbs and special small stones. She tucked an ivory-handled dirk into a leather-lined knife case within the heavy green silk.

Andraste! To me! Lara called, and her famed sword appeared already settled within its leather sheath. Lara buckled the belted sheath about her chest so that Andraste might rest snugly against her back. The sword was already humming softly as Lara drew on her soft dark green leather gloves. It had been some time since she and Andraste had journeyed together.

Fear not, my child, Ethne said to her. You journey to the Dark Lands, but the light surrounds and is within you. You are protected.

Lara sat a moment, drawing a small piece of parchment from a drawer in her table. Picking up a quill, she scrawled a quick message to Kaliq. Then, calling a faerie-post messenger to her, she entrusted the tiny faerie with its delivery to Shunnar.

"At once, Domina!" her messenger said, and was gone from Lara's privy chamber in a flash of light.

Lara drew several long, calming breaths. And then she spoke aloud. "Into the darkness I must go. Keep me safe from harm and woe. Return me back when I would. And let me do only good." She felt herself being drawn into a whirling black vortex where about her the winds howled and blew icily. Lara bit her lip till she drew blood to keep from screaming. The spinning slowed, slowed, and finally stopped. And she was standing in the throne room of Kol's castle. It was a place she had never thought to see again. Lara shivered, but then iron seemed to enter her veins. I am faerie and I am stronger than anything here, she thought.

"Why, Mother, how nice of you to pay us a visit." She heard Kolgrim's familiar mocking voice, and Lara turned to face him.

"But for the color of your hair you look just like your father, standing there upon the steps to his throne," she said to him as she walked toward him.

"Would you like to see my sister?" Kolgrim queried her pleasantly.

"Where is she?" Lara asked him. Her heart had now returned to a normal beat.

"We put her in your old room. The place our father conceived us, and you bore us," Kolgrim said. And he smiled at her.

"If you have harmed her in any way," Lara began.

Kolgrim held his hand up. "She sleeps," he said. "She has no idea where she is."

Lara felt a rush of relief.

Seeing it upon her face, he laughed. "Is she so precious to you, then? Unlike us, of course. Did you love her father?"

"Her father is a great hero of his people. Your father was a villian who stole me from my husband, and begat you upon me," Lara responded.

"Yet faeries do not give children to those they hate," Kolgrim said.

"You do not know the whole tale?" She was surprised, but then why would anyone associated with the Dark Lands have told him? "Your father had the Munin steal my memories. He convinced me I was his wife, and had been ill. Kol could be very kind when he chose, and because he needed me to conceive his heir, he was indeed kind to me. Of course, when my memories were restored and I learned what had happened, I did what was required of me. I used my magic to make two of the one, thus bringing chaos to the Dark Lands," Lara told Kolgrim.

He nodded, and his dark gray eyes held an admiring light. "Perhaps it is from you I gained my cleverness," he said to her.

"There is nothing of me in you or your brother!" Lara replied.

"I have your golden hair, Mother," he murmured.

"I am taking Anoush back with me," Lara told him.

He shook his head. "I cannot allow you to do that," he said. "I'm afraid it would anger our Darkling sister greatly. Ciarda is particularly nasty when crossed."

"You cannot allow?" Lara burst out laughing. "You have no real powers yet, and when your powers are eventually realized they will only be half of what they should be because there are two of you."

"We have taken our captive by using the power of three," Kolgrim told her. "There was a spell in the Book of Rule for it."

"There are few spells I cannot overcome," Lara said. "Listen to me, foolish boy. The Darkling uses both you and your brother for her own ends. She means to take the worlds into darkness, and rule it all from this castle. And she favors your brother over you, for she knows she can control him, but she cannot control you. Where is Kolbein now? Do you even know?"

"He is in the House of Women," Kolgrim replied.

"And where is the Darkling? Probably with her mortal lover, whom she will eventually kill when he is no longer of use to her. As she will kill you," Lara told him.

"She cannot kill me," Kolgrim said. "It is forbidden."

"Aye, it is, but why would that stop her?" Lara responded. "In this kingdom women are taught subservience. But Ciarda is not subservient. In this kingdom women do not rule. Yet Ciarda would rule not just the Dark Lands, but all the worlds as, well. And if she would do that, why would you think she would even hesitate to kill both you and your brother?" Lara smiled a wicked smile at him.

"The people of this kingdom would not tolerate a woman attempting to rule them," Kolgrim said.

"The people of Terah do not permit women sovereigns, either," Lara said, "and yet I rule in Terah even as Ciarda will rule in the Dark Lands. She will be a Shadow Queen for her son, and she will see he is too weak to overcome her."

"She has no son! And if she did he would have to be from the direct line of Jorunn and Usi to rule the Dark Lands," Kolgrim said. "I have never lain with her, nor will I ever lie with her."

"For now the Darkling is content to leave things as they are, for she has other matters concerning her," Lara told him bluntly. "But when she is ready it is Kolbein's son she will conceive, and she will have no hesitation in killing you and your brother when she chooses to do so and you are no longer of any use to her. Now take me to Anoush."

Kolgrim had grown oddly silent as he absorbed her words. Then he said, "Come!" and led Lara from the throne room through a familiar corridor to the beautiful apartments that had once been hers. There upon her bed lay Anoush, sleeping soundly and totally unaware of anything about her. "She looks like her sire, doesn't she?" he said, gazing down at the dark-haired girl.

Lara nodded. "Aye, she does."

"And she is my blood through you," he said.

"Aye, she is," Lara admitted.

"Ciarda is my blood, too, through our father," he remarked. "She says it was the power of three that allowed us to bring her here." He looked directly at Lara.

"Yes," Lara said. "The protective spell had already been accidentally broken."

"By whom?" Kolgrim asked, both fascinated and curious.

There was no point in lying or being mysterious, Lara decided. "My youngest daughter, who seems to have been born with a great talent for magic like her mother and eldest brother. She did not mean to do it, became frightened by what she had done and hid herself away. It was several days before she was found, and admitted to her error in judgment. By that time Ciarda had discovered the spell broken, and, using the power of three, was able to bring Anoush here. She could not have done it otherwise, for most of her powers are currently channeled into aiding the Hierarch."

Lara continued as Kolgrim eyed her thoughtfully.

"She needed Anoush, for, you see, the mortal she chose to serve as the Hierarch is in love with my child. As long as Ciarda holds Anoush her captive, Kolgrim, the Hierarch will do her bidding. Without Anoush she has been left with little to control him, for the Hierarch is beginning to believe that perhaps he is really who they say he is, and that he actually has the power."

"He doesn't?" Kolgrim said.