“I do,” said Aoth. He paused, giving the Halruaan a breath to examine what he must imagine to be the possibilities of that. Then: “That’s why Jhesrhi and Yhelbruna are busy carving runes in the hull. If you attack us once you’re in the air, or try to fly away without meeting your obligations, it will be your turn to burst into flame and fall out of the sky.”

The tent still held the heat of Cera’s conjured sunlight long after the glow had died away. She supposed it retained the heat of the three bouts of lovemaking too. At any rate, she was warm enough, but a mix of tenderness and worry still prompted her to snuggle even closer to Aoth’s naked body.

She hadn’t meant to wake him, but his luminous blue eyes opened in the gloom, and then he kissed her. “Ready for another tumble?” he asked.

“That would be lovely if you can manage it. One more. After that, it will be dawn and my time to pray.”

“Then let’s have at it. I know you can’t keep Amaunator waiting, and I don’t want him interrupting me in the middle.” He caressed her breast and made it tingle.

Good as it felt, she put her hand on his to stop it moving. “We’ve been too hungry for one another’s touch to talk much. Before we start in again, and then have to get up and be about our business, I just … well, I want you to know the deathways were bad for me, worse, even, than for Jhesrhi, because they all but cut me off from the Yellow Sun. It was partly the hope of finding you again that kept me from breaking down.”

“Only partly?”

“Be grateful an impious cutthroat rates even that high.”

“That sounded witchy. Yhelbruna and her kind are a bad influence … But, darling lass, if you insist on talking seriously, then I guess I should take a turn. I missed you too. Enough that I realized something.

“You can’t turn down being sunlady of Chessenta if your peers elect you to the office,” he continued. “Being a priestess is your calling. And I can’t give up being a wandering sellsword. That’s mine. But I swear by the Pure Flame, we won’t lose one another. At the moment, I have no idea how to make things work, but we’ll find a way.”

“I want that too. Perhaps we can figure it out after we defeat the undead.”

She’d intended to sound confident, but his lambent eyes narrowed. “Are you scared we won’t? Mario Bez has the scruples of a starving rat, but he has no play except to deliver on his promise. Neither he and his men, the Old Ones, nor I have gone into Immilmar, so Lod’s agents in town haven’t seen us and can’t have sent word to him that we’re lurking about. If Lady Luck smiles, we’ll catch the undead by surprise.”

“I’m more worried about Jet’s part of the plan.”

“Because he hasn’t healed?”

She sighed. “It’s difficult to answer that. He’s done all the healing the Keeper’s light could promote, given that I wasn’t able to tend him until days after he was injured. But he should take more time to rest. Are we sure this is a wise idea?”

Aoth grunted. “It’s difficult to answer that. Taking on undead and dark fey, we’re likely to need all the strength we can muster.”

“But will it even work? Yhelbruna said the Three would incline the wild griffons to serve those who defeat the undead. So far, no one truly has.”

“Which means that at this point, goddesses and spirits don’t figure in, and in the absence of their prompting, the griffons will act in accordance with their nature. That’s to follow the leader of the pride, and if Jet defeats the golden beast, he’ll be the leader.”

“But the golden beast’s no ordinary griffon. It’s a telthor.”

“And Jet’s the product of enchantments I cast not just on him but his bloodline going back for generations.”

“I’m not concerned because I underestimate him. It’s because I care about him and know you love him.”

Aoth snorted. “If I ever said such a thing to him, he’d mock me forever after. But you’re right, I do, and I argued when he broached his scheme on the journey back from the Ashenwood. But maybe he needs this fight to test himself. He doesn’t want to go on living except in the knowledge that he’s still as strong as ever.”

Cera frowned. “That’s foolish and arrogant too.”

“For a human being, maybe, but that’s not what he is.”

“No,” she said, trying to banish worry from her tone, “he’s the mighty, fearless creature who fought Tchazzar and Alasklerbanbastos, and obviously, he’ll be fine. So we’ll stop fretting over him and conclude our reunion properly.” She lifted her hand from his and glided her fingertips down his stomach.

The golden griffon was soaring high above the hilly ground north of Immilmar. Jet flew in at a higher altitude still. It would be foolish to cede the advantage of the high air before the duel had even begun.

As he made his approach, he felt an impulse to take stock of his wings and see if they were aching even a little, but he thrust the urge away. Whether he was hale or still impaired, it was too late to worry about it now.

A prickly sensation, almost stinging but not quite, danced over his body, and the blueness of the sky brightened and darkened from one moment to the next. He’d experienced the same phenomena on his previous visit. He was crossing the intangible barrier the hathrans had established to contain the feral griffons. Fortunately, because the original spell hadn’t targeted him, it had no power to keep him out.

Their feathers bronze and brown in the sunlight, common griffons flew toward him. They might well remember seeing him before, and on that occasion, he’d fled from them, or so they would have believed. They likely expected him either to do the same again or set down on the ground in submission.

Instead, he shrieked a challenge that caused the wild griffons to assess his attitude, size, and manifest strength anew. Then they all veered off in various directions, declining a confrontation and in the process clearing an expanse of empty air between him and their golden leader.

The king griffon was even larger than Jet, and no scarring or bald patches marred his plumage and pelt as they gleamed like polished metal in the sun. Now that his followers had failed to dominate the newcomer, he deigned to take notice of Jet himself. Opening his beak, he gave a piercing scream of his own to demand deference.

Jet simultaneously circled right and climbed even higher, the start of a corkscrew path that might allow him to plunge down at the golden griffon from above and with the wind at his back. His actions conveyed his defiance as clearly as any cry, and, pinions beating, blue eyes glaring, the other beast began maneuvering too.

Perhaps because he’d been restlessly flying around and around his invisible cage for so long and knew the space inside so intimately, the gold beast almost immediately found a fast-flowing updraft. The vertical current flung him upward, and in a moment, he possessed the high air. Jet realized he had little hope of reaching the same height swiftly enough for it to matter even if he exerted himself to the utmost.

But it might serve him well to pretend that was what he was doing. So he beat his wings and climbed like a dunce while the king griffon made a lazy-looking circle and positioned himself to dive.

The gold then hurtled downward. Jet kept climbing as if he had yet to perceive the threat or as if he were suicidal.

When the telthor had nearly plunged into striking distance, he gave a scream intended to petrify his prey. Jet, however, took the shriek as his cue to raise one wing, dip the other, and, with the agility Aoth’s prenatal enchantments and a lifetime of aerial combat had produced, dodge out from underneath the gold’s talons.

The gold plummeted through the space he’d just vacated, and now Jet was the one who held the high air and had his talons positioned to stab and seize. He furled his wings and dived after his foe.