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virtual prisoner."
    "A prisoner?"
    "I should have said an honoured guest. Naturally he would not be harmed. Not unless what everyone suspects Goadel is planning actually happens. Not unless you make it happen."
    The irony in his eyes and his voice, even the anger, were subsumed by a deadly earnestness that she had not seen before.
    "Think. Is it worth pursuing what you want over your brother's blood? Will it be worth waking up each day even in the midst of all your power and all your riches knowing what you have done?"
    The shadow of that other unjust death took shape between them. The power of a brother's sacrifice. The sound she made was not human. It came out of the mouth of some crazed animal writhing in its trap. She could see why wolves caught by iron would bite their own limbs off just to escape the pain and the darkness closing in.
    If she went back to Bamburgh they would keep her there forever, a prisoner in all but name. Or else they would send her back to her father in the palace at Craig Phádraig. To let him plot another marriage for her. If even the most greedy and ambitious of prospective husbands would have her now.
    If she took one step out of this door in Brand's keeping she would place him in appalling, merciless danger just as she had done before. Until he got her across the length of Britain and possibly even after that
    If she did not go they would kill Modan. Sooner or later. Because Goadel would not give up his ambitions.
    Is it worth pursuing what you want over your brother's blood?
    That was what Brand had done, unwittingly. Caused his brother's harm. For her sake. It was what she had already done. Killed an innocent man.
    And now what would she do? What choice did she have?
    "Come. You will be quite safe from a repeat of my importunate advances if that is what you are worried about. Someone else claims he was…seeking to find you. He is here."
    She looked at the burning eyes.
    "No doubt he will see to your welfare."
    "Who?"
    "You will see."
    He did not touch her again. He did not need to. She took the first step by herself, the step that set her on the road back to the past, to the beautiful, deadly palace set on the impregnable sea-girt rocks at Bamburgh. The place where it had all begun.
    There were half a dozen Northumbrians waiting outside. And one Pict. It was her half brother Cunan.
    The hellhound of Craig Phádraig.

CHAPTER THREE

    They would have to stop.
    Brand could see it in her face. He cursed. He had wanted to be much farther away before they halted. Farther north. He knew he could push himself until the daylight faded, beyond, despite the wound to his arm. The men would follow. They would have to. But Alina…
    He called a halt. The first to protest, naturally, was the yapping creature Cunan. The word meant "hound-like." If ever a man had been more aptly named…
    A torrent of badly-accented English poured from lean and snapping jaws. He turned his back. Even a bitter, illegitimate half brother ought to have some feelings for his sister. The man should have been demanding that they stopped hours ago, not that they went on.
    He strode off without looking, trying to mask disgust. Behind him the complaints continued.
    His shoulders flexed with the urge to knock a set of predatory teeth down a snarling throat.
    Alina said nothing. She had said next to nothing to her brother since she had seen him. Whether that meant she resented him, or whether she would not converse with her kinsman in front of a band of Northumbrians he did not know.
    He stopped beside her mount and held up his hands.
    "Come here."
    He thought at first she would refuse his aid. She probably loathed him enough to do so. But then she changed her mind. He realized the full measure of her tiredness. She simply fell from the saddle into his arms without the slightest resistance, or, he suspected, the slightest control over what she did.
    He braced himself instinctively to swing her weight against his right side. He need not