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Abramm’s presence strongly now and knowing he was on his way.
    Just don’t look into their eyes .
    The door rapped hard against the sideboard, hopping it back another inch. Toothy, foam-flecked muzzles protruded between door and doorjamb. She pointed the spear’s iron head toward them, dismayed to find it wasn’t a spear, after all, but a rope with a large knot at its end. She’d been able to hold it rigid only so long as she believed it was a spear. Now that she saw the truth, it collapsed limply to the floor.
    She glanced over her shoulder to check on the boys, but they were gone, the bed with them, a small doorway gaping in the empty wall, much too small for her to fit through. Just as well, she thought. Now we don’t have to worry about the Esurhites getting them .
    The sideboard shrieked as it slid backward several feet, and she whirled to see the first of the wolves bull its way through the crack and leap onto the chest. The creature towered over her, jaws gaping, black mane swirling around a narrow, gold-scaled face with a serpent’s split tongue and eyes like burning coals.
    Don’t look at their eyes!
    Too late. The beast had skewered her gaze with his own and red fire roared around her. “I have her!” the creature crowed triumphantly. “And now nothing of his shall remain.”
    She lifted the useless rope and screamed—
    The rasping, hoarse croak that came from her throat jarred her from the nightmare, and reality eclipsed the phantom images. She lay gasping in her big canopied bed—alone, save for the maid who stirred on her pallet nearby, rolling over and going still again. The tiny kelistar on her bedside table cast a dim illumination through the great bedchamber. She could just make out the heavy sideboard against the wall to her left, laden with its three bowls of artistically arranged staffid-warding onions amidst sprays of wheat. Outside, a dog moaned a forlorn lament, and the wind chime on her balcony tinkled faintly, touched by an errant breeze. Beyond that she heard nothing. No wolves, no shrieking gale, no snow crystals.
    She let out a long, low sigh that held as much regret as relief. It was just a dream. Of course—it rarely snowed in Fannath Rill, and any wolves that had once prowled the surrounding fields and forests had been pushed into the higher lands of the north centuries ago. And while the city had recently seen an influx of jackals on its eastern fringes, that was far from the palace itself.
    He wasn’t really here. She slid her palm over the modest mound that was her womb, nowhere near the size she’d dreamed it but swelling daily with the seed her husband had sown there six months ago. The only thing she had left of him now.
    Her throat tightened with grief and longing, for the sense of him had been so strong it seemed he was in the next room and would any moment burst through the door to take her in his arms. And oh, she wanted to feel those arms so very, very badly, to lay her head against the broad chest and listen to the powerful beat of his heart. . . .
    And their boys . . . their beautiful boys . . .
    Tears welled in her eyes as the tightening in her throat turned to a painful lump, and she began to weep—as she did so often these days, her dreams tormenting her with hope when she knew better than anyone that her boys were lost to her and her husband wasn’t coming back.
    The night Abramm had been tortured, both she and Carissa had shared the experience in the fractured way of their linked dreams—that one ending in a terrible wave of agony and defeat, followed by an explosion of blinding light. After that they’d shared no more nighttime adventures, and Carissa was convinced that blaze of light meant he had died. Maddie had found it difficult to disagree, especially when she had no further contact. Nor did it help that she’d suffered from both seasickness and morning sickness on that dreadful journey to Chesedh. And when they’d reached port and learned he had