For days, they had walked in the shadow of a ghost.
Theressan, Dhaelon's pale-haired apostle, moved with a serene, unsettling grace that made the hairs on Caldan's arms stand on end. She never seemed to tire. She spoke rarely, and when she did, her words were polished stones, smooth and cold and heavy with a meaning that always seemed just out of reach.
Ryven walked a few paces behind them, a thundercloud of silent distrust. His hand never strayed far from the hilt of his sword, and his steel-grey eyes missed nothing. He watched Theressan not as a guide, but as a viper he was waiting for the right moment to kill.
And between them walked Caldan, a man caught in the grip of a cold, new certainty, with a dragon of living shadow padding at his heels. Morian had grown in the past days, its body sleek and powerful, its obsidian scales drinking the pale sunlight. It watched Theressan with an unnerving, knowing intelligence, a silent acknowledgment of the power she served.
