“At least we don’t have to fly commercial,” I muttered as I jammed folded clothing into my suitcase. “We have that going for us. I don’t know if I could withstand being crammed in with a bunch of humans. I’ve seen photos of what some of them do on commercial flights. It’s a scandal.”

I was babbling, and I knew I was babbling. All for the sake of making the entire situation seem less dire than it appeared on the surface.

Traveling?

With the clan?

Exposing ourselves to the outside world?

With the clan?

Iris paced back and forth before the false windows. I appreciated the effort at making the rooms feel like they existed somewhere beyond the cave, with panels behind curtains which lit brighter and brighter as the day went on, as though natural sunlight made it so. The effect reversed itself in the evening, dimming until there was nothing but darkness.

But there was no mistaking the fact that we were underground, no matter how lovely the illusion.

“I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.” Iris’s nostrils flared as her breathing got louder, harder. She was working herself up into a fine state—the lights even flickered once or twice as if to confirm this. I could almost taste the electrical charge in the room. If she’d had anything more than a fine layer of dark peach fuzz on top of her head, it would’ve been standing straight up.

“Breathe it out,” I warned her, referring to the lessons we’d learned as girls. Back when we were first coming into our powers. A funny thing, that. As if puberty weren’t bad enough, we had both raging hormones and only the vaguest control of our emerging abilities.

Learning to control our emotional outbursts before they resulted in catastrophe had been an early lesson, and a crucial one.

Iris threw me a look of irritation—to say the least—but did as I advised. Once she had, she appeared somewhat calmer. Her fists weren’t clenched nearly as tight as they had been.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t like this much more than you do,” I admitted, sitting on the bed with my folded hands between my knees. “I have no desire to meet new dragons, for one. This clan is more than enough for my tastes.”

“Agreed,” Iris whispered.

“And I have no desire to see Appalachia,” I added. “It might be lovely, but that matters little to me.”

“I agree on that as well.”

“But there’s nothing we can do about it. If these dragons have some information, something that might help us, we need to have it. It could make a tremendous difference to us for generations to come. Don’t you think we owe it to ourselves and our future bloodline to pursue this if it will make such a difference?”

“I suppose I’m too set in my ways.” Another flicker of the lights, and the bed trembled beneath me. “I don’t like change. This has already been more than enough change for me.”

I snorted. “We can agree on that much. But we’ve managed to survive, haven’t we? It hasn’t killed us, nor has it broken the coven. Nothing can break us. Am I right?”

“You’re right.”

“And have I ever been wrong before—when it’s truly counted?” I added when she opened her mouth to disagree.

“When it truly counted?” She sighed, looking up at the ceiling as if she had to think about it.

“All right, all right, but you get my point, I’m sure.”

“I get your point. I don’t have to like it, but I get it.” She was shaking her head as she walked to the door. “Don’t complain to me when this starts to go south, all right?”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I murmured, smiling to myself even after she left the room. Iris had always been one to live with her emotions close to the surface. She felt everything keenly and had rarely been one to think before reacting.

This would make her the ideal traveling companion, I thought with a roll of my eyes. What would the American clan think of her? Of any of us, for that matter?

Why the dragons had to come with us, I still had no idea. Why my mother believed us incapable of taking care of ourselves was a mystery. She was the one person who ought to be aware of our power, yet she had no faith in us.

“Is that truly what you believe?”

My head snapped around hard enough to leave a crick in my neck when my mother suddenly appeared at my door.

“What was that?” I asked, flustered.

“I felt what you were thinking.” She stepped into the room without asking whether I would allow it, but that was her way. Why would she change her ways simply because we’d gone from living in one cave to living in another?

She would feel it, wouldn’t she? The High Priestess, the most powerful of all of us. I could trust my shield to hold up against my sister, my coven, the dragons. But not my mother.

“If you felt it, you must know it to be what I was thinking.” I’d learned many years ago not to lie. Lying was a waste of time and effort, and it only made the person telling the lies look ridiculous.

Besides, trust was not an easy thing to regain once it had been lost. If I was willing to lie about something as relatively inconsequential as the thoughts I knew very well my mother could already sense or feel, what else was I willing to lie about?

“You think that little of me? That I would have no faith in you? I, who know better than anyone what you’re capable of?”

“It seems to me that if you were aware of our abilities, you would see how unnecessary it is to send chaperones.”

“Chaperones.” She laughed softly, shaking her head. “It worries me that you see it this way.”

“What other way is there to see it?”

Her laughter ended. “I’ve never thought you dense, but it seems you’re determined to prove me wrong. Would I allow my daughters, my coven, out into the world without protection? And yes, it is protection, make no mistake about it. I want you protected.”

“From what?” I stood, facing her. The very sight of my mother had always been rather awe-inspiring—her beauty, the way she held herself, the grace with which she moved—but I couldn’t look at her that way just then. I couldn’t allow myself to be dazzled.

“From the world. Nothing less than the world.” She came nearer, reaching out to stroke my hair. A comforting caress, one as familiar to me as my name. “You are too precious. Would that I might avoid sending you out. But you and Calliope are also the two I trust more than any others. If I cannot go, I would have you go in my place. You can translate the runes and be of service to the coven.”

She knew just what to say. Service to the coven. Who wouldn’t wish to serve? To distinguish themselves? To be a heroine in their mother’s eyes?

“With the dragons, though? Can we not avoid such prolonged contact with them? I might avoid them by hiding out in here, but there’s no hiding once we’re in the world.”

“Why would you hide here, in your chambers?” She looked around with a slight shrug. “Pleasant enough for what it is, I suppose, but hardly what I wish for you. Perhaps this journey is for the best in more ways than one.”

“It doesn’t—it isn’t—” I turned away before she could stroke my hair again.

“What is it?” She took me by the shoulders and turned me toward her. “What aren’t you sharing with me? I sense something hidden.” Her forehead creased, her eyes narrowed. “But I can’t quite find it.”

The sensation of her poking around in my head made my skin crawl. “Please, enough. You don’t have to pry into my mind. I’ll tell you. I don’t like them, I don’t like living with them, and I certainly don’t like the thought of traveling with any of them. It’s beyond belief! We’ve gone from avoiding them at all costs to deliberately walking into situations which demand we remain in close quarters. It’s a major adjustment.”

“I realize this.” Her shoulders slumped. “Though I admit, I have not given it as much thought as I should, and for this, I apologize. I’ve failed to ask for your opinion on our activities.”

I sighed. “As if I would go against anything you’d decided was for the best. I do see the advantages of this arrangement, don’t misunderstand me. I’m doing everything I can to get along—truly,” I added with a flush of guilt when she fixed me with a stern look.

“Why did I overhear you arguing with one of them this morning? Dallas, I believe?”

More guilt, with anger behind it. Anger toward him. “What of it?” I challenged, even though I quaked inside.

“You know how crucial it is that we keep the peace.”

“All I did was bring up a problem that I feel needs to be resolved.”

“Why not bring it to me, then? Or to Alan? Dallas has no say in these affairs.”

“Alan was nowhere to be found. Too involved with his human mate.” I wrinkled my nose in distaste.

“Be that as it may, I’m sure the matter could have waited. Are you certain you weren’t in the mood to start an argument?” She followed my gaze as it darted around the room, unwilling to meet hers.

How did she manage to make me feel like a child? No matter how many years I lived, there was always the sense that she knew my motives and saw through my excuses. I could freeze a dozen men in place and leave them until they rotted if it suited me, but let my mother look at me in that certain way, and I was nothing.

“I suppose I was,” I admitted. “What can you expect, though? Everyone comes to me with complaints. Electra can’t get a hot shower. Callie is continually sickened by the stench of meat coming from the kitchen. Iris wants to fight everyone all the time. And those are just the most recent complaints.”

“Why have I heard nothing of this?”

“Because none of them wants you to know how uncomfortable this arrangement has made them. I didn’t want you to know, either, which is why I’ve stayed quiet until now.”

“Quiet in front of me,” she corrected with a knowing smile. “Not quiet in front of the clan.”

“Well, if anyone is going to fix things, it ought to be them.”

“There is nothing for them to fix!”

“I know that, but I thought I should at least try to smooth things over as best I can before bringing you or Alan into it.”

“You didn’t seem to be smoothing much of anything over, judging from what I overheard.”

“I suppose… he pushes my buttons. Dallas, I mean. I like him least of all of the dragons.”

“You were wrong to goad him about the incident.”

My cheeks darkened when I heard the words I’d already thought to myself. She didn’t need to tell me I was wrong. I’d felt wrong the instant I brought it up, but at the moment I’d flailed about for something to say. Some sort of comeback. What I’d come up with was beneath me. “I know.”

“We were just as much at fault for allowing it to come to pass.”

“I disagree.” When I turned my back, she made no attempt to stop me. “It was Gavin’s fault. Gavin should have done everything in his power to prevent a rupture between us. He fell short, and look what became of him. Gunned down, when we might have been able to protect him and his clan.”

“I do not disagree—and yet…” The bed shifted slightly as she sat.

I kept my back to her. “And yet?”

“And yet I’ve had more than enough time to think things over, and I know I was at fault. I was very much at fault.”

“No, Mother.” I turned and knelt before her. “You followed our law, the law written by our ancestors and by Gavin himself. They sealed the agreement with blood. There was no going back. I know the pain it caused you to banish Demeter, but you saw no other way. You were keeping the law, nothing more. Gavin thought he was above the law he himself helped create—or, rather, that his clansman was above it. He broke the agreement. It was his fault we no longer shielded the clan as we once had. It was his fault the humans or Gwydions or whoever was responsible for the attack were able to find them and kill so many.”

“Even so.” She stroked my hair, staring at me but not seeing me. I sensed her being far away. With Demeter, who was long since dead. Her favorite, the golden child. “Even so, Demeter was in love. I should have taken that into account.”

“With a dragon.”

“It matters not to the person in love,” she whispered. Unshed tears sparkled in her eyes. She even managed to cry prettily. “Your sister knew very well the price she would pay if discovered. She walked into the affair with complete awareness. That means whatever she felt toward this dragon was far stronger than any fear or guilt.”

She offered a weak smile. “As I said, I’ve had time to think about it. Once the anger burned away, I had nothing but the weak excuse that I’d done what the law ordered. It’s been cold comfort, my dearest.”

I bit my tongue against the arguments threatening to pour forth. No sense in adding to the pain she clearly still suffered. Any further attempt to remind her of the treachery of the dragons would only worsen things. I didn’t want to fight just before leaving.

“I’d better finish packing,” I decided as I stood. “I have a long trip ahead of me.” Better to get moving than to open old wounds.

Besides, I would need to conserve my mental energy, if expected to sit on a plane with Dallas for hours on end.