I stared at her, frozen, a hollow roaring that had nothing to do with any storm beginning in my ears.
"My Lord, no!" Pasqual settled back onto her haunches, her head sinking lower as she sought to calm me with her posture. "My Lord, please; listen to me!" she pleaded. "Our daughter is dead. She died not long after she left her shell--"
I snarled back, the glow about me growing in brightness, the snow beneath my feet crackling and hissing as it began to melt.
I choked off then, my eyes wide with shock as I watched Pasqual's body abruptly begin to shimmer and flow like quicksilver, then abruptly solidify into an image of my elder daughter, but grown to full adult size. Eyes the color of storm clouds studied me soberly, the silvery mane cascading down the side of the serpentine neck chiming gently in the near-silence. Finally, the apparition sighed, and continued. "She was never very strong, my Lord; I think there was something wrong with her breathing. She'd try to play, but then she would start gasping for air, and. . . . And. . . ." The eyes closed, and the transformed Pasqual turned away. "And one morning, she would not wake up," she finished simply, her voice breaking slightly.
I just stood there, staring at her, staring at what my elder daughter should have been, but would never be. I couldn't move, couldn't think as the silver-scaled form once again turned back to me. "I feared that when you came for us, that you would not understand, would not want to understand. That you would search for our daughter, perhaps even attack me, and in so doing, doom us all. Rather than see our children fall at last to Ahnkar, I took our daughter's place." Pasqual's form flowed, returning to her own appearance. Gray eyes filled with molten gold, their gaze never leaving my face.
"You betrayed Ahnkar?" breathed Stefan, quickly grasping what my mate was implying. "Why did you not contact us?"
"Ahnkar betrayed me!" Pasqual snarled back. "He lied to me, used me, used our children!" Her head was held high now, her eyes bright with an icy fury as she glared at Stefan. "When Lady Dithra revealed to me what Ahnkar had done, any fealty I owed him died that very moment." Her gaze then swung to me. "But I could not turn on him overtly, my Lord; he still had our children beneath his claws. If I had forsworn him then, declared the enmity I felt, I knew I would never see our children again."
I never even got to see her, save for a brief glimpse in a dream. . . . I closed my eyes, then gave my head a sharp shake, shoving the pain away, trying to force my grief-wracked brain to think.
Pasqual winced, her gaze dropping. "He knew through my own foolishness, my Lord," Pasqual replied, her voice growing bitter. "I did not believe at first. Ahnkar was an Elder; he would never betray Lady Dithra. It had to be some terrible misunderstanding. So I slipped away and went to Ahnkar to tell him of my confusion, to beg of him an explanation. I was a fool." She paused, then looked back up at me. "I will not be fooled again."
. . . . I whipped my head frantically about until I spotted her, still standing forlornly where she had during the entire melee, neither helping nor hindering either side. Our eyes met, and for a moment I thought I saw something other than sadness and fear. . . .
. . . . I felt my breath drawing in sharply as I recognized Pasqual's face a moment before she abruptly spun to look behind her, then darted away into the night. . . .
. . . . So far, I couldn't believe how good our luck had been. Too easy, grumbled my churning stomach, but I ignored it while I wished mightily that I dared shift to my true form. . . .
Slowly, I began to almost-believe. Perhaps because it all made sense with what I knew, perhaps because I so-very much wanted to. My human side ranted at me, called me a naive, besotted fool, but I sat back onto my haunches, the silver-gray nimbus about me winking out as I reached up and removed the sphere from my jaws. "So. You operated from the inside, avenging yourself upon Ahnkar and Ksstha by sabotaging their plans, and using this one--" I gestured at Kaa'saht's miserable form "--to feed us enough information to mount an operation to free our children." Those golden eyes regarded me, then the slim, armored head gestured confirmation. ". . . . But how did you know? How did you know their plans, our plans, so well? Did you have spies within both our camps--"
Something that could almost have been grim humor touched Pasqual's eyes as she gestured negative. "No, my Lord, I had no spies. But what need is there for spies when one has the blood of the Lung?" Both Stefan and I stared at her, mystified, and the humor, along with something . . . warmer . . . grew. "You told me I was beautiful," she said to me at last.
Abruptly her form once again flowed, her darkening body seeming to fold up like some fantastic piece of origami as it rapidly dwindled in size. Seconds later it was over, and where Pasqual had been, a crow now stood upon the snow, its obsidian eyes gleaming. Then the bird's form flowed again, and a great horned owl now gazed at me.
. . . .The blood of the Eastern dragons may have gifted you with other abilities as well. Can you shift your form, Hasai? Can you take on the shapes and abilities of creatures other than man and dragon? Can you become, perhaps, a wolf?. . . .
Yet another shift, and Pasqual stood before me in the human form I'd once known. She looked into my stunned face and gave me a small, sad smile, then continued. "It seems as if there was hardly a day, my Lord, when I wasn't watching--"
Then Lucifer was there. If I live to be a thousand, ten thousand, I will never understand how he managed to track us through the storm, how he managed to get so close, undetected by any of us. All I know is that suddenly he was there, melting out of the underbrush, his swift stride bringing him up behind Pasqual. She saw my eyes widen and began to turn, too late as the fighting knife slid silently out of its sheath on Lucifer's combat harness, the vicious, double-edged blade swinging in while Luce's other hand gripped her hair and pulled up and back, twisting her head to expose her unprotected throat. . . .
"Luce! NO!"