Edinburgh, 1871:

Jack left for Sicily on Midsummer's Day. Ellini didn't go down to the palace steps to say goodbye, but she perched on one of the many ponderous, grey-stone balconies overlooking the gates, and saw—even from twenty feet up—the emotional politics of the situation.

Robin knew.

Oh, he behaved affably—he clasped Jack's hand and clapped him on the back and flashed those perfect teeth—but he knew, he knew, he knew she'd kissed him!

He probably didn't know the details. She had been careful, even in the midst of all that moonlight and delight, to make sure Robin wasn't anywhere near them. But he knew something had happened. Jack was radiating happiness—that was obvious from twenty feet up too. It was glinting off the top of his head as though he was wearing a highly polished helmet. In fact, it seemed like more happiness than a kiss could really justify. Robin probably thought she'd gone even further. She might just as well have painted a bullseye on the poor boy's face.

The whole palace had spilled out onto the steps to see him off that morning—some of them peering out twitchily from under their parasols, because they had sunlight-allergies, or just because they hated the sight of the outside world, with all its ill-breeding and bad tailoring. Even the man not-very-affectionately known as the Abominable Crow-man was there, preening his feathers at the back of the crowd.

Robin smiled at this too—smiled so hard that she could see the sunlight glinting off his teeth.

"Don't expect to be this popular in Sicily, golden boy. Gargotha won't even feed you if he doesn't think you're doing well."

And Myrrha was there, with her pigtails and her little girl's gown that displayed her ankles. She was looking pointedly from Jack to her husband, as though to highlight the contrast between them. Robin saw that look—it goaded him into smiles and more smiles, until Ellini thought she'd be blinded by them and topple off the roof into the middle of that fraught family group.

Jack looked for her, of course, but not seeing her didn't dim his happiness. He went off assuming everything was all right—assuming Robin was his friend and Ellini would still be there when he got back. And she envied him his peace-of-mind as well as his destination. From that morning on, she found herself imagining all the different ways that Robin might find to kill him. Perhaps he would bribe someone to push him overboard on his voyage to Sicily. Or give him a sealed letter to pass to Gargotha, with instructions to execute him on arrival.

Only two things consoled her. The first was that none of these methods would be in-keeping with Robin's tastes. He liked things to be cruel and personal. He would want to kill Jack face-to-face, and, since he didn't seem to be making any plans to leave Pandemonium, he was obviously at least deferring Jack's punishment.

The second consolation was the arrival, early next morning, of a fur-and-bronze-clad apparition with a huge broadsword that she trailed behind her as she paced the palace courtyards, dredging up sparks and setting everyone's teeth on edge.

"Her name's Val," Robin told her the next day. He seemed to have decided that the best course of action would be to pretend Jack had never existed, so he was still talking to Ellini, though he didn't meet her eyes very much.

"Val," she murmured, watching through the kitchen window as the new woman jostled with some of Robin's soldiers in the training ground. "Is it short for Valerie or Valkyrie?"

Robin smiled. "I think she's keeping it open."

"How do you know her?"

"Trained with her in Sicily. It's quite a tragic story, really. Strength is her demonic symptom."

"No kidding," said Ellini, as she watched Val kicking her opponent in the stomach, then scything him down with her other leg when he doubled up. He stayed still for a long time after that, apart from the occasional twitch.

"But her extraordinary strength didn't manifest until she was thirteen," Robin went on. "That's when she accidentally crushed her mother's ribs in what was supposed to be a fond embrace."

Ellini was tempted to look up at him then, but she knew it would only fuel his sense of importance. He would love the idea that his story had managed to horrify her. She fixed her eyes on the armour-clad woman instead. She was surly and square-jawed, but she didn't look vicious. And she was keeping her distance while her beleaguered opponent struggled to get to his feet.

"She doesn't allow herself to get close to anyone now," said Robin. "Except in a fighting situation. Won't so much as shake my hand, though we've known each other since we were fourteen."

Ellini didn't think that was so very remarkable, but she didn't say so. Her mind was busy with speculations about what this might mean for Jack. If Robin had sent for a male warrior the day after she'd kissed him, Ellini would have been thrown into a panic—she would have thought this was an assassin with orders to hunt him down and bring back his head. But a female warrior suggested a different approach. It suggested that Robin meant to deal with her instead—probably by hiding her away in some fortress or nunnery where Jack would never find her.

She supposed it was comforting that Robin didn't mean to kill Jack, but comfort confused her, because she hadn't had any for a long time. She was used to shutting it out. But now it was worming its way through, like a beam of sunlight that got in and disturbed your sleep no matter how tightly you closed the curtains. She couldn't be hopeful, but she couldn't despair. Maybe this was what love was like—a horrible, feverish limbo where you suffered but never gave up.

She couldn't run away. Robin would only kill more people—anyone who sheltered her, spoke to her, or even looked at her. She had fantasized for a while about creeping off into the wilderness, where there was nobody to hurt, but the Scottish wilderness had its limits. If she wanted to go any further, she'd have to hire a boat, and then its crew would be in danger. They'd be marked men from the moment they looked at her.

So she waited in Pandemonium, under Robin's watchful eye, until Val was ready to spirit her away to another prison.

Of course, she still had her usual distractions. She still clambered over the rooftops and buried her face in books, but her stomach was tight with anxiety, even when her mind didn't remember what that anxiety was. The cold, hard facts of the matter bobbed to the surface every half-hour or so, like a corpse that hadn't been properly weighted down.

And then there were the dragon eggs.

She hadn't been sure at first. She had kept a respectful distance from the eggs, because that was what it said you should do in all the books of dragon-lore she had found in Myrrha's library. She hadn't even dipped her hand into the pool where they nestled, almost indistinguishable among the pebbles, to feel the warmth of their shells.

But she'd gone back, day and night—because there wasn't that much difference between them, for Ellini—and looked for signs of the mother. A nest, maybe, a fresh kill, even a slight displacement of the gravel on the cave floor. But there was nothing. The only traces of a visitor in those caves were the ones she'd made herself.

And so, after perhaps a week of watching owlishly from the bank of the pool, she reached in and picked up one of the eggs. Not knowing what else to do, she rocked it in her arms, like the abandoned child she now felt sure it was.

The mother must have died or fallen prey to a collector. Perhaps it was in the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park or sitting with cramped-up wings in some rich man's wine cellar. Either way, she was not coming back. The eggs were safe for now, in their moon-drenched pool, but two hatchlings wouldn't last long on these hills.

She didn't talk to the eggs much, to begin with. She just picked them up and handled them mutely, because the slight, iridescent sheen on their shells calmed her worries.

When she did finally speak, she told them her fears, and even the silly, girlish hopes that she was half-ashamed of—no, completely ashamed of, because she had seen how love turned out, hadn't she? She knew what she did to men. She had no right to be so woefully naïve.

But they were silent and shiny, and they always listened.

And, just as she'd spent five hours a day imagining all the different ways that Robin might find to kill Jack, she now couldn't rid herself of the image of two little hatchling dragons shivering on a hillside, watching the sky for a mother that would never come. Somehow, all her other anxieties had found expression in this image. It felt as though everything would be all right—Jack would find her, Robin would forget about her—if only she could ensure that the baby dragons didn't die.

And then, one day, while reading under a desk in an unswept corner of Myrrha's library, she realized that this might just be the case.

She turned over a page to see a blaze of silver, so bright that she had to narrow her eyes against the glare. It was silverleaf, or something like it, pressed onto the page in the shape of a dragon's egg. It had the same markings, the same moon-bright colour as the eggs in her cave. It lit up her face with the same delight.

Silvery, light, and fleet-footed, she read, Achillea Bonnesatva, or messenger dragons, pass through the air as swiftly as words—and, because of the magical power of metaphor, can be used to carry words from one person to another.

They may live for centuries but never speak until they find the one soul for whom their message is intended. Sometimes they don't even grow tongues until they have encountered the right person. At other times, they simply scratch out their message on rocks or in the earth. And they never forget. They could not mistake the identity of a recipient, for they are relying on a sense more fool-proof than mere sight.

The next day, Ellini learned in another book how to make a halfway house, and discovered that all halfway houses are connected. In the hot, womb-like caves between earth and hell, the dragons would be safe. And they could find their way to Gargotha's halfway house under Mount Etna to deliver a message to Jack.

The message itself took some thinking about. She couldn't tell him where she'd be because she didn't know where she'd be. And she couldn't tell him she loved him, because—well, because she couldn't, that was all. She could tell him not to trust Robin, but that was so obvious that it seemed like a waste of a dragon.

In the end, she settled for:

Dear Jack,

Don't despair.

Love, Ellini.

That mentioned love but didn't commit her to anything. And it would tell him not to give up, no matter where Robin hid her, or how many obstacles he threw in their way.

She made sure she was there when the dragons hatched, which was not difficult. It wasn't as though she had any other appointments, not even with sleep, and she seemed to know, somehow, when the time was near.

They were tiny, sticky, spiky things when they elbowed their way out of their shells, with half-closed eyes and bits of mucus clinging to their snouts. They were not just useful but beloved, and she tried to give them a sense of this—she tried to handle them lovingly, even though she couldn't tell them she adored them, because the first words they heard had to be the message.

She stroked the spines along their backs, tickled them under their chins, and then raised each one in turn to her mouth and whispered her message.

Then she tucked them into a little hollow in the rocks as if she was planting a seed, recited the names of the seventy-two potentates of hell as given in the Lesser Key of Solomon, and watched them sink slowly into the rock, leaving only a glowing patch and a smell of burnt silicone where they had been.

Watching them go was like losing her family again—only crammed into the space of twenty seconds. But, if they could give light to Jack when he was in a dark place, it would be worth it.

Then she walked back down the hill to the castle and threw herself into a book—which was better than throwing herself off a ledge only because of the quality of the prose. It was a new translation of Don Quixote. By the time she'd finished it, she was locked up in a high, Rapunzel-like tower in Switzerland with Val.

Next, she read The Faerie Queene—and, by the time she'd finished that, Val had fallen in love with her and carried her off to Paris, where Robin couldn't find them. It must have happened during Book Five, because she remembered reading that on horseback. The jolting motion of the gallop had made it difficult for her to focus on the page.