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hair.
    Scowling, half-absorbed in his thoughts and the work spread out before him, Kenrick gave a shake of his head. "No. She claims to remember little of that night."
    "Fever can rob a person of memory. I have seen it happen more than once."
    Kenrick grunted, knowing there was sense in the statement yet unwilling to accept it. "She holds something back. I can see it in her eyes. She vows she is being truthful with me...but I don't know."
    "Mayhap it is fear that keeps her from talking." Braedon turned a sage look on him. "Fear of you, my brother."
    "Me?" Kenrick scoffed. "I have given the chit no reason to fear me. She is alive, is she not? She is safe and comfortable. Any fear she might harbor toward me is misplaced--nay, unfounded and foolish."
    "Hmm."
    The thoughtful response bespoke disagreement but Ariana's husband made no more of it. Kenrick watched him turn his attention to a small object in the cradle of his palm. He inspected the metallic shard, tilting it this way and that to allow the firelight to skitter across its polished surface.
    "That she was present during the raid on Greycliff is obvious," Kenrick continued. "I reckon the chip of tooled steel you hold in your hand is evidence enough of that."
    "Yes," the dark-haired warrior concurred, grim as he continued to peruse the item. "This dagger tip could have come from one place only."
    "Aye," Kenrick said. "Anavrin."
    Although thoughts of the place had consumed him for years, he had not spoken the word aloud in months.
    Anavrin.
    It was the realm of the Dragon Chalice itself, a mythical world that was said to exist alongside their own, ruled by benevolent immortals and guarded by soulless magi warriors who could shift their physical forms at will. Legend had it that some of those shapeshifters had been dispatched to the mortal world to aid in retrieving the Chalice treasure, after it had been stolen from Anavrin some hundreds of years ago by an unscrupulous knight who had connived his way past Anavrin's protective gates.
    Most would call it fanciful fiction, mere fairy tale. But not Kenrick. Not Braedon and Ariana. They had seen too much of it--felt too much of the power and the pain--to maintain a blissful ignorance of the treasure and those who sought it.
    Rand and his family had seen too much as well. And Haven, whose tender body had endured the nearly lethal blow of a shifter's blade.
    "She was there," Kenrick asserted. "She was nearly killed by one of them--strangled, stabbed, left to die--and yet she can recall none of it."
    Braedon set the chip of tooled steel on a table beside him. "Naturally, you do not believe her."
    The statement carried an irony that made Kenrick pause. "Would you? Knowing all that you know--Criste, having lived through it, closer than most--could you trust anyone who might have knowledge of Silas de Mortaine and that accursed cup he seeks?"
    A measured silence was all the answer he would get from Braedon le Chasseur, the man once known by his dangerous reputation as The Hunter. Eyes gone stormy with contemplation, he looked away from Kenrick, toward the orange glow of the fire on the grate. As he turned, light played over the long, silvery scar that rode a jagged trail down the left side of his face. It was an old wound, given to him in the time before Kenrick or Ariana knew the man they would one day call kin.
    Braedon bore other scars as well, the most savage of them earned but a few short months ago, in the bowels of an ancient abbey in France. The night that he, Kenrick, and Ariana experienced the true and terrible power of the mythical Dragon Chalice. None of them had emerged unscathed from that journey. Nor would they be eager to face such a test again.
    Kenrick knew he need not remind his sister's husband of the danger they courted should Silas de Mortaine and his league of sorcerer's underlings learn of their escape and then turn their sights on Clairmont.
    De Mortaine was a wealthy man with vast personal connections,