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then waved a graceful hand over it so he might see her once more.

    L ARA SHIVERED suddenly.
    “What is it?” Noss asked her. “Are you all right? You have suddenly gone quite pale, Lara. Are you cold?”
    “Nay, but I just had the oddest feeling—as if someone was secretly looking at me. I have had it now and again over this last year. It only lasts a moment or two.” She shrugged her shoulders as if to shake off the sensation. “My faerie senses grow stronger. It is, I suspect, nothing more than that,” she told Noss with a chuckle.
    “The summer is almost over,” Noss remarked, “and soon it will be time for the Gathering. I usually look forward to it, but this year I am not. You will leave us after the Gathering concludes. And traveling with a new infant won’t be easy for me.”
    “No, it won’t be,” Lara agreed. “I keeping forgetting that your daughter will be born shortly. If my son is right and it is a daughter.”
    “Dillon is correct,” Noss said quietly. “When he makes a pronouncement like that he is never wrong, though he is yet a child himself.”
    “I will be glad to have the opportunity to observe him more,” Lara said. “I had not planned to send him to Kaliq until he was twelve but if his powers are strengthening I may have to change my mind. Don’t tell him I said so,” Lara finished with a small laugh. “He is so anxious to go.”
    “I suspect he wants to be someplace where his talents are not looked upon with suspicion,” Noss remarked. “There are always those who will be frightened of magic, and often he is thought of as more your son than Vartan’s.”
    Lara sighed. “If Vartan were still alive that would not be so.”
    “I know,” Noss concurred. “It is sad, but there it is and we cannot change it.”
    “I suppose not,” Lara agreed. “Has Bera said anything since we sent Cam away with Sholeh? And how is the woman we chose doing?”
    “I don’t think Bera realizes how many days have passed since the boy left,” Noss said. “Pakwa does well with her. Bera enjoys her company and she is a marvelous cook. I actually think Bera is putting on a bit of weight. She seems less intense with Cam gone.”
    “What a pity we cannot keep Cam from her entirely,” Lara murmured. “I hope Pakwa will remain when he returns. If Cam decides he doesn’t want her in Bera’s house he will make it difficult for her to stay.”
    “Pakwa has been warned. She will concentrate all her efforts upon Bera and ignore the boy. He will have his lessons to concentrate upon in the Icy Season,” Noss remarked. “And he will go to Sholeh again next year. Or perhaps to Rendor or Roan.”
    “Don’t allow him to become close friends with anyone,” Lara advised. “He must make no allies among the clan families.”
    “Lara, he is just a child,” Noss said softly.
    “He will not always be a child and Bera has put it in his head, you may be certain, that he should one day be lord of the Fiacre. Liam will live long, Noss. I know it. But you do not want Cam causing trouble among the Fiacre as your husband grows older.”
    Noss nodded reluctantly. “I cannot help but feel if we had been raising Cam it would have been different,” she said.
    Lara shook her head. “Nay, there is wickedness in him,” she replied. “He will need to be kept under control all his life.”

    N OSS GAVE BIRTH to her daughter in very late summer. Mildri was a pretty baby and gentle of temperament. The time of the Gathering was drawing near. Magnus Hauk would join Lara and the clan families as he had done every year since they had come to the New Outlands. It was at the Gathering that they rendered him their tribute as their overlord. Lara had sent a faerie post to her husband telling him that Dillon and Anoush would be coming home with them. The Dominus wrote back that his sister, Sirvat, had come to help. She was already preparing rooms for the children despite the fact she was great with a second child to be