Every vessel they overflew left him in an agony of doubt. Was Malta held prisoner on board that ship? Tintaglia had loftily assured him that if she had come that close to where Malta was held, she would have sensed her.

“It is a sense you do not possess, and hence I cannot explain it to you,” she added condescendingly. “Imagine trying to explain a sense of smell to someone who had none. What sounds like an arbitrary, almost mystic ability is no different from smelling apple blossoms in the dark.”

Hope filled Reyn’s heart to breaking, and anxiety clawed him daily. Each day that passed was another day of separation from her, but worse, it was another day of Malta in Chalcedean captivity. He cursed his imagination for how it tormented him with images of her in coarse hands. As he bedded down near the fire, he hoped he would not dream tonight. Too often, his dreams of Malta turned to nightmares. Yet trying not to think of her as he was dozing off was like trying not to breathe. He recalled the last time he had beheld her. Heedless of all propriety, they had been alone together, and he had held her in his arms. She had asked to see his face, but he had refused her that. “You can see me when you say you’ll marry me,” he had told her. Sometimes, in his dreams, when he finally held her safe in his arms, he foolishly allowed her to lift his veil. Always, she recoiled in horror and struggled from his embrace.

This would not do. He would never fall asleep with such thoughts.

He recalled instead Malta at a window, looking out over Trehaug while he drew a brush through her thick, black hair. It was like heavy silk in his gloved fingers, and the fragrance of it rose to his nostrils. They had been together, and she had been safe. He slipped one of her honey drops into his mouth and smiled at the sweetness.

He was skimming sleep when Tintaglia returned. She woke him, as she always did, by adding too much fuel to his fire. In what had become a habit, she lay down beside him, between his body and the night. The curve of her body trapped the warmth of the fire around him. As the logs she had dropped on the fire warmed and then kindled, Reyn dropped deeply into slumber.

In his dream, he once more drew a brush down the shining length of Malta’s hair, but this time she stared out over the bow of a ship as he did so. The night was clear and cold. Stars shone sharply above her, piercing the winter night. He heard the snap of canvas in the wind. On the horizon, the black shapes of islands blotted out the stars, glittering stars that swam as she looked up at them, and he knew that tears stood in her eyes. “How did I ever come to be so alone?” she asked the night. She lowered her head and he felt the warm drip of tears down her cheeks. His heart smote him. Yet, in the next instant his chest swelled with pride in her as she lifted her head once more, her jaw set in determination. He felt her draw a deep breath, and stood with her as she squared her shoulders and refused to surrender to despair.

He knew in that instant that he desired nothing more than to stand at her side. She was no cooing dove of a woman to be sheltered and protected. She was a tigress, as strong as the wind that swept her, a partner a Rain Wild man could depend on. The strength of his emotion rushed out and wrapped her like a blanket. “Malta, my dear, my strength to you,” he whispered. “For you are my strength and my hope.”

She turned her head sharply to his words. “Reyn?” she asked the night. “Reyn?”

The hope in her voice jolted him awake. Behind him, sand and stone rasped against Tintaglia’s scaled body as she stirred.

“Well, well,” she said in a sleepy voice. “I am surprised. I thought only an Elderling could dreamwalk on his own.”

He drew a deep breath. “It was like sharing the dream-box with her. It was real, wasn’t it? I was with her, as she stood there.”

“It was definitely a sharing with her, and real. But I do not know what you mean by a dream-box.”

“It is a device of my people, something lovers occasionally use when they must be apart.” His words trickled to a halt. He would not mention that such boxes worked because they contained a minute amount of powdered wizardwood mixed in with potent dream herbs. “Usually, when lovers meet in such dreams, they share what they imagine. But tonight I felt as if Malta were awake but I was with her, in her mind.”

“You were,” the dragon observed smugly. “A pity you are not more adept at such dream travel. For if you were, you could have made her aware of yourself, and she would have told you where to find her.”

Reyn grinned. “I saw the stars. I know the heading her ship is on. And I know that she was not in pain, nor confined in any way. Dragon, you cannot know how heartening that is to me.”