TWENTY-TWO
Vasco woke with a start. It took him a moment to realise that the soft weight on top of him was merely the bed coverings, and not Dokia's dead body. He wasn't sure which nightmares were worse – the ones in the heat of battle, or the ones from the night his village burned. He hoped he hadn't woken the princesses by crying out.
He rose and padded to the door to their bedchamber, pressing his ear to the closed door. Silence greeted him – they were surely asleep. Sighing in relief, he crossed to the narrow window and took a deep breath of the cool night air, hoping it would clear his head. But the view from the window made his breath catch in his throat.
A flotilla of small boats, like a flock of swans, drifted across the lake toward the misty island in the middle. Moonlight gl
