Chapter 86

Later that night, Brendan embarks on a search for his own wife.

As per usual, Alcina had left to go for her routine visit to the dragons, just before bed. But where she usually returned within an hour, this time, nearly two had passed when Alcina still had yet to return; another thirty minutes later, Brendan had decided to set out and search for Alcina himself.

When he glances outside in the courtyard where she usually remains with the dragons and finds Orion and Perseus, alone, he knows where his wife might be.

The only other place, that would call her attention so late at night.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Alcina gazes down at her father’s face, smoothed by sleep, unconsciousness, rather, in a way that she has never seen it, before.

She tries to think of the last time she had ever seen her father’s features, without the lines that seemed to have permanently etched themselves into something disapproving, and she cannot remember.

Her earliest memory, after all, is of her father, gazing down