As with all of her outfits, Dahlia left the top of the low-cut vest unbuttoned, and the stiff collar turned up to frame her delicate head. It would not do to be along the road under the sun with no hair to protect her pate, though, so she wore a wide-brimmed black leather hat, pinned up on the right, revealing her black and red braid, banded in red silk and stylishly plumed with a red feather.

When she bent her right leg and turned it out just so, striking an alluring pose, what man could resist her?

But what she saw in the mirror did not quite match the reality of her beauty.

They caught her easily and threw her down, but didn’t pile one after another atop her as they had with the others. Dahlia caught the gaze of one burly barbarian, the Shadovar of huge size and strength who had led the raid. While most of the raiders appeared as dusky-skinned humans, the leader was obviously a convert, a horned half-demon—a tiefling.

The young and delicate captive, barely a woman, was his, he decreed.

They stripped her down and held her for the sacrifice, and for the first time, Dahlia truly understood her foolishness in running back to the village, understood what she, and not just what her People, had to lose.

She heard her mother screaming for her, and from the corner of her eyes, saw the woman running at her, only to be tackled and sat upon.

Then he stood over her, the huge tiefling, leering at her. “Loosen and ease, girl, and your mother will live,” he promised.

He had her. She managed to turn her head to look at her mother as he lay down atop her, and managed to bite back her screams as he tore into her, though she felt as if she was ripping in half. The act itself was over quickly, but her humiliation had only just begun.

Two barbarians grabbed her by the ankles and lifted her up into the air, upside down.

“You will keep the seed of Herzgo Alegni,” they mocked as they pawed and slapped at her.

Eventually they lowered her so that her head twisted painfully on the ground. She turned it enough to keep an inverted, distorted view of her mother—enough to see the tiefling, Herzgo Alegni, cross into her field of vision.

He looked back at her and smiled—could she ever forget that smile?—then he so very casually stomped on the back of her mother’s neck, fine elf bones shattering under the blow.

Dahlia took a deep breath and closed her eyes, fighting to hold her balance. But only briefly did she swoon, for she was not that child of a decade before. That young elf girl was dead, killed by Dahlia, murdered internally and replaced by the exquisite, deadly creature she saw in the mirror.

Her hand went across her hard abdomen, and she recalled, just briefly, when she had been with child—with his child, with the smiling one’s child.

With another deep breath, she adjusted her hat then swung away from the mirror to grab up Kozah’s Needle. The slender metal staff stood fully eight feet, and though it appeared glassy smooth from even a short distance, its grip was solid and sure. Its four joints were all but invisible, but Dahlia knew them as well as she knew her own wrist or elbow.

With the flick of a hand, she cracked the staff at its midpoint, letting it swing down to fold onto itself into a comfortable four-foot walking stick. She noted the slight discharge of energy as it swung, feeding her, and the muscles in her forearm twitched under the soft folds of her sleeve.

She took a last glance around her bedchamber. Dor’crae had taken her larger packs to the wagon already, but she let her eyes linger a few heartbeats, wanting to ensure that she had forgotten nothing.

When she left, she didn’t look back, though she expected that several years, perhaps many years, would pass before she again looked upon that place, which had been her home for more than half a decade.

The roots tasted bitter—she couldn’t help but gag as she stuffed one after another into her mouth. But the Netherese would return, the elders assured her. They knew where she was and knew she carried the child of their leader.

One old elf woman had tried to talk her into killing herself to be done with it.

But that girl who had foolishly run back to her village instead of away was already dead.

She felt the pangs in her abdomen soon after, the terrible convulsions, the tearing agony of childbirth through a body too young to accept it.

But Dahlia didn’t make a sound, other than her heavy breathing as she worked her muscles and pushed with all her strength to get the beast child out of her. Covered in sweat, exhausted, she at last felt the rush of relief, and heard the first cries of her baby, of Herzgo Alegni’s son. The midwife placed the babe upon her chest and a mixture of revulsion and unexpected warmth tore at the woman as surely as the Shadovar had torn at her loins, as surely as his son had ripped her in birth.

She didn’t know what to think, and took a tiny measure of comfort in hearing the women discussing their success, for she had beaten the return of the father and his brutes by several tendays.

Dahlia rested back her head and closed her eyes. She couldn’t let them return. She couldn’t let them determine her life’s path.

“You are not gone yet?” Sylora Salm surprised Dahlia almost as soon as she had exited her room. “I would have thought you halfway to the Sword Coast by now.”

“Seeking to claim what fineries I’ve left behind, Sylora?” Dahlia replied. She paused to strike a pensive pose for just a moment before adding, “Take the mirror, and let it serve you well.”

Sylora laughed at her. “It will prefer my reflection, I am sure.”

“Perhaps true, though I doubt many would agree. But no matter, human, for soon enough, you will be old, gray, and haggard, while I am still young and fresh.”

Sylora’s eyes flashed dangerously, and Dahlia clutched Kozah’s Needle a bit more tightly, though she knew the wizard wouldn’t risk the wrath of Szass Tam.

“Peasant,” Sylora replied. “There are ways around that.”

“Ah, yes, the way of Szass Tam,” Dahlia mumbled, and she moved suddenly right up to Sylora, face to face so that the woman could feel her breath hot on her face. “When you entwine with Themerelis and inhale deeply of him, does it feel as if I am in the room beside you?” she whispered.

Sylora sucked in her breath hard and fell back just a bit, moving as if to slap Dahlia, but the young elf was quicker and had anticipated the reaction. “And you will be pallid and unbreathing,” she said as she cupped her free hand and grabbed Sylora’s crotch. “Cold and dry, while I remain warm and.…”

Sylora wailed, and a laughing Dahlia spun away and skipped down the hall.

The wizard growled at her in rage, but Dahlia spun back on her, all merriment flown. “Strike fast and true, witch,” she warned as she put Kozah’s Needle up in front of her. “For you get but one spell before I send you to a realm so dark even Szass Tam couldn’t drag you back from it.”

Sylora’s hands trembled before her in nearly uncontrollable rage. She didn’t speak, of course, but Dahlia surely heard every word: This child! This impertinent elf girl! Her small breasts heaving with gasps as she tried to regain her composure, Sylora only gradually calmed and let her hands fall to her sides.

Dahlia laughed at her. “I didn’t think so,” she said, then skipped down the hall.

As she neared the keep’s exit, two corridors presented themselves. To the left lay the courtyard, where Dor’crae waited with the wagons, and to the right, the garden and her other lover.

She had picked the spot well, and knew it as soon as she came to the edge of the cliff overlooking the encampment of Herzgo Alegni’s Shadovar barbarians. They couldn’t get to her without running for nearly a mile to the south, and could reach up the hundred-foot cliff with neither weapon nor spell.

“Herzgo Alegni!” she cried.

She presented the baby in the air before her. Her voice boomed off the stones, echoing throughout the ravine and reaching beyond to the encampment.

“Herzgo Alegni!” she shouted again. “This is your son!” And she kept shouting that over and over as the camp began to stir.

Dahlia noted a couple of Shadovar running out to the south, but they were of no concern to her. She shouted again and again. A gathering approached, far below, staring up at her, and she could only imagine their surprise that the foolish girl would come to them.

“Herzgo Alegni, this is your son!” she screamed, presenting the child higher. They heard her, though they were a hundred feet down and more than that away.

She scoured the crowd for a tiefling’s form as she yelled again to the father of her baby. She wanted him to hear her. She wanted him to see.

She couldn’t quite read the look on Themerelis’s square-jawed face as she came out into the garden. The night was dark, with few stars finding their way out from behind the heavy clouds that had settled in that evening. Several torches burned in the stiff wind, bathing the area in wildly dancing shadows.

“I didn’t know if you would come,” the man said. “I feared—”

“That I would leave without a proper farewell?”

The man started to answer, found no words, and simply shrugged.

“You would make love one last time?” Dahlia asked.

“I would go with you to Luskan, if you would have me.”

“But since you cannot.…”

He started toward her, arms outstretched, begging a hug. But Dahlia stepped back and to the side, easily keeping her distance.

“Please, my love,” he said. “One moment to remember until again we meet.”

“One last barb I might stab into the side of Sylora Salm?” Dahlia asked, and Themerelis’s face screwed up with puzzlement for just a moment until the notion fully registered, replacing curiosity with a stare of disbelief.

Dahlia laughed at him.

“Oh, I will stab her this night,” she promised, “but you’ll not stab me.”

She brought her right arm forward in a sweeping motion, then flicked her wrist, uncurling her staff to its full length.

Themerelis stumbled backward, eyes wide with shock.

“Come, lover,” Dahlia teased, bringing the staff horizontally in front of her chest. With a slight move, unseen by her opponent, she cracked two joints, leaving a four-foot center section in her hands, with twin two-foot-long sections dropping to the ends of short chains at either side. Again barely moving, Dahlia set those two side-sticks spinning, both forward at first, then one forward and one backward. She began rolling the center bar in the air in front of her, dipping its ends alternately, heightening the spins of the respective sides.

“It need not be—”

“Oh, but it does!” the woman assured him. “But our love—”

“Our lust,” she corrected him. “I am already bored, and I’ll be gone from here for years. Come then, coward. You profess to be a grand warrior—surely you’re not afraid of a tiny creature like Dahlia.” She worked the tri-staff more furiously then, rotating the central bar in front of her and all the while keeping the two side sticks spinning.

Themerelis put his hands on his hips and stared at her hard.

Dahlia grabbed the center of the long bar in one hand and broke the rotation. As the side sticks swung back to slap against the central bar they created lightninglike bolts that Dahlia expertly directed at her opponent.