They slipped between earth-folds together, small against the reaching spires of the Northern lands. The air crackled and bit in Oliver’s lungs. Tir intermittently put a hand up to rub his left temple, either unthinking or forgetting to hide it. Ollie watched worriedly. Tir said everything was fine, or would be shortly, and turned them west, toward the coast, down a defile.

  The morning poured itself into midday in a waterfall of blue and gold, framed by rock.

  The final obstacle steadfastly refused to appear. Oliver had nearly forgotten to expect it. They were close, so close; his spirits rose with the sun. He could finish this Quest. He could go back to his life. It could be over and he could go home, he and Tir could—

  Except it wouldn’t be over. He’d see whatever he saw in the Seeing Pool. Some destined True Love to save and fall madly in love with. Head over heels. Romance. Happy endings. And he wouldn’t not try to save someone who needed him. Of course he wouldn’t abandon anyone, not when he could help.

  If Tir would come with him on that rescue, would stay with him, at least—

  The object of his crowded thoughts stopped walking. “Oliver?”

  “What? Um. Yes. Sorry.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. I was just…thinking. You know.”

  “Yes.” Tir sighed. “Everything will change for you, won’t it…”

  “For us,” Ollie said, “you’ll be with me, come on, you’re my companion, aren’t you?”

  Tir let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh. “Of course. And speaking of…it’s that last test. Up ahead. I haven’t looked yet, but I can feel it. In my head.”

  “Oh.”

  “Shall we?”

  “Guess we should…”

  They peeked around the rock-fall corner at the last test.

  The last test proved to be a dragon.

  Oliver, flattened against the canyon wall, hissed, “Did you expect this?”

  “No!” Tir adventured another glimpse around rock. “That’s new. Not in any of my research. That is, they exist, but they’ve never turned up for your family’s tradition before!”

  “I thought they were extinct!”

  “Not at all. They don’t come across the border, though. They live on magic. Oh—of course, this is your Seeing Pool, it’s entirely magic…I wonder if it drinks from the Pool itself, or—”

  “You can practice comparative magical zoology later!” He risked one more peek himself. The Pool was indeed visible, beyond the not insignificant obstacle of dragon.

  It formed a natural spring, welling up into a bowl shaped of smoky transparent stone, carved over eons by the drip of Fairyland-sourced water. It shimmered under the slate-and-cloud sky at the end of the skinny rock-walled trail. It lay only a few steps distant, but: dragon.

  Not a cuddly faithful tamable beast, as in some children’s puppet shows. Not huge, about the size of a big cart-horse, but absolutely not small as a house-pet lizard. Ugly. Black-scaled, spiky, fanged. Ochre glow down near its belly. Built to be a predator and bring death. It lashed its tail like a vicious cat, waiting. It knew they’d come.

  Tir gave him a faintly offended scowl. “If I had a profession I’d be a writer of magical romance, and I like doing the research—”

  “I know you do! What do we do about it?”

  “I…honestly, I’m not certain.”

  “Okay,” Oliver said, sitting in the dirt behind a boulder, Tir at his side. “Okay…then what? We give up, go home, say we couldn’t reach the Pool?”

  “You couldn’t do that. I might be able to do…something…”

  “Like what?”

  Tir eyed Oliver’s short sword. Speculation in pale eyes.

  “What, you want to…throw my sword at it?”

  “No. Yes. I’d guess you need to do the actual deed. But I can offer assistance.” Tir bit his lip. “Magic, for a magical creature.”

  “It needs magic.”

  “You know all those children’s stories about enchanted blades and heroic deeds.”

  “I’m not a hero!”

  “You will be. Give me your sword.”

  “But—”

  Tir held out a hand. He’d tied his hair up, severe and sleek, but a strand of black had slid loose, along his temple.

  Oliver drew his sword. Surrendered it to his fairy’s request. It was a good sword: no fancy name or lineage, just plain strong steel and solid craftsmanship. He’d never needed to use it beyond training, Home Guard reviews, drills. He was decent at those—he had the height and the breadth for power in swings, and he’d practiced because he’d wanted to be good, the way an Heir should be.

  He’d never fought anyone, anything, in seriousness.

  Tir closed a lightly bandaged hand around the blade, not the hilt. Oliver almost interrupted right then.

  No blood appeared, despite sharpness. Ollie wasn’t sure what that meant.

  He kept an eye on Tir’s fingers. He’d grown up with legends about magic and the cost thereof.

  Tir murmured something, low. And stroked his hand along bare steel, a disarmingly intimate gesture. Oliver might’ve been imagining the way the sword thrilled to his caress, a ripple passing along the surface. Might’ve been.

  Tir’s eyes were distant, faraway. His lips were parted. After a second he tugged a bandage looser, bared skin, touched the sword again: closer.

  Oliver had a flash of astonished wondering: was this how Tir would touch someone he loved? With strength, with coaxing, with unhurried deliberate fingers and palm?

  He swallowed. He tried not to think about whether magic always moved like this for Tir: a slow sweet seduction, a pulse-beat, a swell of desire.

  He’d seen Tir do one or two things, small, quick. Cedric’s arm, for instance. But even that’d been years ago.

  Everyone knew the Crown Prince’s loyal companion was a fairy. Oliver had never seen his best friend as a fairy before. Not like this. Not at all like this.

  Tir blinked, shook himself, came back from whatever dreamy precipice he’d been on. “Here.”

  “Was it good for you,” Oliver tossed back, a joke in the face of strange uneasiness. Tir’s hand stroking his sword, Tirian beautiful and inhuman and wrapped in invisible sorcery. The teasing landed badly.

  “I put myself into it,” Tir said. No perceptible reaction to Oliver’s failed joke. Only sincerity and practical focus, which of course should be the case, in the face of a dragon. “My own magic. It should work.”

  “You could use it. Um. If it’s…yours?”

  “You’re better with a sword than I am, and it’s your Quest.” Tir shoved the sword into his hand and pulled both long knives instead. “I don’t know that it’ll work. I’ve never done this before.”

  “As if I have. Did you have a plan?”

  “I’ll be your distraction. Just try to cut its head off; that’s the only way I know how to kill them. There’s no such thing as a mythical vulnerable spot. Ready?”

  “No,” Oliver said. “Are you okay? I mean…I don’t know. Are you?”

  And Tir’s eyes got less guarded, more affectionate, more familiar. “I’m fine.”

  They ran into battle—for the first time ever—together.

  The world transformed. Became a crazy collision of black scales and lunges and scorching fire.

  Oliver had trained with a sword, but never against a horse-sized heap of fangs and claws and spiked tail; he ducked, dodged, felt the sharp sudden sting of a tail-barb scrape one leg. A flicker of blue-black flowed past him, and a shimmer of gold burst in the air.

  Tir. And magic. More of it. Spinning rock-dust into glittering light, calling a Fairyland-beast away from Oliver.

  That would’ve worked, except that Ollie stumbled on a rock. The dragon’s head swung his way and snarled. Fire bubbled up: not ready yet but building.

  Tir threw a knife instead of magic this time. It whirled back to face him.

  Oliver dove in and tried to do what his fairy said, really tried, and the sword slid through scales like butter, but the dragon got quicker and meaner when hurt and it pulled back and teeth clashed above Tir’s head—

  No. Not happening. Oliver panicked, lunged in, flailed around in scales, gave up and stabbed it through where he hoped the heart lay. Malevolence collapsed in a clatter of scale and bone, and ceased to move.

  He sagged, exhausted.

  “Hmm,” Tir observed, coming over to his side. A fresh scratch marred one graceful cheekbone: not a claw, but flying shards of rock slicing skin. Red, but not deep. “That shouldn’t’ve worked.”

  “Guess you’re just that good at magic.”

  “I meant—” Tir paused, shook his head, smiled. He looked abruptly tired, though Ollie couldn’t spot any other wounds. “Let me wrap up your leg, and then you can go peer into your enchanted water.”

  “I didn’t know you could do magic like that,” Ollie nudged, while skilled fingers bandaged his cut. It also wasn’t bad, a slash across the meat of his left calf that hurt and would take some care but wouldn’t leave lasting damage. “Sparks and swords and everything.”

  “When have you ever needed a magical sword before now?” Tir retorted, which wasn’t an answer. “Can you walk on it?”

  “Oh, yeah, it’s fine, it’s barely even anything, thanks.” He got up to prove it, and held out a hand. Tir, who’d been sitting on the ground to examine his leg, took it.

  Nothing changed, not outwardly. He’d grabbed Tir’s hand countless times before. Had held both those hands in his the night before, smeared with salve.

  He’d never noticed the strength of those fingers. The way they fit into his without hesitation, nothing held back.

  “Quest,” Tir remembered, letting go. Rock-dust lingered in his hair, lightening dark silk to silver. “Why we’re here.”

  “Oh…right.” He’d forgotten.

  He left the sword. He didn’t want to, but it seemed to be stuck in the dragon, and Tir said it wasn’t enchanted anymore anyway. He walked past the scaled body and up to the crystalline mirror of the Seeing Pool in its moonstone bowl.

  He looked into clear shallow waters. Why they’d come. Perils defeated. Ready to meet his destined other half, whom he’d go and save from one last Peril and marry in triumph.

  He saw Tir.

  He regarded this face—unfairly long eyelashes, aristocratic cheekbones, dark hair, the profile he knew better than his own—for a minute.

  “Oh,” Tir said, behind his shoulder. His voice sounded odd. Almost wounded, though he hadn’t been, unless Ollie’d missed something. “It’s me.”

  “You…?”

  “I mean I must be making it go wrong for you. Magical interference. Sorry.” He vanished so quickly that Oliver wondered whether that expression wasn’t figurative, whether teleportation might be possible for fairies at home in the North; but when he glanced back Tir was sitting on a rocky outcropping a few strides away and studiously pretending to clean a knife.

  Hmm. Well, Tirian was a fairy; presumably magic knew magic. And Tir didn’t lie to him.

  Something nameless and lonely poked at his chest.

  He looked back at the Seeing Pool, which should be showing him the person he was meant to save and treasure and love. Waters lapped upward; shapes formed, hazy at first, then blurring into a recognizable setting.

  The setting was the royal library; he saw that much, and he liked the idea that that’d be his future, cozy and book-paneled and comfortable at the heart of his kingdom. A good foreshadowing. Had to be.

  He hovered closer as a figure strolled into view, wandered over to a shelf, plucked a book down, beamed at the title page.

  Oliver knew that figure. Slightly longer hair, silver pins holding rich dark loops of it; obviously a few years older, from the unfamiliar cut of clothing, different boots. But he knew that wide unfurling pirate’s smile, that head-tilt at a book-friend.

  Okay. Of course Tirian would be in his future. He wanted Tir in his future.

  It was reassuring, he decided: however this quest played out, whomever he ended up with, Tir would always be at his side. In his library; and he had to grin. That was the life he wanted. Yes.

  He wondered when the unknown Prince or Princess would be revealed. He stared into the water. He was prepared. He hoped so, anyway.

  Someone entered the library, in the vision. Tir turned, lit up, laughed at whatever the person’d said. Taller than him, albeit only by an inch or so, and also male, at least based on clothing and shoulders and gait; clearly someone he knew well, from the delight in those eyes. Ollie couldn’t quite see.

  The scene shifted: as if he wasn’t getting it, as if he needed some hand-holding. No longer the future: the past, he understood, as Tir’s hair and clothing altered. Still in the library—naturally—but a moment he recalled: roughly three years ago, the first day of the annual spring festival. Tir was reading now, curled up in an enormous royal-purple chair and absorbed in a story. Which meant that at any second—

  Oliver—the memory-Oliver—bounced into the scene. Ollie, observing, couldn’t hear his own voice, but no need: the day came flooding back in a rush. Memory-him lunged over the back of the chair and ruffled Tir’s hair; Tir jumped, dropped the book, scowled like an insulted panther. Hey, Oliver said, come on, spring fair’s today, Scarlet Hood plays, festival dancers, ale, acrobats, it’ll be fun, let’s go!

  Tir sat up, the way he always did when Ollie proposed some random excursion. Oliver, watching, could hear him saying yes, fine, why not, you had me at Scarlet Hood plays, and starting to grin.

  Memory-Oliver bent down to pick up Tir’s fallen book, handing it back with an apology and a joke: Some fairy you are, can’t even sense a clumsy human coming?

  I was reading, Tir answered with a smile, and I’m too used to you to notice. Go on, I’ll put this back and meet you downstairs.

  Okay! Memory-Oliver bounded out the door. Endless enthusiasm. Ale-drinking and spring festival merriment ahead.

  Oliver’s own memory, of course, went with him. But not here. Here the Seeing Pool lingered on Tir: on the way he touched the cover of that book, the spot where Oliver’s fingers rested when handing it back. Tir gazed toward the library door, and smiled again: a fond smile, a sad smile, one that Oliver had never seen.

  The vision went black.

  The world went red.

  In the ravine, outside of visions and his spinning head, Tir was shouting his name. And the great onyx lump of the dragon was moving, opening jaws, not quite dead because Tir told him to cut off its head and he hadn’t listened—

  And the fire roared up in one last awful burst—

  Ollie’s fingers scrambled for his sword, which wasn’t there, having been ineffectually left in a dragon’s heart—

  Tir pushed him aside. Ollie fell ungracefully into the Seeing Pool, which splashed. Shards of broken vision tumbled around him like scorched snow.

  The dragon breathed fire and ash. Oliver, paralyzed, couldn’t move, couldn’t even think.

  Tir stepped in front of him. Magic flickered up into a shield: insubstantial, brave, foolhardy bright blue. Showers of sparks against ancient dragon-flame.

  Tir, who had never practiced much magic—never in all the years he’d lived with them, never until now—did not have a chance.

  Oliver, shoved out of the way, unarmed, heard someone screaming. Not the person standing in flame. Himself.

  Tir only carried knives. He muttered one or two words, even as his last heroic shield-sparks went out. As they died. As his hair, his skin—

  Tir threw a knife. Unerring aim: into the dragon’s throat, into burgeoning eruptions. The world imploded. White-hot ribbons in the sky, burning blue tongues. Slithering scales and crashing rumbles of collapsing ground—

  And then silence, and dark.

  Oliver woke up hours or years later. He felt wet and cold and uncomfortable; he felt as if he was lying in a puddle on rocks.

  He opened both eyes, agonizingly, to discover that he was in fact lying in a puddle on rocks.

  The rocks arched up in voiceless agonized molten shapes, smoothed and seared by dragon’s fire. The shape of wings lingered, flash-burned onto stone above a small heap of black ash. The sky swung in dull flat iron overhead. The Seeing Pool was dead; when Ollie sat up, he discovered he’d been unconscious in it, or rather in what remained. Water had splashed out across the ground and onto rocks like blood, only a few drops pooling at the bottom of the basin.

  He wasn’t on fire, so that was good, but he was stiff and sore everyplace, not a surprise, and if he felt this bad then Tirian must be worse, having pushed him out of the way and dispatched a dragon singlehandedly; so he looked around and said, “Tir?”

  His voice echoed back from canyon walls and empty stone.

  “Tir?”

  No reply.

  “Tir,” Oliver said, “this isn’t funny, tell me where you are, if you’re hurt, if you can’t come to me I’ll come find you, just say something, please.”

  He said, “Tir, please.”

  He got to his feet, limping and wincing, and said, “If you still have spare socks can I have them?” because Tir would always come when Oliver needed him, Tir always did, that was—

  The dragon was gone, but the heap of black ash stirred, coaxed by wind.

  Oliver took a step that way.

  Tir’s second knife—the slim twisted sliver of enchanted metal that was no longer a knife, barely even a hairpin—glimmered dull silver under dark dust.

  Ollie picked it up. Little flecks of ash clung to the metal, to his fingers, until the wind took them away.

  Ollie said, “Tir…?”

  After a minute he sat down, very slowly, back against the sheer rock wall.

  He did not move. He held Tir’s knife in his lap. He was not seeing anything.

  The sun went away and came back again.

  The Seeing Pool did not refill. Oliver’s pack sat abandoned beside the rock basin. The pack held food and medicine. Healing salve. For burns. For—

  It was useless.

  The sun went away, and came back. Again.

  He felt hands on his shoulder. On his face. Checking him for injuries. Shaking him. “Oliver?”

  “He’s dead,” Oliver said.