He looked back at them again, at their silent, sleeping forms.
Once they knew, of course. Once they were told.
He eased himself away from Nightshade, thinking of what had passed between them as the Knight and the Lady, recognizing the damage they had inadvertently done to themselves. He remembered how she had kissed him. He remembered her touch. His eyes closed in dismay. How could he tell her that it was all a lie? How could he tell her that she was not his charge as he had believed, that the magic of their prison had misled them, had tricked them into thinking that their relationship was something other than what it really was and caused them to …
He could not finish the thought. Only one thing mattered, there was now and had always been only Willow.
He climbed to his feet, not yet ready to do so. He walked away from her, moving toward the trees, trying to assemble the fragments of what he knew into some recognizable whole. He thought of how he had been made to appear, a Knight with no past and no future, a nameless warrior, a champion for a master with no name and of a cause without identity. His worst nightmare. His worst …
Fear.
He saw it then, the truth that had been hidden from them all this time. They were in the fairy mists, too!
The Gargoyle was next to him suddenly, a dark shadow moving out of the haze. Gnarled hands balanced his disjointed body as he leaned forward. “What is it?” he asked, seeing Ben’s face.
Ben looked at him, trying to see past the ugliness, past the mask the magic had created. He could not. “I know what has been done to us,” he said. “I know where we came from. I know who we are.”
The Gargoyle’s face twisted and froze, his eyes glittering like candles. “Tell me.”
Ben shook his head. He motioned to the Lady. “We must wake her, too.”
They walked to her, and Ben reached down and touched her arm. She awoke at once, flawless, cold features softened by sleep, a smile upon her face. “I dreamed of you,” she began.
He placed a warning finger to her lips. “No, say nothing. Don’t speak. Sit up and listen to me. I have something to tell you.” He moved back from her, letting her rise. “Listen carefully. I know who we are.”
She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head quickly. “I don’t want to know.” There was fear in her voice, recognition that something was about to be stolen away. “What difference does it make to us here?”
He kept his voice calm, even. “By knowing who we are and where we come from, we give ourselves a chance to escape. Our only chance, I think.”
“How is it that you know and we do not?” she snapped at him, angry now, defensive.
“I was given a dream,” he told her. “In the dream I discovered what had happened to us. We have been trapped in this place by magic. We were sent here from another world, our world. Magic was used to make us forget who we are, to make us seem different. We were sent here to wander about forever, I think—to spend what was left of our lives futilely attempting to find a way out. But there is no way out of here except by using magic. You were right—magic alone can save us. But first we have to understand how that magic works. To do that, we have to understand ourselves, who we are, where we came from, what it is we do.”
“No,” she said quietly and shook her head back and forth. “Don’t say anything else.”
“I am not the Knight,” he said, pressing quickly ahead, anxious to get this over with. “I am Ben Holiday, King of Landover.”
Her hands flew to her mouth, shaking. She made a noise deep in her throat.
Unable to bear her look, Ben turned to the Gargoyle. The monster was staring at him, expressionless. “You are called Strabo. You are a dragon, not a Gargoyle.”
He turned back to the Lady, determined. “And you are…”