"How, how can it be?" Elgon said numbly as he stared up at the woman whose memorial he'd attended just the day before. "Lady, Lady Ashlynn," he breathed. "Is it, is it really you?"
No one in the room moved. The servants pressed against the walls barely dared to breathe, and even Sir Beathan's sword had drifted downward. The young Templar's fierce conviction crumbled into the same stunned bewilderment that had seized every other person from Blackwell.
Elgon's sword was already sheathed. He couldn't remember putting it away, but his hands were empty and trembling at his sides as he stared up at the woman on the landing. His eyes, sharpened by years spent watching the horizon for the first sign of pirate sails, swept over the woman claiming to be Lady Ashlynn with a mix of desperate hope and deep distrust.
