He found her near the peak of Agate Mountain, the tallest mountain in the Claws of the Clouds range. She was sitting in the mouth of a small cave, looking east to where the sun was rising over the twin peaks of Jade Mountain, casting dark green shadows over the valleys below.

Darkstalker landed beside her, folding in his wings. It didn’t look as though she’d brought anything with her. Where was his scroll? Had she used his magic? He hadn’t felt any twinges from his spell on the scroll, so it seemed like she hadn’t. But then why steal it?

“Did you know,” Clearsight said thoughtfully, “that this won’t be the tallest mountain in Pyrrhia for much longer? There’s going to be an earthquake soon and this whole side will collapse. Then Jade Mountain will be the tallest.”

“Is that supposed to be a metaphor?” Darkstalker said, flicking his tail back and forth. “Something about the most powerful dragon falling and someone else taking his place? Because it’s a bit muddled. Not your best work.”

She actually laughed, just a little bit. “No,” she said. “Not a metaphor. I just thought it was interesting. A piece of the future that is definitely true.”

“Anything about the future can be changed,” he said. “Even that. I could enchant the mountain to stay up if I wanted to. We can make the future turn out however we like.”

“Not if we want different things,” she said, pulling a small yellow wildflower out of the dirt. She started shredding it between her claws. “Not if we can’t even agree on what is right and what is wrong.”

He took a step toward her. “If you don’t want to be with me, just say so.” He wanted to know … but he wasn’t going to let her go. He loved her too much.

“Nothing I did worked,” she said. “I thought I was so careful, and we still ended up here. All that studying, all the timeline scrolls. Now it’s all happened, and I can’t change any of it, and I still don’t know where it all went so wrong.”

“Because it didn’t,” he said, taking another step closer. “It’s not wrong. We’re on the right path, Clearsight. We’re so close to our happy future. The bad part’s almost over. Almost all my enemies are dead.”

“Including Indigo?” she asked. Her eyes lifted to meet his, and he froze for a moment. Does she know? Did she find the hidden spells? No … she’s just guessing.

“What do you mean?” he said. “Indigo left. That was nothing to do with me.”

“Maybe it started the first time you lied to me,” she said, turning to the sunrise again. “Or maybe it was losing Foeslayer and not being able to do anything about it. Maybe it was all the small moments where you felt threatened or powerless or out of control, and all the things you did to fight those feelings.”

I’ve never been powerless, he thought. Nobody threatens me. “Everything I did was for a good reason,” he said. “To protect you, or Whiteout, or our future dragonets. Why can’t you trust me?”

She took a deep breath and looked back into his eyes. “Or maybe it’s just part of you, something you hatched with. Maybe that’s what you really got from your father, along with your magic. Maybe you were always going to turn out this way, no matter how I tried to save you.”

He lunged toward her, fury flooding through his veins, and seized her wrist, twisting it painfully. “I’m nothing like my father,” he snarled. “I don’t need saving. I can choose my own future, and I like the one I see, and you’re going to learn to like it, too. Where is my scroll?”

Something slid coolly along his scales and he glanced down. Clearsight had slipped the moonstone bracelet off her own arm and onto his.

For a brief flash of a moment her mind was open to him again, unguarded for the first time in years, and he saw with perfect clarity how she loved him, how she feared him, how many terrible futures lay before them, and how she was betraying him to save everyone else.

Good-bye, my dearest love, her thoughts whispered.

And then … blackness rushed up toward him, enfolding him in its wings, and he was gone.