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Corinna had set aside her Saturday to investigate the park again, this time in the daylight. Dylan was, she hoped, using his Saturday to give more thought to his choice in Jesse, maybe spend some quality time with him -- but it was just as likely, or, well, honestly much more likely that he'd be off sneaking into the restricted section of the public library and trying to read books written in Chinese. He was gifted; he thought faster than most people; he needed fuel for his considerable imagination. He wasn't always single-minded like Corinna.

No new clues seemed to be revealing themselves during the daylight. She roamed about for a bit, examining strange footprints, taking photos of anything that looked suspicious. Finally, she gave up for the time being, and settled into just taking photos that might look sharp in her portfolio someday.

She'd just focused her camera on a stout little snowman that was leaned up against a telephone post in full throes of exhaustion, smiling at the composition of it, when something orange drifted into the line of her lens. Hair, someone's hair. Corinna looked up. "I need you to move!" she yelled. "You're ruining my shot."

There was something inhuman about the way the girl was staring. It wasn't quite natural; it was a shy, startled movement like a deer, like a rabbit. It was -- familiar. She had seen this before.

In the street of the town square with the carolers. Yes, that was where. This girl had been one of the ones she'd quarreled with.

No.

No, not before -- Before.

She had seen that stare Before. That was the look of a unicorn, a pegasus. She'd know it anywhere.

Corinna lowered her camera and then let it go to dangle from the strap around her neck. She crossed the space between them, snow giving way to her purposeful strides, and when she'd arrived in the space directly in front of the orange-haired girl -- the unicorn -- the famed Priest of Elysion -- she finally drew up short and stopped. Corinna looked into the other girl's eyes, as though by sheer dint of will she could compel the truth from her. It couldn't be coincidence that the Priest was here the very day after the meteor. It couldn't be -- there were so few coincidences in the world. It meant something. Corinna needed it to mean something.

"She's here, isn't she?" she demanded, her voice a whisper as hard as flint, and as apt to sparking. "Isn't she?"

That wasn't the answer Corinna wanted. She grabbed the copper-haired girl by her upper arms, heedless of the imposition, and leaned in threateningly close. It wasn't the sort of closeness that was generally not appropriate between people -- when a person was this close to your face, you tended to have the impression that they were either about to kiss you, or else to take a bite off the end of your nose. Neither of those were pleasant prospects between strangers.

"Do not trifle with me," she hissed impatiently. Corinna Grant was one of very few people who used phrases like 'don't trifle with me' unironically in everyday conversation. Hero Barrett was another; the both of them being the sort of person who did not see anything unusual in telling someone quite seriously that they would 'rue the day.' There were many people who probably did rue the day they ever met Corinna Grant, but in most cases that was a natural result of, well, meeting Corinna Grant.

"I know what you are, Dream Priest. You can hide in the body of a girl, but no matter what form you take, I would know you however much time has passed. Turn the moon princess over to me and I'll leave you in peace. I have no quarrel with you."

Corinna shouldn't have been surprised. With everything that had happened between them, she could hardly expect a friendly embrace from the Dream Priest now. But that had been long ago -- two lifetimes ago, for her.

(Two lifetimes ago: The Dream Priest was a slender man, youthful, light -- his hair a baby's-breath-white froth of silk over his forehead, broken only by the glimmering gold of a horn. She circled around him, paced, raved, and he watched her throughout with a sleepy tranquility that made her blood race.

The Princes of Earth had been brought captive before her, and Hector had looked at her with just such eyes, calm in his defiance. He had not made any pleas, nor given her any other word -- he was as silent as a stone at the bottom of the sea.

Alexandros, too -- his eyes held only an abiding and opaque peacefulness. He had reached out a hand, fearless, cryptic, and brushed his thumb over her bottom lip. "What have you done?" he had asked, as though she had simply broken some costly vase.

The Dream Priest had eyes like the Princes of Earth, and delicate wrists, and pale hair -- and for that she had locked him in a golden cage and kept him.)

No -- it was no wonder, now, that the unicorn was cold to her.

"I'm no longer your enemy," Corinna tried again, resolutely. "But she's made herself mine. You can't hide her away in your Dreamworld forever -- she'll have to come up for air eventually." She stepped back, finally, letting go. "You're a fool if you don't know what it is you're harboring," she warned. "And a disgrace to your kingdom if you do."

She was not a disgrace to her kingdom, Corinna reassured herself. She was not a disgrace to her kingdom. The Dream Priest didn't know anything, he was a fool, he was a puppet -- he was nothing. Nothing. Alex would tell her so. She was an honor to her empire now.

Wasn't she?

All the same, she took a step back. "I'm going to sincerely hope that you're only ignorant of the facts," she said, packing away her camera. "Because if I learn that you were complicit in your white moon princess perpetrating an act of war against me, I swear to you by all that I hold dear, I will bury you."

There was a coldness in her chest -- she could feel it if she was looking for it. It was a place just beneath her ribs where the Marcasite Crystal should've been. Should've, and wasn't. She felt broken and unwhole, felt empty -- Corinna pushed these thoughts aside.

"Never let it be said that I didn't warn you. Your white moon princess, and a wizard with her, came to my world, to my castle -- and they . . . succeeded -- in stealing the Marcasite Crystal from me. If you choose to trust your little pink princess, that will be your folly and your failure.

"Give her shelter, if you dare," Corinna said in a darkening voice, "but mark my words: sooner or later, she'll rip the Golden Crystal from your forehead, if you still bear it."

The wind picked up ominously, blowing some loose snow over her feet. She turned to leave.