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“Nice, isn’t it,” the chief cackles. “It makes my hand hurt when I touch it.”

“You are lucky it did not blow your head off completely. It must have taken pity on you. It is an artifact of great power, and it belongs to me.”

As my fingers close around it, I feel a rush of that same power I just described. It is like warm sun flowing through my veins, a beautiful, rich, intoxicating feeling that makes me want more. I have one of these of my own, of course. No leader is supposed to have two, but this cannot sit down here, a powerful artifact being used as cheap, ugly decoration by those who do not recognize its power.

The kobolds do not try to stop me as I leave the den. It is almost anticlimactic, and yet fascinating. The fifth seal belongs to Bjorn Birna, the shape changer. It bears claw marks across its faces to represent him—or at least, it did, before they were filled in with paint made from mud.

I wonder if something has fallen Bjorn, if he has been bested, or if this was stolen from him. I will have to send envoys immediately to uncover the truth. If someone is moving the seals around, there may be trouble ahead.

I have an uneasy feeling in my gut, even as the power of the seal surges through me in slow pulses. I put it in a pocket, my summoned clothing having multiple places to put preciousitems in such a manner that they cannot be removed without my knowledge.

This matter is not over. This is just beginning.

I leave the kobold den, and return to Melissa, who should be neatly bound to the underside of the tree limb where I left her.

She is not there.

The way my entire being hitches when I realize she is gone cannot be described.

Otto is still ground tied where I left him grazing on the grass around the bushes. He seems unbothered, which confuses me. He is no guard animal, but he is also not usually entirely immune to the effects of a struggle or a murder.

“Melissa?” I lift my voice.

“Help!”

I direct my eyes down into the bushes. The very same ones Otto is eating around. As it turns out, they do not only contain grass. They also hide my mate.

I know I bound her securely, but I also know that if she spent the entire time wriggling back and forth she might have managed to half-free herself. I am horrified by the realization that she could have seriously hurt herself in the process, had there not been a bush beneath. She could have gone crashing to the ground face-first and knocked herself out. She could have hanged herself from the rope by accident. She could have spiked herself onto an inopportune branch and bled out by the time I returned. Keeping Melissa out of danger is a far greater quest than any other.

It would be easy, and even proper for my relief at seeing her alive to turn into anger at her reckless actions, but she does look quite cute still tied up and rolling around in the greenery.

“What happened here?”

“I fell from where you put me.”

“Mhm. And why did you fall?”

I do not want to be indulgent with this little female. I do not want to make her feel that I will soften toward her and allow the kind of misbehavior that got her into so much trouble previously. She needs discipline. But she is absolutely adorable all trussed up where she is right now.

“Are you going to get me up?”

“I don’t know if you deserve to be gotten up. I don’t know if you deserve to be untied. I left you in one place for a vanishingly short period of time, and you managed to wriggle out of it. Could have hurt yourself.”

“Don’t we have to get out of this forest soon? Won’t bad things come out at night?”

“They will. But we have time. Worst case scenario, I strap you to Otto and send him back to the castle while I fly overhead.”

“Did you get the seal, at least?”

“Yes. I did.”

“Oh, good. Did you get any gold, or gear?”

“Just the seal.”

She frowns and wriggles around a little more, or at least tries to. The bushes are not cooperating with her. “That means this is part of a longer quest line. We must have to turn the seal in somewhere else to get the rewards.”

“The seal is the reward.”