It took entirely too long for Prevna and Tike to reappear in the cave. Long enough that I let the crocodile curl his bulk around me like he would do with Tike. Prevna appeared first. Between one blink and the next—though it felt like I had dozed off and was suddenly jolted awake by her groaning on the floor in front of me. As if I could sleep in situation like this.

Klus and I both rushed up to her as she sat up. I asked, “Are you alright? Did she hurt you?”

Prevna shook her head. “No, the spirit was just insistent with her questions.” She tried for a small smile. “With how many she had, I had to stay a little longer to make sure she wasn’t an elder who had wandered off and gotten confused.”

The tension knotting its way through my shoulders tightened. “Prevna.”

Prevna chuckled. “It’s fine. I think she was amused.” She glanced around. “Where’s Tike?”

“Not here. She still has him.”

Prenva groaned and Klus curled up around her. I ignored the crocodile’s instant change of loyalties in favor of figuring out what we needed to do next. A large part of me was tempted to take Prevna and leave the cave. Now. Without a second thought about Klus or Tike or the entity.

But I knew the crocodile wouldn’t budge without his master and Prevna wasn’t likely to leave Tike behind either. Not after he had helped us and braved this stupid cave when he didn’t need to.

And I couldn’t leave her behind. So we sat on the floor dotted with stars while we tried not to think about the tale Tike had told us about the mountain spirit that buried men alive. There was nowhere to bury him in the cave and this entity seemed to deal more in dreams and wishes than living graves, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a hand in both options. After all, myths always had their grains of truth and there didn’t seem to be multiple long limbed women making their home in the inner valleys.

“Will you stay awake after this again?”

“Not for days on end.” It hadn’t helped anything the last time and I didn’t want to repeat past mistakes. That had always been one of the worst kinds of weakness. Besides, the entity’s ability to make us fall asleep without realizing it seemed tied to the cave as she had only invaded me dreams elsewhere in the valleys rather than inducing them.

That made me want to leave the cave just to be sure this also wasn’t some elaborate dream the entity had concocted. The shadows were no longer the impenetrable darkness they had been during the previous dreams, but I wouldn’t have put it past the entity to be able to make her dreams resemble reality, even one that took into account the effect of the Dark Sight boon.

Prevna noticed my restlessness. “Go check outside. I’ll stay here in case Tike appears.”

She didn’t bother trying to make me wait in the cave and I didn’t try to make her leave with me. We both knew it’d be a waste of breath. Still, I hesitated after I got to my feet. Leaving felt a bit like abandoning her to the spirit’s clutches.

“I’ll be fine,” Prevna insisted.

I had no choice but to trust her.

The day had somehow gotten late since we had arrived at the Night Cave. No doubt our absence had been noticed by now in the village, though I hoped that didn’t cause the same uproar that our previous delayed return to the village had. Shuffling down the passage to the Dawn Crawler’s lair once had been more than enough, nor did I want the beast to decide it was best to shorten the grace period. There was the chance Mishtaw would need our help for something more once she was able to see the throne herself.

There weren’t any odd shadows among the trees surrounding the patch of grass in front of the Night Cave. I could taste the dampness in the air from the fog, hear the leaves rustling, smell the surrounding forest though it lacked the scent of pine I was used to. Nothing like the staleness that could happen in dreams.

Stepping back into the Night Cave felt like willing stepping into a nightmare. Like walking down the path to the main chamber would give the entity permission to pull me into another dream whether I wanted it or not and I wouldn’t know it until those rootlike hands wrapped around me.

But nothing happened. I entered the main chamber and found Prevna and Klus exactly where they had been. Prevna was focused on the myriad of statues enjoying their time in the Silver Forest while Klus kept as curled up around her as he could. I followed her gaze up to a man who had his hand out to pull a fox tail off the belt of a woman who was midspin, apparently dancing with abandon like the Silver Forest was a Heartsong Festival than never ended.

When I looked back down, slightly dizzy again with the sense I had just been jolted awake, Tike was standing in front of Prevna. He didn’t groan like Prevna had, and, for a moment, I questioned if it was really him. His…stance was all wrong. Chest puffed out, head held high, confident. Or proud. More brutish than he got when he knew a good path through the valley and was sure it would help us circle around something unpleasant. Almost like he was geared up for a fight.

Then he seemed to collapse in on himself and he was back to the nervous, word vomiting Tike I knew. He started to shake before he collapsed to his knees. Prevna and Klus rushed over to him to make sure he was fine while I was still trying to decide if that change I had seen was real or not.

“I never should have come in with you. Everyone just disappeared! And then there was this disembodied voice that kept asking me questions and I was sure that I going to get—”

“Let’s go,” Prevna gently pulled him to his feet. “We can go over what happened when we’re not in this cave.”

We left.

It took a bit for Tike to compose himself and talk about something other than the roots he was sure were trying to drag him to his doom but, when he did, he led us back to the village. We got there as the setting sun started to turn the fog orange and gold as if the whole sky had been set on fire.

Kuma looked up from where she was sitting by a small fire in our little campsite and smiled. She waved for us to join her before she whistled loud enough that I was surprised the mountains didn’t echo it back to us.

“Told them I’d whistle if I saw you.”

A group of men rushed over to where we were settling in, including Tike. It seemed like after our ordeal he wasn’t quite ready to disappear off on his own somewhere. Logar was leading the group of men and he stopped short at the sight of us relaxing by the fire as if we had never left.

“You shouldn’t have left the village,” he said.

I had no height to match his, no true authority as a whisper woman, no good reason that I cared to share with him for why we had left. I did have my glare, black lips, and the knowledge that no matter what happened I would outlast him. He might have had half the authority of the village and been the more reasonable leader, but I was throughly tired of being questioned and pressured by others.

I stepped outside of Prevna’s reach so she couldn’t try to calm me down without being obvious about it before I glowered up at Logar. “We had business.”

“You—”

“We. Had. Business,” I repeated as I cut off the village leader.

I knew this wasn’t the best way to handle the situation. That to begin with I should have put at least a token effort into informing Logar and Morn that we would be leaving to take care of something even if they didn’t want us tromping all over their valley after things with the fire dancers had gone poorly. I could have Nine Claws know about my secondary mission and have her put the pressure on the villagers to let me complete it.

But I hadn’t wanted to share it. Delivering the stone had been something private between Esie, the Lady of Calm Waters, and me. I doubted they wanted me blabbing her business to everyone we met. Nor did I want to explain myself to everyone either.

The villagers at Logar’s back looked more than ready to punch me in the mouth for daring to be ruse to their leader. Which was hardly surprising given that what I was doing was likely one of the things that had driven them from the wider territory in the first place.

A hand clasped my shoulder and pulled me backwards. Using the same motion, Prevna stepped smoothly in front of me. “Sorry about that. Sometimes she forgets how to be civil. We’re fine, thank you for your concern. Tike had mentioned the Night Cave and we insisted that he show it to us.”

The men shrank back once they heard ‘the Night Cave’ and whispers cropped up. Logar frowned as his gaze swept back and forth between his men and us. “The Night Cave? You shouldn’t go there again. It’s known to be dangerous.”

Prevna nodded. “We won’t. It wasn’t what we expected.”

“Tike,” Logar summoned the younger man. “Bring Klus and join me. We need to go some things with you.”

Tike cringed with regret but he didn’t try to make excuses and wriggle his way out of what was likely to be at least a lecture. If nothing else, that made him better than Deamar to me, though I doubted he’d appreciate the ranking.

They left without another word, likely to stop a fight from breaking out, and I knew that if Nine Claws or Malady heard about the incident I’d be in for a lecture of my own.

“Mishtaw isn’t going to be pleased if you make it impossible for her to take care of the throne without fighting the locals,” Prevna said.

That was true too.

“He didn’t need to know about what we doing.”

“No, but that doesn’t mean you needed to be rude about it. And if something did happen while we were supposed to be at the village, you know that Nine Claws and Malady would hold them responsible for that.”

I sighed and sat back down, glaring into the fire. Not quite willing to admit that I knew she was right.

Prevna settled next to me and bump her shoulder against mine. “Do you need help practicing how to smile? I could teach you if you want. You just go like this and this…”

The night devolved into round after round of Prevna teasing me while Kuma kept her peace on her side of the fire. I cut back with my own sarcastic remark or two but I never let my tongue slip and say the things I knew would truly get Prevna to stop. We needed the reprieve from all the stress we had been under ever since we set foot on the Broken Spear Peaks—and, I think, we both knew that if we let the silence stretched too long we’d be tempted to see if the other had made a wish like the entity had so clearly wanted. We’d want to know the answers the other had given to the spirit and whisper about wishes.

All things that could strain our newly repaired friendship. All things that could draw the goddess’s ire if She had truly done Her best to stamp out knowledge of wishes, and those were things neither of us were ready to deal with. So we joked about any and everything other than what had happened in the Night Cave, and pretended that we knew that the spirit wouldn’t invade our dreams again.