Sasha was sleeping in her mother's cottage. Denise had brought her there late last night, not that Sasha had remembered. Everything but the tower felt kind of dizzy. She had nightmares about flying recipes. Butterflies hunting her with words of poison.

Elias had to pull her off the dragons back and carry her to bed, all the way from the small march to the cottage. Elias had protested, Sasha was in no shape to travel, but Denise and Ivy had put in their veto. And he thrust the dragons explicitly.

“Care to bring me back to the castle?” Elias asked Denise. “I have done what I can here.”

“I thought Sasha needed you?” Ella interrupted, looking at her son and towards Sasha's bedroom, wary of putting pressure on him. She occupied herself with cleaning after the breakfast, preparing cinnamon buns for when Sasha awoke.

“She is healing fine”, Elias briefly acknowledge his mother, his jawline stiff and his eyes already on the door.

“Couldn’t you wait until Isaak and Ivy arrive? I am no healer.”

“I have some catching up to do in the castle”, Elias said and left the room. “I expect you to have deciphered does recipes until I come back.”

Denise looked after him.

“What you did was harsh”, the dragon said.

“I know”, Ella nodded. “He has every right to be angry with me. But you know as well as I that I am gifted with foresight.”

“With time we tend to tell ourselves our version of truths”, the dragon exhaled, bringing fire to the fireplace. “It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.”

“It was a Hobsons’s choice and I have come to terms with it”, Ellas said, her chin high, looking the dragon square in her eyes.

“Well, he hasn’t”, Denise stated. Her black wings glittered in pink, growing bigger as the dragon turned. Before she reached the door she turned and took one last look at Ella.

“He is better off catching up with the royals. Them being together in the castle, without the sisters, just as in good old days, is exactly what Sasha needs. Elias knows this.”

Ella sat down on the chair, looking at the cinnamon buns, her eyes staring out in the unseen.

Sasha felt lightheaded when she woke up. There was a smell in the air that was just marvelous. She smiled. Elias had taken her to the cottage. It smelled like home and childhood. She put her feet into a pair of slippers and a blanket around her shoulders as she tiptoed out to the kitchen.

“Slept well?” Ella asked, bringing a fresh plate out of the baking oven.

“Honestly, no”, Sasha sat down and grabbed a cinnamon bun.

“I don’t like the development. The king's last prank almost cost me, my daughter.”

“It was a closer call than I am comfortable with”, Sasha said and felt a chill run down her spine. “Could we please not talk about it?”

Ella nodded.

“You know I am here, whenever you feel ready.”

“I know mother. I just”, Sasha raised from the kitchen table to do her dishes. “I need everything to be as before, just for some days, until I can wrap my head around it.”

“Then so it be. We could go out harvest herbs, it's that time a year, and I foresee I will start taking customers from the villages again eventually.”

“Yes, I would have liked that”, Sasha said.

Sasha stayed in the cottage for a week, Ivy and Isaak dotting her. She caught Ella glancing her way once in a while, an odd expression in her eyes, but she never pressured her.

“How come you have never married?” Sasha asked.

Isaak and Ivy shared a look, and then Isaak turned for the door.

“I need to take in some wood to the oven”, he said, almost sprinting away.

“I better show him where we keep the wood”, Ivy hurriedly tuned after him, her face more of a thunderstorm.

“The things we do for love”, Sasha muttered.

“Yes”, Ella sighed. “The things we do.”

“So?”

“Me and Elias father have kept contact during the years, but it is complicated. He lives in our neighboring kingdom, Ebenhow, and I thought it better to keep a low profile.”

“Who is he?” Sasha asked. “He has to be strong. I have never met anyone as strong as Elias. I know the king is a better healer, and the queen's witchcraft is not of this world, but none of them would have handled what has been thrown upon him.”

“I think you should keep your thoughts to yourself”, Ella said wistfully. “Elias deserves to hear it firsthand, and I will tell him, eventually.”

“Good. I agree.”

The time and the memories had caught up with Sasha. She didn’t want to go to bed, reviling yet another night of nightmare and rumpled wet blankets. Her sister's soothing helped some, but she had come to the end of the road. She needed someone to talk to. Someone that would think clearly and not be colored with the history. Maybe she ought to call for the knights of Aaliyah? It might have helped, but she rejected it, rising from her chair, looking at the papers laying on the kitchen table. It was time to make a decision. She would leave, but before leaving the cottage there was something she had to do. Sasha picked up the papers from the table. She threw them in the baking oven and throw a small, black orange fireball into it.

Elias didn’t need to know.