'Arthur!' Emily shouted after him as he disappeared into the darkness. When she made to go after him, Captain Caldwell stepped across her. 'We can't leave him.'

'We aren't going to,' he assured her. 'I'm going first; you can't defend yourself with a broken arm.'

'He took your sword; there isn't much you can do either,' she snapped. As she tried to push past him, he turned, hurrying deeper into the cave before she could.

The cave was narrow and almost pitch black. On more than one occasion, her left arm knocked against the rock, sending a sharp pain shooting up to her shoulder. Blindly, she hurried after Captain Caldwell as fast as she could. In the distance, there was another scream, one belonging to a woman this time.

With each twist and turn, it seemed to grow ever so slightly lighter until, taking one last, tight turn, the cave was flooded with light. A dozen or so paces ahead of her was Captain Caldwell, running and jumping over one of the fallen pillars that littered the cavernous room. On the other side of the room, she could see Arthur standing with his back to her, a sword held loosely at his side. From among the broken pillars to the right, a woman with mousy blonde hair appeared.

As he got closer, Captain Caldwell slowed. Pushing past him, Emily saw a body lying on the floor. She couldn't see who it was, though; Arthur was blocking her view. The only thing she could see was some untidy blonde hair.

'Lewis?' she shouted instinctively. At the sound of her voice and running footsteps, Arthur stepped aside.

Lewis sat on his knees, cradling the body of a blonde-haired woman. Slowly, he looked up, his eyes finding hers for the first time in weeks. 'Emily?' he whispered, blinking as if he couldn't believe his eyes.

'Are you okay?' she asked quickly, hurrying to his side and dropping to her knees. Broken arm be damned, she thought as she threw her good arm around him, pulling him tightly against her. 'I thought I was never going to see you again!'

'I'm fine, just my back,' he muttered, trying to ease her off of him slightly. When she finally retreated, he looked her up and down, his eyes lingering on the bandage around her head and the sling made from Arthur's shirt. 'What happened to you? Why are you soaked?'

'We had a little mishap with our ship,' Captain Caldwell supplied as he joined them, taking his sword from Arthur and returning it to its sheath.

'A mishap?' Arthur said, turning to him in disbelief. 'If you call running a ship into rocks, sinking it, trying to take a row boat to shore in the storm of the century, getting capsized, and nearly drowning a mishap, I would hate to hear your definition of a disaster!'

'All of the above except actually drowning,' Captain Caldwell replied.

'Okay,' Arthur said as he looked back at Lewis. 'We had a mishap with our ship.'

'What were you doing on a ship near here?' he asked.

'It's a long story,' Emily sighed. 'What happened here? Why did George come tearing out of the cave like a bat out of hell?'

'I've got a few questions as well,' Arthur said before Lewis could reply. 'Why are you here with one of those people who kidnapped you, and should I be running her through with Captain Caldwell's sword as well? Why did the other one burst into flames, and who is she?'

'She's fine,' Lewis said quickly, holding up a hand as Olivia shuffled closer to him worriedly.

'You kidnapped him?' Emily demanded, looking up at the woman standing behind Lewis.

'I didn't kidnap him,' she said. 'The other one did, the one you ran through with the sword.'

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'This is Olivia; she helped me escape in a roundabout way,' Lewis said, nodding his head in her direction. 'She's one of the good ones.'

'What about her?' Emily asked, looking at the woman Lewis still held in his lap.

'Her name was Cassandra. She just saved my life,' he said slowly. 'We were taken prisoner in the forest west of here. I was forced to marry Cassandra by her father, the leader of the tribe that captured us. When Cimant Village was attacked by spectres, she escaped with us.'

'And a spectre is?' Emily said.

'You remember the creatures that were attacking Tristan at night?' Lewis said, looking in Arthur's direction. He had been there when Thomas injured one of them and seen the creature for himself. 'That was a spectre.'

'They are created by the dark powers of The Dusk,' Olivia said. 'I didn't realise that Ellen was the one who had been creating them until we got to the tower.'

'So, The Dusk created the creatures so that they could kidnap you?' Arthur asked. 'Then you got taken prisoner, forced to marry Cassandra, and then escaped. Where does George fit into all of this?'

'After we escaped, we went to the tower where they were supposed to teach me how to control my powers, but it ended up being more like torture,' Lewis explained. 'I had a vision of George here. Ellen tried to kill us, but we managed to get away. After that, the power led me to Porthton. That was when we saw George and followed him here.

'There was an artefact that was stolen years ago called The Orb of Embers. He wanted to use it to bring back some precursors. Ellen wanted it as well. When we got here, he had the orb and the crown.'

'He didn't have anything with him when he ran out of the cave,' Emily said.

'The crown is over there,' Lewis said, pointing to where it sat on the floor against one of the few pillars that was still standing.

'I'll get it,' Arthur muttered, Captain Caldwell following him a moment later, leaving Lewis and Emily sitting on the floor together.

'Lewis, we should bury her,' Olivia said quietly.

'I want to take her back to her village,' he said. 'She saved my life; I owe her that much.'

'Alright. Let me deal with her body,' she said. 'Don't worry, I'm just going to encase her in a layer of ice to preserve her body until we get to the Cimant Village.'

With a nod, Lewis gently lifted Cassandra's head from his lap, laying her on the ground. 'Come on,' Emily whispered, taking his hand and helping him to his feet. 'I want to try and dry off.'

In silence, he allowed her to lead him away from Olivia and Cassandra and over to one of the stone basins filled with fire. 'I should have told her to stay in Porthton,' he sighed.

'You couldn't have known what would happen,' Emily said, sitting down on the fallen pillar beside the fire.

'Ever since we escaped the attack on the village, I've been offering her the chance to leave. Maybe I should have made her go.'

'If she hadn't been here, then it might have been you lying over there,' Emily insisted. 'She made her choice. I would have done the same thing. I've come close to dying so many times now that it really makes you think. If it is going to happen, I would rather it be to save someone.'

'You came close more times than you know,' Lewis said as he thought about the sacrifice he had been willing to make for her. 'When Ellen kidnapped me in Fir Forest, she placed a bond on me. The bond connected her life to yours; if she died, so would you. That was how she managed to get me to go with her. If I refused, she could kill you by killing herself.'

'I thought Arthur just killed her, though? Why am I still here then?' Emily asked.

'The only way to break the bond is to learn to control your power,' Olivia said. 'When she found out who Lewis really was, she not only wanted to kill him but to remove any memory of him from this world.'

'How can that be possible?'

'It isn't important,' said Olivia, waving away her question as she moved over to the fire. 'When we were standing on the edge, he asked me if his death would mean that the bond was broken. He was prepared to die if it meant that you would be free from the bond. That was enough to snap the bond.'

'You were going to sacrifice yourself? For me?' Emily asked, looking up at him in surprise.

'Of course,' he muttered, pulling her close to him. 'I wouldn't have gotten through the last few weeks if failing hadn't meant losing you.'

'How do you always know the right things to say?' Emily asked with a smile, wiping a tear away as it rolled down her cheek.

'I don't, believe me,' he said with a weak chuckle as Arthur and Captain Caldwell joined them.

'This is yours, I believe,' Arthur said, tossing the crown to him. Catching it, he looked down at the stones set in the gold crown. He had never really had the chance to examine it properly, he realised. It could wait for another day, though, he thought as Emily took it out of his hands, placing it lopsidedly on his head.

'What will be your first decree, Your Majesty?' Emily asked with a laugh.

With one hand, he removed the crown from his head, getting to his feet. For the first time since he had broken the bond inside the volcano, he felt tired. In fact, he had never felt so exhausted in his life, but for the first time in weeks, the dark clouds over him seemed to have lifted as he allowed himself to think about Tristan and all those he had left behind. 'Let's go home.'