''The scent,'' she thought, the memory arriving with a clarity that had survived everything else the last hour had done to her concentration. ''I smelled it across the void boundary. Impossible scent. A cauldron's forbidden yang — the kind that doesn't exist anymore in the true continents because the men strong enough to produce it died in the founding wars. And it was here. In a discarded continent. In a place that shouldn't have—''
"I came for a scent," she said aloud.
Her golden eyes finding his face.
Finding what was behind his face.
The gold-red of his eyes.
"A cauldron's forbidden yang. The kind that—" She stopped. Something in her expression shifted. The assessment clicking into place. "You."
The word arriving with the quality of a woman who has just understood the shape of the mistake she made.
"It was you I was tracking. I followed your trail to that tiger clan woman. I had no idea—"
She looked at him.
At the women around him.
