We tucked the sleeping Astar in with Stella under the blanket, their twin heads, bright and dark, immediately leaning together. I reassured Ami that our Nilly would be fine—and did not tell her about the hook the high priestess had embedded in her daughter’s mind. A favorite aunt could keep some secrets, I decided—especially when her mother would only worry.
“We’re seriously hampered by not knowing what’s going on with everyone else,” Ursula fretted. “We need to go out there and meet the Deyrr forces head on, but who knows what we might encounter? Still, we’ll be at a worse disadvantage if we wait for them to breach the doors.”
“I can find out how things stand,” I said.
Rayfe nodded. “Andromeda is, of course, far more powerful than I, and she can extend her mind farther, but I can track the movements of our people. Between us, we should be able to find out everything you’d want to know.”
Ursula gave us a look of astonished disgust. “Why didn’t you say so before this?”
I shrugged, making it Tala elaborate, just to poke at her a bit. “We had other priorities.”
Rayfe laughed softly, then turned to me. “Speaking of which—are you all right? I don’t smell fresh blood anymore.”
His concern no longer felt so prickly and smothering, and I leaned against him, glad for the shelter of his arms and the lean strength of his body. “Yes, Nilly healed me completely. I feel better than I have in weeks.”
“Is that so?” He eyed our sleeping niece with the same surprise I’d felt.
“How are you,” I asked tentatively, unwilling to look in his mind for myself, “with… everything?”
His brows slanted down, and he lowered his voice. “I feel very strange, like I’ve been asleep. And there are things I’m wondering about. Traces of you in my mind. You didn’t—”
Ursula cleared her throat pointedly, tapping her fingers on the hilt of her sword. Grateful to postpone the inevitable confession to Rayfe of how I’d violated the trust between us, I gave her a look of polite attention.
“Yes,” Rayfe said, facing her. “Speaking of which, I owe you apologies and amends, for the Hawks I apparently murdered.”
She gave him a long look. “Are you going to apologize for every person killed by Deyrr? Because that would be a lot of amends.”
He frowned. “Well, no, but—”
“No buts,” she said, cutting him off. Never had I been so grateful for her decisiveness and clear, bright lines.
I touched his cheek. “No one blames you.”
“Enemy,” Ursula said pointedly, and loudly. “At the doors. About to descend upon us. You can canoodle later.”
“If we survive,” Ami quipped, then looked sorry she’d said it. But she straightened her spine. “I’d like to point out that you all are together with your partners in life, whereas Ash is…” Her musical voice broke and she lifted her chin defiantly at me, as if I’d criticized her for the lapse. “If you can tell me how he is, I’ll forgive you not finding out and telling me before this.”
Chagrined, I nodded at her. “I recalled the n’Andana attack team before we retreated down here, but I’ll check with them first.”
“I’m surveying our people now,” Rayfe murmured.
I heard his call to the Tala, a bone-deep sounding like the howl of a wolf on a full-moon night, summoning, asking for answer. I’d felt something similar before when he called the Gathering. The King of the Tala, rightful alpha of them all, asserting his leadership and requiring their attention. Even I quivered to respond, though I was able to set the urge aside and focus on my own task.
I reached out to Zynda, knocking first. No reply.
Dread chilling my heart, I tapped more loudly. Nothing. I widened my call, looking for traces of any of their minds. Zyr I could usually at least hear, but no. I zoomed out my mental scope, scanning for the null spots that would be Zynda and Djakos’s dragon-shaped holes in the world. Nothing nothing nothing.
Increasingly panicked, I cast about for Kiraka, not bothering to politely tap for attention this time. “Kiraka!” I sent.
“So the queen emerges from hiding,” the old dragon replied. There was a sense behind her thoughts of a battle raging, of a minute pause between each word like a person puffing for breath.
“I can’t feel Zynda or the others.”
“I’m sorry for you, but I’m busy. The cliffs out here are overrun.” She slammed me into the view from her eyes, as if she’d grabbed me by the throat and mashed my face against a window. We were entirely overrun. Kiraka perched on the ledge outside the council chambers, the little table Rayfe and I had once shared in happier times now shattered. I might not have recognized Annfwn, the way smoke clogged the skies. Once colorful silk banners flamed or flapped in rags. Screams rent the air. And the sea boiled with ships.
A phalanx of Deyrr creatures arrowed in on Kiraka. She blew out a wide swath of flame, ashing them from the sky. The dust cleared and another took their place.
Profoundly shaken to see my visions a reality, I asked, “Dafne, Nakoa, and the baby?”
“Doing all I can to protect them. Wish I’d taken them out of here.”
“Do it now.”
“Can’t. Dafne won’t leave you all, even if I could get them out. We’re trapped.”
“We’re coming to help,” I promised recklessly.
“Better make it soon.”
Hoping against hope that at least we didn’t have to deal with the Dasnarians yet, I expanded my mind out to the Hákyrling. Not wasting any more time, I tapped directly into Jepp’s mind. Then reeled in astonishment at what I saw through her eyes, unable to wrap my mind around it: it looked like the entire Dasnarian navy indeed streamed through the barrier.
Jepp was fighting. I felt her moving in a whirlwind of blades, my phantom hands tracking with hers. Fishbirds flew in pieces as she spun.
“Andi, tell me if you’re there,” she panted. Then she repeated it, like a chant.
“I’m here,” I said with her mouth.
“Thank fucking Danu,” she snarled. She spun and ran for a door, hissing as something sliced her arm. She vaulted through and paused in the dark interior, slowing her breath. “The barrier is breached. We’re doing our best here, but the Dasnarian ships are pouring through, and moving fast. They’ll be at Annfwn before long. Tell Ursula I’m sorry.”
“Do you need help?” I asked, though I didn’t know what I’d offer if she said yes.
“We’re playing it safe, holding back or else we’ll be decimated. We can’t stop them, but at least we can come in behind them. One of Nakoa’s storms would be handy. Any other magic tricks, too. Though you might need all of that there. Good luck.”
“Good luck to you,” I said back, though numbly. She thumped a fist to her heart in the Hawks’ salute, then plunged out the door again, knives at the ready.
The barrier breached. Just as I’d known it would be, but how had it happened? I reached for the Heart, finding the cobalt crabs going about their business… except for one side. They’d opened up a hole in the barrier, sea water now filling my dome, the abalone throne knocked onto its side by the force of inrushing pressure. I remembered with a visceral stab how the high priestess had punched at me when I freed Rayfe from her leash. She’d been ready for me to do that very thing—and I’d been connected to the Heart, pulling as much power as I could to augment my own.
No matter what I did, I seemed to be dancing to her tune. Well, that was going to change.
I commanded the crabs to repair the barrier, but they—impossibly—ignored me. I reached into the barrier itself. For the first time since I first infused it with my will, it failed to respond. I tried again, but it was like dashing my power against an impervious wall.
Just like when I tried to blast that Deyrr warthog.
At least the true Heart—the font of magic buried beneath the ocean floor, still responded to me, a flood of power surging through me with uninhibited fire. The high priestess had compromised the barrier itself, but she didn’t have the Heart. That was mine.
Furiously I jammed my hand in my pocket, finding the Star, not the high priestess’s focus stone, but I used it nevertheless to wrench a door open to her mind. I startled her—she recovered fast, covering it up—but I took savage satisfaction in catching her that much by surprise.
She hastily formed a featureless bubble around herself, but not before I caught a glimpse of a serene aquamarine sea—unmistakably the Onyx Ocean near Annfwn—and the spars and masts of a sailing ship with billowed sails. Not clad in her usual semi-naked sensual attire, she wore a version of Dasnarian armor, though in her trademark gold instead of silver. It also fit her feminine curves and petite frame, clearly custom-made for her in an empire that not only never armored its women, but went as far as possible in the other direction, denying them even shoes. A delicately wrought helmet perched on her head, framing her lovely face with sharp metal thorns that emphasized her beauty while protecting her face.
She’d learned from the time she’d attacked Ursula, and lost both eyes in the process. I didn’t know how she’d regrown them—if those dark pits even required regrowing—but she was clearly taking no chances with a repeat injury.
“Oh, Andromeda! I’m afraid you’ve caught me at a busy time,” she chirped, as if I’d stopped by for a neighborly chat at an inopportune moment. “Can we talk later? After I’ve finished conquering Annfwn and enslaving the Tala will work for me. I know you will be at your leisure, with no people and no kingdom.”
I’d lashed out without a plan of what to say, but I wasn’t backing down now. “What have you done?” I snarled.
She simpered prettily. “Catching on now, are you? Really, it’s been dreadfully dull waiting for you to see past a few simple diversions. I’d rather thought you’d be smarter but…” She lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “I’ve realized I expected far too much of you. Unfair of me, as I knew you couldn’t amount to much, poor untrained, untalented little thing. Such a pity your mother died before she could teach you anything useful.”
“You certainly saw to that, didn’t you?” The rage had a grip on me.
She raised her brows and fluttered her lashes, a gesture that on Ami looked charming, but became grotesque with those dead black eyes staring out. “I can’t imagine what you mean, Andromeda, darling. You’ll really have to try to be more specific with your questions.”
It didn’t matter if she’d killed Salena or had a hand in her demise. I shouldn’t let it sidetrack me. Don’t let this become a personal vendetta. Hatred and anger can tear you apart. No, I reminded myself, my hatred and anger will tear them apart.
“In answer to your question,” the high priestess said with some impatience, and I realized my pause had spurred her to keep talking. “What I’ve done is win. Again, unless you’d like to be more specific. Or, perhaps you’re rethinking your curt refusal of my patronage. There’s still time to pledge yourself to me. Just say the word. I’ve outmaneuvered you in every direction. Give up now and you, at least, will have a good life.”
Tempting, to spit out all the things I knew—but also foolish. I needed to be smarter. All the things I wanted to ask—what had happened to the strike team, how close was she to Annfwn, how she’d taken control of the barrier—would reveal what I did and didn’t know. If the high priestess didn’t know about Zynda and the others, then they might be hiding, and I’d betray them by asking.
“Perhaps I was hasty.” I tried to sound contrite. “Let’s meet and discuss.”
She laughed, a gay twinkling sound appropriate for a glass of wine with friends. “Silly little baby sorceress. We’re talking now. Pledge yourself to Deyrr. Otherwise I can’t possibly trust you. Surely you understand that.”
“How would I go about doing that?”
“Oh dear, that is a conundrum.” She pouted, then a reptilian smile crept through, cold and without a shred of compassion. “I suppose you’ll have to wait like a good girl. Surrender and I might take you to Deyrr. But that will have to wait until we meet.” She made a moue, adding that fatalistic shrug, then laughed. “Which is fortuitously quite soon!”
She waved a hand and cut the connection with a vicious backlash that had me physically reeling. Rayfe caught me, steadying me in his warm embrace. Utterly grateful for his strength, I burrowed against him.
“Andromeda.” He drew out my name like a warning, but I sensed no anger from him—and I clung to that small comfort. “Were you… You were talking with the high priestess.”
“Yes. Yes, I was. And not for the first time.”
“Is that wise?” Ursula asked.
“Every weapon at my disposal,” I answered.
Rayfe frowned. “I don’t understand what you’re doing.”
“No, I know that,” I replied quietly. “Will you trust me anyway?”
“Yes,” he answered simply, no uncertainty in it, and I drew strength from that. I needed it for this next bit. “Ami—I’m sorry to say I couldn’t make contact with any of the n’Andana team. They’re not answering, and I can’t sense the dragons like I usually can.”
Ami, who wept over the death of a baby bird, firmed her chin and studied me with dry eyes. “Ash is dead then? Along with all of them.”
“I don’t know. This is what I do know.” I gave them the rundown of everything I’d seen, heard, and learned.
“That verifies what I discovered,” Rayfe added. “The cliff city is overwhelmed, but we cannot hide down here any longer. We can fight or surrender. I say we fight.”
“Kiraka can hold awhile longer, but not much,” I said. “I can pass a message for Nakoa to brew a storm, but we need to get to them.”
Rayfe growled deep in his throat, likely not even aware of it. “We have to get ourselves out of here.”
I swallowed against the knowledge that we’d at last run up against the wall. This was the moment that everyone I loved would throw themselves into that endless onslaught of monsters, with only a spinning fragment of chance they’d live through it.
“This is what I propose,” Ursula said. “We bust out our forces, seal the tunnels with the vulnerable inside. Rally the outside troops, secure the cliff city, repel the high priestess, then we should have a short breather to prepare to repel the Dasnarian navy.”
It sounded so easy, put that way.
“I’m with you,” Rayfe declared, body singing with energy, eyes glittering with feral excitement.
“Our ships, even the ones we’ve recalled, won’t reach us until tomorrow at the soonest,” I reminded them. “And our aerial forces might be trapped, or destroyed. We can’t count on any help.”
Ursula actually looked excited. “Then we’d better step up and handle this ourselves.”
Rayfe nodded at her, expression the twin of hers. Never had they seemed more alike to me, to my great love and everlasting despair. “Agreed,” he said.
“We need a temporary strategic retreat,” she said.
“Behind Kiraka,” he said.
“Perfect,” she said. “We’ll need to clear a path and rally everyone to the cliff city. Abandon the beach.”
“Won’t we risk being trapped there?” Harlan inquired mildly.
Rayfe grinned, the wolf in it. “We can always go up and over.”
“I see.” Harlan nodded thoughtfully. “A small rear guard can defend us from pursuit.”
“And Andromeda can lock the gate to the road, so they won’t be able to follow that way,” Rayfe added.
“You can?” Ursula raised her brows at me.
“Already done,” I said. “I’d intended it as a final measure to keep any forces that defeated Annfwn from invading the other twelve kingdoms.” Rayfe watched me with calm knowingness in his eyes, and I realized he’d known this, too, about me, all along.
“How long can you hold it?” Ursula asked cannily. “And be honest.”
“Honestly? I don’t know. I’ve never had to hold a fixed enchantment against a high priestess of Deyrr and a god, while fighting to regain control of the larger barrier and maintain several other battles at once,” I replied, trying not to snap at her and failing.
“What’s this?” She made an astonished face. “The great and powerful sorceress Andromeda is recognizing her limitations at last.”
A retort hovered on my tongue, but I swallowed it. “You have no idea,” I finally said, feeling the sag in my shoulders. I straightened them and my spine. “But I’ll hold it as long as I can.”
“That’s all we ask,” she said, giving me a smile before she moved on. “All right. We make a concerted push to get every able-bodied fighter out of the tunnels, rally our people to the cliff city, leadership meeting back at the council chambers. If we cannot hold until our reinforcements arrive, we evacuate the cliff city and reconvene at Ordnung.”
“Abandon Annfwn to Deyrr?” Rayfe said the words like a question, but I knew he was testing the truth of that possibility within himself.
“We always knew we might have to,” I said softly, leaning into him so he’d feel my shared sorrow. “Annfwn was always temporary. A toehold clawed out of a desperate effort to re-create what had already been lost.”
He looked down at me, holding my gaze. “I know. It just … feels like defeat.”
“Lose the battle to win the war?” I asked, attempting a brave smile.
“We can hope. All right, agreed. I’m telling the Tala.” Rayfe closed his eyes, the song spinning out.
“Andi—can you relay to the staymachs with our lieutenants?” Ursula asked me.
“Yes.” I opened my eyes. “Done.”
She acknowledged that crisply. “Are you going to the Heart?”
“Not enough time to get there.” They didn’t need to know the Heart had been compromised. I would fix it. “I’ll be on the promontory. I can access the Heart from there and still see everything.” I thought Rayfe might object, but he dipped his chin at me, his confidence bolstering.
“All right. Ami—would you stay here to guard the children and others?”
“Of course,” she replied, her face set in cool reserve. “And I shall pray to all three goddesses to intervene on our behalf.”
“We’ll clear the doors and send reinforcements,” Harlan told her.
“I can put up the shield again,” I offered. “Though it will keep us from communicating with you. You’ll be on your own with your people here.”
“Not entirely,” she replied with firm conviction. “No mortal shield can thwart Glorianna, Danu, and Moranu. The sisters will be with me.”
Ursula glanced at me, an unreadable look in her steely gaze. We’d come so many years from spoiled little Ami trotting out Glorianna’s wishes as justification for her childish whims. “All right with you if I call on Danu’s attention and assistance from time to time?” she asked. Though she’d phrased the question with some amusement, a core of sincerity rode in it.
“You are Her avatar, Essla,” Ami replied seriously, exactly the way her daughter did. “May Danu protect you and guide your blade.”
It might’ve been the emotion of the moment, the certain dread that this might be the last time I saw some of them alive—or all of them—but Ursula seemed to take on a light, banishing the shadows. And Ami… she wore the face of love.
“And you, Andi,” Ami said, turning to me. “Moranu goes with you. She is yours and you are Hers. There is nothing for you to fear in letting Her will fill you.”
I shivered at her insight, and the compassion in her violet blue eyes, so lovely, and so knowing. How had she known of the fears that plagued me? Such a narrow line for me to walk between fighting the high priestess—and becoming her. Unable to voice any of that, I simply nodded.
But Ami—or Glorianna—didn’t let me off so easily. She canted her head slightly, the stern mother shimmering in her. “Remember that Deyrr is Moranu’s ancient nemesis, more than any other of the sisters. You have been Marked by Her from the beginning. Don’t refuse Her will now, when all hangs in the balance.”
A midnight wash of silver flame licked through me, as if the many-faced goddess set her hand on me, indeed. I tried not to resist it, but I also flinched at the darkness so like Deyrr’s. I never asked to be Marked.
“But you did,” Ami said, making me jump. The numinous echoed in her voice, and I knew Glorianna spoke directly to me.
“Before you were born, you asked for this,” Ursula said crisply, Danu in her eyes.
A firm hand at the small of my back kept me from retreating. I looked up to find Rayfe watching me with that same ruthless compassion as he had from the beginning. “There’s choosing and there’s choosing,” he said.
I smiled at him, knowing it to be tremulous. Then I faced the goddesses, all three of them—the two in Ami and Ursula, the one flickering around me with the beating wings of night—and said, “I accept my destiny and will do my utmost.”
The immediate, crushing presences of the goddesses withdrew, and I took a full breath.
“You handle the barriers and the high priestess,” Ursula said. “Trust us to deal with the rest.”
“Nothing will get through me to harm the children, or anyone down here,” Ami vowed. “You have my word.”
I almost didn’t say it, but felt I should. I’d placed trust in Stella and she in me. I would honor that. “Nilly will tell you if the high priestess approaches.”
Ami paused in surprise, then dipped her chin, not questioning.
Ursula embraced Ami, then crouched to kiss the sleeping twins, Harlan following suit. “We’ll organize our forces and get the doors cleared,” she told us.
“We’ll be right behind you,” Rayfe replied, following me as I hugged Ami and also kissed the children goodbye. “Be strong, heart-sister,” he said gravely. “I trust no one more with the children of Annfwn.”
Her eyes filled, but the tears didn’t spill. “Andi—Ash is alive. I’d know it if he wasn’t.”
“I believe you. We’ll find him, all of them. I promise.”
Rayfe and I walked together, ascending the long tunnel more slowly as Ursula and Harlan jogged away, calling commands. He took my hand, weaving his fingers with mine, and it felt so familiar, so necessary that I shuddered inside. “Harlan explained everything,” he said quietly. “There’s so much I don’t remember. Stretches of time gone from my memory.”
“Yes,” I whispered into his expectant silence, though he hadn’t posed it as a question.
“I understand now why you lied to me,” he said. “Though I imagine I don’t know all the lies you told me.”
“It probably doesn’t change anything, but I want you to know I really hated lying to you. I can’t express how much.”
“I don’t know whether that changes anything,” he said slowly. “I don’t know what to think or feel.”
“I understand that.” I bit down on my lower lip, wanting to tell him more, but it felt selfish to tell him how hard this had been for me.
“It’s a very strange thing, not to be able to trust one’s own mind.”
“You can now. You’re free of her. I made sure of it.”
He paused at the last turn—Ursula and Harlan’s orders echoing from around the corner, preparing our people to push through—and turned to face me. Rayfe searched my face, his eyes shadowed in the flickering lamplight. “You went into my head, like she did, and some of those missing memories, they’re gone because of you, not her. It’s very odd, though—I can’t really tell you apart. What you did and what she did, they’re the same, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“Are you?” He canted his head slightly, the wolf sensing vulnerability, considering the danger he might be in—and how to attack. “Why?”
“I never wanted to become like her, to do that to you. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I—”
“Andromeda.” He stopped my tumbling words with a little shake. “There’s nothing to forgive. If your power is the same is hers, then it’s good that Annfwn has you on our side, that I have you.”
“But that kind of ability, to alter someone’s thoughts and memories, their very will—I never wanted that. To be that kind of person is…” I trailed off because he smiled, amusement lighting his eyes. “What?”
“You will never be like your father, Andromeda.”
My lips parted, but no words came out. “I…”
He cupped my face in his hands. “Yes, you,” he murmured. “This is about you. Not your father, not your mother, not the high priestess, or any of them. The power is there for you to use, in all of your compassion and wisdom. You used it to save me, and I will be forever grateful for that. I only regret that I have not been the husband to you that you deserve. I promised you a long time ago that, though you didn’t have a choice in marrying me, I’d make you happy you did. I let you down, I know.”
I loosened my hand from his and put my arms around him, laying my cheek against his chest. He put his arms around me without hesitation, and it was as if nothing between us had ever been otherwise.
“I want you to know,” I said against him, “that I love you with everything in me. I know that we were forced together, that I’m not someone you… chose, but I did choose you. When I found a way to sneak out of Windroven during the siege, it wasn’t only to stop the war. I wanted you. Not out of duty or because of destiny, but for myself. I wanted you from that first day in the meadow, and there’s never been anyone else. Could never be anyone else.” There’s choosing and there’s choosing.
He made a pained sound, and I braced myself for him to brush off my words, or to say something unintentionally cutting. With my cheek still pressed against him, the sound of his heart thudded under my ear, and I closed my eyes in misery, for the past, for our terrible present, and the doomed future.
“Andromeda.” Rayfe eased me away from him and I firmed my lips, really hoping I wouldn’t cry. He slipped a finger under my chin, coaxing me to look at him. “Is that what you think—that I didn’t choose you? I could’ve made a hundred, a thousand other choices. After that first day in the meadow, I could’ve gone back to Annfwn and never given you another thought.”
The leap of hope, of longing, was nearly painful. “But Annfwn needed me, you kept saying—”
He shook his head, an impatient gesture, and he firmed his grip on my chin. “Annfwn survived nearly thirty years without a queen to manage the barrier. We could have found a way. I made myself a bargain that if I didn’t like what I saw, I’d go home and never breathe a word to Salena’s daughter about our betrothal. Instead, I waged a war for you. I risked everything for you. Not out of duty or because of destiny, but for myself.” A slow smile curved his lips and his fingers gentled, stroking my jaw, his thumb feathering over my lower lip.
I gazed at him, feeling, knowing the truth of that. “Then it wasn’t only for Annfwn?”
He bent his head, brushing a kiss against my lips so sweet and full of answering longing that I almost couldn’t bear it. “It was never about Annfwn,” he murmured against his lips. “Or not only about Annfwn. If it had been, I wouldn’t have married you.”
I frowned. “We were married for a lot of reasons, by representatives of several goddesses and cultures, for the peace treaty.”
He shook his head slightly. “I mean when I married you in the Tala way. That night in the cabin. Blood magic to bind us together for all our lives.”
I stared back, shuffling the memories of that night, the bits and pieces of things I’d heard referenced since. Of course I knew not all Tala performed that particular ritual—not many Tala opted for monogamy at all—but I supposed I’d thought it had to do with being queen. “It wasn’t necessary?”
“Not even a bit.” He looked both chagrined and hopeful. “I told you before—you didn’t need me at all. You could’ve reigned as Queen of Annfwn without me, certainly without marrying me.”
“No I couldn’t,” I replied with fervor. “I wouldn’t want to.”
His smile turned rueful, and he lifted a hand to caress my cheek. “It was unfair of me not to tell you before the ceremony. I know that, and yet…I was driven. I couldn’t risk losing you. Then afterwards… I hesitated to tell you. Nothing can break our marriage bond. Wolves mate for life. I’ve warred with the wolf in me over it. The man knows I tricked you, but the wolf doesn’t care. You were mine from that first kiss, and I was unwilling to let you go.”
“I see.” I did see, suddenly understanding so much that I hadn’t.
“I was a coward,” he confessed quietly. “I didn’t want you to be angry with me. To maybe leave me because of it.”
“I’m not angry,” I whispered.
“You’re not?” He asked the question in a wondering tone, a hesitant smile blooming on his lips.
“No. I’m glad to know you love me, that you wanted me. That we aren’t simply dancing the steps destiny forced upon us.”
He kissed me, softly. “You are far too fierce to be forced to dance to anyone else’s tune, my queen.”
Except that I had been, bowing and skipping along to the yank and pull of Deyrr’s strings. No more.
“Rayfe, Andi—time to do this, people!” Ursula shouted.
“Time to say goodbye,” I said, tipping up to kiss my husband one last time.
His hands tightened on me with a possessive ferocity I’d missed like I’d lost a part of myself, and he took the kiss deeper. Not sweet or soft at all, but ravenous, consuming, all encompassing. He broke off as suddenly as he’d taken control, leaving me shaken.
“Not goodbye,” he grated. “Because we cannot be parted. And I categorically refuse to let them win. You do what you must to stay alive.”
“You too,” I managed, overcome.
“Would it be wrong…” He hesitated. “I’ve missed so many opportunities, but could I say something to our child?”
Tears sprang out and rushed down my cheeks. “It’s not wrong at all. He’d love to hear his father’s voice.”
Rayfe’s face transformed, luminous with a joy I’d rarely glimpsed in him. “We’re having a son?”
“It seems so.”
Rayfe sank down onto one knee, expression reverent, smoothing his hands to cup my belly. He placed a kiss there, murmuring something I couldn’t hear, laying his cheek against the taut round, just as I’d listened to his heart. I ran my fingers through his long hair, impossibly moved. He reached up and took my hand, twining my fingers with his, then looked up at me, his face ravaged. “I’ve wasted so much time. Out of fear. Childish worries.”
“I’ve been afraid and worried, too,” I told him.
He turned his gaze to the bloodstone ruby I wore. “You’ve never taken this off.”
“Not since the day you put it on my finger. I never will.” I realized I’d once promised to give him a ring, too, and had never quite gotten around to it. So many lost opportunities.
“Is there a future for us?” he asked somberly, and I remembered the first time he asked me what I saw ahead of us, back in that cabin on our wedding night.
“There is always that possibility.” I said the words as firmly as I knew how, hoping I didn’t speak a lie.
“There has to be, because I can’t let it end here.”
I squeezed his hand. “Then we won’t, my wolf.”
He grinned at me, sharp and feral. “Together?”
I raised him to his feet. “Together.”