Kerrigan gasped as she crested the surface of the pool. Air stung her burning lungs. Her body ached and sang, all at the same time. Her mind was reeling from what she’d seen. Who had the celestial woman been? What had the woman’s touch done to her? Had any of it even been real?
Then, there were voices.
“Kerrigan!” Fordham cried. He splashed into the star-lined pool to get to her, uncaring about why there were stars in the pool. His black clothing clinging to his hardened frame.
He grasped her around the middle, holding her up. “You’re okay. You’re okay.” He repeated it as if he could make it true.
“I’m okay,” she breathed. “We’re in stars.”
He brushed her matted red hair out of her face. “Only you could conjure stars into a pool such as this. Only you.”
It had been real. The water was no longer the clear blue of daylight, but the inky blue of midnight. White stars glowed in their depths, as if she had plucked the heavens from the sky and deposited them into the water. She’d never seen anything like it.
Her mother stared down at the banks of the water warily. “What happened? How is this possible?”
“It’s a miracle,” Vera said.
Cleora was on her knees with tears in her eyes. Danae stared agape at the entire scene. No one else moved to touch the water. As if they were afraid it was tainted and would infect them. Fordham was heedless of any danger.
“I released the stars,” Kerrigan breathed.
“Your magic?” Fordham asked hopefully.
She closed her eyes and reached down into that empty pit in her stomach. Except it was empty no longer. She barely had to brush the surface of the well, and there it was at her fingertips. The magic as bottomless as it had ever been. Just as perfect as she always remembered it.
Tears ran down her still-wet cheeks as she lifted her hand and let light shine from her palm.
“It worked,” Vera said.
“But how? The ritual …” Keres said, trailing off.
Kerrigan’s light expanded until the pool was fully illuminated. Her control on her magic back to full power. All the fears about it had disappeared with the ritual that Cyrene had helped her through. She didn’t know when she would be ready to talk about it, but she had her magic back. It was back.
“It worked,” Kerrigan agreed.
And the part that she didn’t voice—she’d taken more.
She could feel it. When she had been reaching into the universe for all the power that would fill her, she’d been stopped. But the strange starlight woman didn’t fully stop her. She’d left enough in that well of power that Kerrigan knew she had more. More than she’d ever had before. And maybe with just a little bit more, she could take on the Red Masks and win this war.
Kerrigan was removed from the pool, which miraculously did not go back to regular water after she was out of it. Vera was muttering under her breath about whether or not it was ruined permanently. Cleora was arguing with her that it was a miracle and hardly considered ruined. It was a lively discussion that Kerrigan tuned out as soon as she was bundled into a towel and escorted back toward the house.
Summer had returned to the woods. No snow to tromp through. No beast to hunt her. Whether or not that was his purpose. Just a beautiful morning with bugs chirping as the sun began to set on the horizon.
Dawn.
She’d been there since dawn.
What was it that her mother had said? Time wasn’t linear here. She could have been under for days, and only a matter of hours had passed. And none of them had felt the passage of time. It was disorienting.
Keres and Fordham kept tight grips on her as they walked back down the well-worn path and inside. Danae rushed for a fresh change of clothes and hastily helped Kerrigan into something dry. When she came back out into the room on unsteady feet, everyone was staring at her expectantly.
“What happened out there?” Keres asked.
Kerrigan yawned instead.
Fordham put a protective arm around her shoulders. “She should sleep first.”
“We need to know …”
“Leave her,” Vera interjected. “She might be your daughter, and we might want answers, but look at her.”
Keres finally did look at her daughter. Kerrigan’s eyes were drooping. She could barely hold herself up. If Fordham hadn’t been there, she would have collapsed onto the stone floor. The events of the evening had caught up with her, and suddenly, she had nothing left in her.
Keres sighed heavily. “Vera’s right. You look exhausted. You need to rest. We can talk of this when you wake.”
Fordham hoisted Kerrigan into his arms and marched her back to the bedrooms. She barely had a brain to consider that he was taking her to his room.
“Sharing a room … again?” she managed to get out.
He kissed her temple and settled her gently onto the downy bed. “If you will allow it.”
Her eyes fluttered closed and then opened, half-lidded. She reached her hand out for him. “Stay.”
He kicked off his boots and slid into the bed beside her. “If you wish.”
“Forever,” she murmured.
“As long as you’ll have me.”
“Forever,” she repeated.
He smirked and kissed her hair. “Forever then.”
Daylight streamed in through the open window when Kerrigan awoke. She brushed grime out of her eyes and turned to find Fordham softly snoring beside her. She smiled and pressed a kiss to his cheek.
“Mmm,” he murmured.
“Morning.”
“I think it’s afternoon.”
She laughed. “Could be.”
He threw his arm out across her stomach and drew her in close. “We don’t have to be up yet.”
“They’re probably waiting to hear what happened.”
Fordham opened one eye. “Are you ready to talk about what happened?”
She leaned forward until their noses touched. “No.”
“Then, we stay in bed.”
She giggled. A sound she hadn’t thought herself capable of mere hours earlier. “Since when do you buck protocol?”
“Oh, I’m not.” His body slid against the length of hers.
She’d shucked off her pants sometime in the middle of the night and now was just in the oversize shirt that Danae had given her last night. Fordham was bare to the chest with a cloth around his waist. Nothing at all left to her imagination.
“When a soldier is wounded—physically or mentally—rest is required.”
“Is that so? I don’t think I got that memo. Most of the time, they let us flounder. Both physically and mentally.”
“Not under my watch,” he teased.
His hand slid across her knee and then began to move up the smooth surface of her thigh before landing on her hip. She released a heavy breath as he cupped her ass in his hand and tugged her closer.
“I do believe that you have other things on your mind other than my mental health.”
“Mmm,” he said against her skin as his lips found her chin, then neck, then clavicle. “I have a deep interest in your physical well-being. I need to inspect it for myself.”
“Oh,” she gasped.
“Unless you don’t wish that.” His head dipped lower, finding the space between her breasts. He met her gaze. A finger pushed material aside to expose her breast.
“I … I wish it.”
He smirked before lowering his head to cover her nipple. She arched into him as his tongue did something miraculous to the sensitive bud. Another gasp left her mouth as he lifted the shirt fully out of the way and over her head before taking the other nipple into his mouth.
Her fingers clutched at him. “Ford,” she groaned.
He rolled her over. Thundercloud eyes boring down into her as their lower halves met and she could feel the extent of his desire for her.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“Of you? Always.”
“Not to be that girl, but what changed?”
He slipped his hands up her sides, positioning himself between her thighs. The length of him pressed firmly against her as he ground his hips. She saw stars again, knew the entire universe, wanted nothing but him in all the cosmos.
His fingers tangled in the red strands of her hair. “I thought I’d lost you. I watched you go under and not surface. I watched stars fill that pool. Time stood still. You were gone. You were not of this world. And I knew with every fiber of my being that I would crash into those stars to be with you. That you were the only thing in this world or the next that mattered to me. I would go to the ends of existence to save you. It burned away all the rest. Until there was only you. My love, my mate.”
Tears came to her eyes. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” he whispered softly into her ear. He drew the lobe into his mouth and flicked it with his tongue. “I want to show you that love every day from now until you tire of me.”
“And if I never tire of you?”
He drew back with a pensive expression on his too-serious brow. She reached up and smoothed it. “Then, I will love you until we find the end of our days.”
“Forever.” She repeated the word she had used last night.
He nodded once. “Forever.”
He aligned their bodies and thrust forward inside of her. She gasped at the feel of him, the incredible stretching as he filled her. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head as they began a languid rocking motion that made her shudder with need.
There were no words after that. Just the feeling of reconnection. After so long apart and even when they had reunited, they had been mentally separated. Emotionally incapacitated by the depths of pain that had been unleashed on them. Now, that was all gone. He had thought she was dying in the pool last night. Neither had wanted to live without the other. She couldn’t even fathom it at this point. He had her back, but this was more than that. This was how it always should have been. Not enemies, not partners, not separated by a foreign country set on their destruction. Together. Mind, heart, and soul.
Kerrigan rolled him over. The bed squeaked underneath them as she took control. His hands settled on her hips, following her movements as she stretched above him, fully on display. She purred like a cat as she used the momentum of her thighs and her hands on his chest to pick up their pace.
“Gods,” he groaned. “You’re a vision.”
Red curls fell to frame her face as their eyes locked. “More.”
His grip tightened, bruisingly harsh on her hips as he dragged her down, down, down. The movement harder and faster than they’d been going only moments earlier. Everything clenched as she reached for bliss in his body.
It hit her like the galaxy had last night. She saw the universe spread before her once more. Only this time, it was just Fordham. Fordham was her entire universe. And at the highest point, she felt something click back into place. A thing that had always been and would always be. Nothing could fully remove that deep knowledge that he was hers, only hers. And that she was his, only his.
“Kerrigan,” he said in a wave of ecstasy as they both unleashed.
When she was finished and collapsed forward onto his chest, panting with exertion, she felt what she had been missing. With her magic restored, there was nothing to stop the tether that wound around them.
“Oh,” she whispered.
His fingers threaded through her hair. “There you are.”
She tugged on the mating bond gently, feeling the flex and pull of what had always belonged between them. “Mine.”
He kissed her temple. “Yours. Always yours.”