“Are you dead, too?” I asked Con, surprised to see him smiling at me. Maybe he was laughing at my final joke, that I’d put him first in my last thoughts. But no, his golden eyes filled with tears, his face crumpling in an agony of feeling, and he dropped his head to my breast, his dark hair spilling against my skin.
I wanted to lift a hand to comfort him, but only my fingers wiggled. Calanthe’s vitality thrummed through me, though, prickling my tissues with pins and needles, as if I’d been lying still far too long. I wanted to stretch but couldn’t.
My gaze went to Sondra, her blue eyes also full of emotion. “I see nothing has changed,” I commented, my voice as creaky as hers ever was.
“Quite the opposite, Your Highness,” she replied, bowing deeply. “I think You’ll discover this third awakening finds us in vastly improved circumstances.”
“Except for your hair,” I noted with compassion. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” Her rough voice wobbled. “A small thing.”
“How do you feel, Your Highness?” Ambrose’s gaze was as deep and old as an ancient forest, and I recognized his magic winding in my bones and blood, blending with Calanthe’s. Someone else’s magic there, too. Something wilder, fierce, and feathered.
I let the mystery go for the moment. “Stiff. Sluggish.” I finally managed to move my arm, and Con lifted his head, sitting back on his heels and wiping his face on his sleeve. The orchid on my wrist rustled, unfurling its petals, color leaching into it. Below that, the stump of my arm itched as if fire ants had gotten under the bandage. “Itchy.”
“Welcome back to the world of the living, Your Highness,” Kara said, giving me a salute and a rare smile. “You were greatly missed.”
“Very much, Your Highness,” Agatha added.
I nodded, surprised to see her there, too. And Ibolya, who bowed her head to me. The terrible itching of my stump distracted me from asking her about it.
“Don’t scratch, Lia,” Sondra scolded gently. “You have to let it heal.”
Con looked from her to me, clearly bemused. I managed to lift my good hand, reaching over to stroke his cheek. He was as unkempt as I’d ever seen him, beard wild and hair hanging in ropes, dark circles under his golden eyes. He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. “How’s My wolf?”
He smiled a little, pressing a kiss to my hand, then covering it with his big one. “Rough. Better now.”
“And Calanthe?”
A hoarse laugh coughed out of him, and his smile widened. “Did you just ask about me before Calanthe?”
“Yes,” I replied gravely. “I did. Somewhere in all that happened—” A shudder racked me and he squeezed my hand. “You were what mattered most in the end.”
“Lia, I let you down. I’m sorrier than you can know. I shouldn’t have—”
“Shh.” I moved my fingers over his lips. They were cracked and peeling. “When I get my strength back, we can have a huge fight about it.”
He closed his eyes and nodded. “Fair enough.”
“In the meanwhile…” I let go of him and picked at the bandages on my wrist. “This is making Me insane with the itching.”
“Lia!” Sondra started forward. “Leave it—”
“Allow me, Your Highness,” Ibolya said, gently inserting herself. As deftly as she’d tended me all those times, she unwound the bandage, soaking the dried blood away as she worked.
When she pulled the last of the bandage from the stump of my arm, we all stared at the skin there, pink and smooth, tendrils of the orchid wound around it. And the tender twigs of new fingers, green with blushing petal tips, growing out of it. I wiggled them, and they curled and uncurled again.
Con turned his molten gaze on me, the dimple in his cheek appearing like the first star of evening. “I guess I get to keep the one I found, huh?”
“And the empire falls,” Ambrose said with good cheer.
“Still?” Con nearly growled the question.
Ambrose rolled his eyes. “You’re not giving up now? Not with all we’ve overcome. You’ve completed some of the prophecy. We must finish.” His gaze unfocused. “Besides, Anure’s wizards came much closer to succeeding than I care to contemplate. Knowing them, those four will only try harder now.”
“You know them?” I demanded, unable to suppress a shudder at the memory of my torturers.
“There aren’t so many wizards in the world,” Ambrose replied, as if stating the obvious. He heaved a sigh of exasperation at us. “And I didn’t spring full-grown from Sawehl’s forehead, staff in hand. I had to study somewhere.”
Con made a sound deep in his throat, and Sondra scrubbed a hand over her face. “I don’t understand.”
“No.” Con made a face. “None of us do, but we’ll work on that. To answer your question, Lia, Calanthe was all right when we left. I’ll give you a full report on the damages and casualties at Cradysica.”
I raised a brow at Ambrose, that side of my face still swollen and aching. It would be nice if that healed, too. Though I supposed coming back from the dead and regrowing a hand should be enough. “Any aftereffects?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” the wizard allowed. “Merle and I did what we could, but we made a bit of a hash of it.”
“What?” Con snarled at him. “What are you talking about?”
I closed my eyes, feeling the vibrant response of Calanthe. Oh yes, She was awake, all right. Restless and angry. And Merle … “The raven is holding Her?” I asked.
“He was. He says he’s losing his grip.”
“I specifically told you that if it came to choosing Me or Calanthe, to choose Her.”
“Yes. Well.” Ambrose actually looked chagrined. “I thought we had Her settled, but then She started breaking free when She felt You die. We decided I’d better get You after all.”
Con made an incoherent sound, raking a hand through his hair and gripping it. “Would one of you explain?”
“Blood shed in violence,” I said. “I warned you that it could be received by Calanthe as a blood sacrifice.”
“So…” He frowned. “Calanthe is a monster inside the island?”
“No. Calanthe is a monster who lay down to sleep in the sea and became an island we live on.”
Sondra made a little sound. Kara looked as if a light had dawned, and Agatha wrapped her arms around herself. Ibolya nodded, smiling ruefully.
“So the earth tremors,” Con said. “If the monster is the island, and She wakes…”
I met his gaze. “No more Calanthe. Everyone on Her falls into the sea.”
“Maybe we should go back to Yekpehr,” Con said, only half joking. “Or … anywhere else.”
“Percy will haunt you if you take his life raft and leave him to die,” Agatha said quietly.
“This is Percy’s yacht?” I asked, incredulous. “How did you pry it out of his grasping hands?”
“We needed it,” Con replied grimly. “I managed to destroy every other seaworthy vessel and we had to come after you. How did you get to Yekpehr?” he asked Ambrose.
He smiled, terribly pleased with himself. “It’s a long explanation, full of fascinating theories concerning time and space. You see—”
Con held up a hand. “Maybe later. If we haven’t drowned under Calanthe’s fins.”
“Lord Percy loves Your Highness, too,” Agatha said with a shrug. “You saved us. So did Calanthe. How can we help save Your island?”
“I don’t know yet.” I turned back to Con, squeezing his hand. “I have to try.”
“I’m not arguing,” he said, shaking his head. I could see the hollowness in him, how utterly he’d exhausted himself. “I’m not arguing with you ever again.”
“What?” I demanded. “Did Ambrose steal My wolf and put someone else in your body?”
He looked startled, then grinned crookedly at me. “I’m just so glad to have you alive again, Lia.”
“I’m just so glad to be alive. And to be with you,” I replied softly.
“Good.” He took a breath. “If you ask, I’ll give up my vengeance for you.”
“You’d let go of killing Anure?”
“For you, yes.”
I didn’t know what to say. “Well, let’s think about that. I doubt those wizards will let Me go easily. We may yet have to fight.”
“Oh yes,” Ambrose put in. “And now we have renewed connections inside the citadel.”
Agatha nodded. “Lady Rhéiane promised to help in any way possible.”
My heart shivered in my chest, cold dread making it stutter in its newly recovered beats. That was nothing to the look on Con’s face.
“Rhéiane?” he asked, very carefully. “A woman named Rhéiane was your contact at the citadel?”
Agatha hesitated at the thin scratch of his voice. “Yes. She was my mistress when I lived there. She’s about Lady Sondra’s age and…” She trailed off. Sondra looked like she might vomit. “You know her,” Agatha finished flatly.
“We didn’t know, Conrí,” Sondra said, pleadingly, her expression aghast. I was sure if she was excusing him or us.
“No, we didn’t.” He lifted his head, the ocean breeze catching his dark hair and tumbling it around his face, eyes blazing gold with renewed fervor. “But we do now. We’re going back for her.”
“Not yet,” I cautioned. “After careful planning.”
He smiled at me, ruefulness and amused affection in it. He smoothed a hand over my skull, warm and rough, achingly familiar. “First we save Calanthe. Then we can plan.”
I nodded and, when Vesno nudged my hand with his cold nose, I stroked his head. The scent of Calanthe, lush with blossoms, floated by on a warm breeze, and I allowed my eyes to drift closed. Con pressed a kiss to my temple.
“I need to sleep a few moments.”
“Then do.”
“Wake Me when we get to the reef, and I’ll guide us through.”
Kara snorted. “I can do that, Your Highness. I solved that riddle.”
“And I can assist,” Ibolya volunteered.
I smiled at them. “Then wake Me at the dock. I have to see about Calanthe.”
“Rest now, Lia,” Con murmured. “I’ll see you safely home.”
Wrapping the dreamthink around me, I trusted that he would.