She was proud of her two boys. She had done right by Robyn, had kept her promise from all those years before. The boys—both men now, especially after tonight—were back where they belonged. They knew what they had to do.
She wished them godspeed.
Only then did she look down at the painful, bleeding wound in her side that the enforcer had inflicted upon her when he’d swung around with his weapon. The wound she’d covered with her arm when Jameson had been with her.
She sank down on one knee, breathing raggedly. The pain from the pulse wound was agonizing, and she was having a hard time shutting it out.
The hallway around her grew blurry, and she felt rather than saw the ground hit her face as she fell on her side.
She had done what she promised to do.
Now she could go find Robyn.
XANDER ALIGHTED atop the tower and rang the bell again.
This time, his people came without hesitation.
They flew up to Founder’s Hill, landing on the gathering place in ones and twos. Some were bloodied. Others had feathers burned off their wings. Children too young to have their wings ran up the hillside, laughing at their own sudden freedom.
Soon they surrounded him, a virtual army of the young and old, staring up at him.
Xander suffered a bout of double vision, remembering another life when he had stood here to talk to his people. He shook his head to clear it and held his arms up in victory.
“Gaelan is free!” he shouted, and a ragged cheer went up from the gathered throng.
“Davyn!” one man called out. “King Davyn!”
Soon the crowd took up the chant. “King Davyn! King Davyn! King Davyn!”
Xander surveyed the crowd, chanting his skythane name. He shook his head. “Listen.”
The crowd kept on chanting.
He shouted “Listen!” and his sigil glowed. His voice boomed out over the crowd, and they went quiet.
“I’m just a man, not a king.” His shoulder was throbbing again, but he could manage the pain. “I was only a child when I was taken from here. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. You don’t owe me anything.”
Talking to them from high upon the tower was wrong. These people had come at his call, and they had fought for him. Some had died for him.
Without pausing to think, he leaped from the tower, his wings lowering him to stand in front of them. “I am humbled by you all. You risked your lives for me, for this city, and some gave them up for that fight. Gaelan belongs to you once again.”
The crowd let loose a cheer.
Where was Jameson? Had he been hurt in the fighting?
A young girl pushed her way to the front of the crowd. He remembered her. Mylin, the girl from the balcony. He knelt before her. “I remember you. You’re Mylin, right?”
She nodded. “Yes, sire.” She looked very serious. “You told me your name was Xander, but you told the whole city that it’s Davyn. Which is it?”
Xander laughed. “A little of both. My birth name is Davyn. But on Oberon, everyone called me Xander.”
“King Xander, then. If you don’t like ‘King Davyn,’ I mean.”
“Wait… I’m not a king….”
“King Xander!” another said, and soon the whole gathered throng took up the call.
She was right. He was the rightful heir, though how a street kid from the Slander had ended up here…. He’d certainly never asked for it. And maybe he was more comfortable with Xander than Davyn.
Give them what they want, Elyra’s voice whispered in his ear.
He looked out at his people, the men and women who had fought for the city at his call, and nodded. “King Xander it is, then.” He raised his hands in the air.
The crowd cheered even louder.
“You’ve become quite the celebrity.” The crowd parted again, and Jameson was standing there grinning up at him.
Xander pulled him forward into his arms and kissed him hard. He was a sweaty, bloody mess, but at the moment he didn’t care. Jameson’s lips met his and set his libido on fire. “Are you good with ‘Prince Jameson’?”
Jameson laughed. “Yeah, that works.” He squeezed Xander tightly.
When they parted, he held up Jameson’s arm. “This is Jameson, my… companion, and a prince of the Erriani.”
The cheer this time was more muted. People looked at one another, and several whispered “An Erriani?”
“We’ll work on it,” he whispered into Jameson’s ear. To the crowd, he called out, “We have much to do. Gather the wounded and dead. Tonight we honor them, one and all. Tomorrow, we have important things to do.”
The crowd began to disperse, but many of them passed by him to touch his wings or shoulder softly.
A man with black wings silvering with age appeared out of the crowd, one of the Gaelani who had fought at his side. He was a little older, but still handsome, with a firm jaw and short salt-and-pepper hair. His mouth was set in a thin line. “I’m Kadin, sire.” He held out a hand to Xander. “I was the King’s Chamberlain, sire, before the landers came and took advantage of the old man.” Kadin looked like he was probably into his sixties, his silver beard neatly trimmed, his gray eyes as full of life as a man half his age. “I would be happy to offer you my services.”
“Xander Kinnson,” he said, shaking the man’s hand. “That’s an offer I’d be hard-pressed to refuse at the moment. We still have a lot to do, but if you could help organize a crew to start cleaning the filth from the city, that would be a big help.”
Kadin nodded. “I’ll get it organized right away, sire. I can come find you at the House of the Moon afterwards?”
Xander nodded, though that “sire” thing was going to get old fast. He put a hand on Kadin’s shoulder. “Glad to have your service. Just call me Xander.”
“Yes, sire… Xander.”
Xander watched as the man turned to start organizing people to clean up the city.
It had been a short but hard-fought battle; having someone who knew the city inside and out would be a huge help in sorting out the aftermath. He doubted there would be much sleeping in Gaelan tonight.
XANDER TOOK charge of things, ordering a table brought into the King’s quarters so they could start organizing their expedition to Deireadh an Domhain, or the Mountain, as Kadin called it—the closest gate between the worlds, and one of the places where the shift could be accomplished, as they were now calling it.
Shift. What a simple word for such a mind-boggling idea.
Dani had been strapped to a chair in a corner of the room. Jameson sat in another chair across from her, watching her for signs of life.
Morgan sat by the fireplace, staring into the flames.
Xander had gone into a mad rage when he’d seen her, and only the combined efforts of Kadin and himself had kept Xander from strangling the lander woman with his bare hands. Strange…. When had he started thinking of the wingless ones as landers? Or himself as skythane?
Not that Jameson blamed Xander. Or Quince.
Where the hell was she?
He’d gotten distracted by their hard-won victory and the rush of activity afterward, but now that things were taking on some sense of order, he missed her brusque, no-nonsense presence.
Dani was still asleep. He’d have to trust Xander to leave her alone for a few minutes.
Jameson stepped up to the table, where Xander was examining a paper map—strange to see such a thing. He missed his connection to the grid.
He put his hand on Xander’s shoulder. His lover looked tired, his eyes rimmed with red. “Have you seen Quince?”
Xander looked around. “Last time I saw her, she was with you.”
Jameson nodded. “I left her to come find you. We were fighting in the halls.”
“I’m sure she’s all right.” He looked less certain than he sounded. “Quince is tough.” Xander turned back to the map. “Why don’t you see if you can find her? We could use her advice on the shift—she knows more about i
t than any of us.”
“All right…. Just promise me you won’t kill Dani while I’m gone?”
Xander glanced over at her. “I promise, I won’t kill her. Not yet.”
“Fair enough.” He kissed Xander’s cheek and went out to search the halls for Quince.
KADIN SUPPLIED maps of the surroundings and the Mora, and ordered in refreshments for everyone, including keff, the local equivalent of coffee. Two sips, and Xander’s eyes were wide open. Damn, this stuff is strong. It tasted nothing like coffee. More like a sharp herbal tea, with maybe a hint of coconut? “Do we know if the lander men are in Errian as well?” he asked the Chamberlain.
Kadin shook his head. “We’ve had little to no contact with the… Erriani… in months. Relations between the Erriani and the Gaelani have been tense for years.”
“That ends now. But we can’t worry about it just yet.” Xander rolled out one of the maps. “Quince brought the two of us here to shift Oberon out of harm’s way, but we have to do it quickly, or there won’t be an Oberon to worry about anymore, and maybe not a Titania either.” He looked up at Kadin, searching the man’s face. “Do you know anything about this?”
Kadin’s brow furrowed. “Some. The queen was a believer in the old tales, and had me do some research through our oldest records.” He looked up at Xander. “What did you want to know? I brought a copy of the prophecy….”
“Prophecy?” More of these people’s… his people’s silly superstitions—but maybe it held a grain of truth. “Can I see it?”
Kadin handed him an old piece of cured hide, written in longhand.
Tempest comes with clash and thunder,
Skies alight with rainbow’s blood,
When the sunlight runs to red,
Comes the reaper for the dead
One with wings as black as night
One with wings of golden light
Spin the worlds back into one
To save them from the murdering sun.
Xander’s hand shook as he read it. Rainbow’s blood…. The auras that had occurred when the shuttle had crashed. Sunlight runs to red. Wings as black as night, wings of golden light. “When was this written?”
“Near as we can tell, Queen Elyra wrote it herself, more than seven hundred years ago.”
Xander sank down in his chair. He closed his eyes, and he could see her face. Part of his memories now. He was so unprepared for any of this. “Dammit, we need Quince here. I hope Jameson finds her soon.” She was fine. She had to be. “All right. How long do they have to stay in phase once they are joined?”
“It’s hard to say for certain. In the last cycle, reports say the solar activity lasted for ten days.”
Xander scratched his chin. “Ten days. We’ll have to figure out how to keep both sides away from each other’s throats until we can send them to their separate corners again. Maybe for good.” He put his finger on the map. “So how long will it take for us to get from here to the Mountain?”
Kadin considered. “Less than a day, if the weather holds.”
“Quince mentioned something. A… key?”
“The rocthane.” Kadin nodded. “It’s in the royal armory.”
“Can you bring it? I’d like to see it.”
Kadin nodded. “I’ll bring it to you, sire.”
Xander looked at the map. The distance didn’t look very far, but the air would be thin at the altitudes they’d have to fly at to reach Deireadh an Domhain. The Mountain.
They’d need a couple days’ worth of supplies.
The doors burst open. Jameson rushed in, holding Quince’s limp form. Her face looked deathly white.
He was at Jameson’s side in a heartbeat. “What happened? Is she…?”
“She took a pulse blast to the abdomen. And I don’t think so.” Jameson laid her body down gently on the bed in the adjoining bedroom.
Xander leaned out the door, finding one of the guards Kadin had left there. “Get me a doctor. Or healer. Or whatever the hell we have here.”
The man nodded and ran off.
Xander returned to Quince’s side. She lay on the bed, looking ethereal and pale, as if the living, breathing part of her had been washed away. Jameson had pulled her shirt back gently from the injury on her stomach. The pulse blast had left an ugly burn on her stomach with an open wound in the center, and it looked like she’d lost a lot of blood.
What he wouldn’t give for an honest-to-God OberCorp medic at the moment.
He brushed back a stray lock of Quince’s hair, tucking it behind her ear. “Hang in there, Quince,” he whispered. “Help is coming.”
She showed no signs of consciousness.
At last, the healer arrived, an older woman with gray hair and feathers and startlingly green eyes. She took one look at Quince and set Jameson to work. “Go put some hot water on the fire,” she ordered him, shooing him away from the bed. “You, cut her shirt off.”
Xander pulled out his knife and started to cut away the cloth as gently as possible.
The healer took out a pouch of dried herbs. At his concerned look, she smiled. “Fennow root. It’s a natural antiseptic. I’m not as much of a witch doctor as you might have feared.”
Xander chuckled softly. She had him nailed.
She sprinkled the herb into the pot of water heating above the fire. When it was warm enough, she dipped a clean cloth from her satchel inside, and gently dripped the water over the wound. “Nasty bit of work, that,” she said. “It’s going to start to bleed again once I clean it out. Wash your hands in the hot water.”
Xander did as he was ordered.
“Here, take this.” She handed him a small cloth pouch. “It will help absorb the bleeding and start the healing process.” She gently cleaned out the wound, which did start to bleed again. “Okay, lay the poultice on the wound, gently, and then keep pressure on it.”
Xander did so. Quince didn’t respond at all.
She placed another clean cloth over it, and he put pressure on that too.
“You.” The healer pointed to Jameson. “Come help me pull her up.”
Together, they managed to get Quince up into a sitting position and wrapped a length of cloth around her waist to make a bandage. Then they laid her back down gently on the bed.
Looking satisfied, the healer washed her hands and held one out to Xander. “Essra Nessaí.”
“Xander—”
“I know who you are. Welcome home, young prince.” Her tone suggested she didn’t exactly trust his experience. “Now you’ll need to change the dressing twice a day. I’ll leave you some extra poultice packs, and will check back on the patient tomorrow.”
“Is she…. Will she be all right?” Jameson asked, shooting a concerned glance at Quince.
She looked grim. “Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. Only the gods know for sure.”
JAMESON AND Xander sat on either side of the King’s bed, where Quince lay still as death. Morgan sat in a chair by the window, staring out at the sky. Xander had ordered Dani taken out to be held elsewhere—Quince did not need to see her when she woke up.
If she woke up.
Her breathing was shallow, almost undetectable.
Jameson caressed her arm gently. “Come back to us,” he whispered, regretting now all the mean thoughts he’d harbored about her when they had first met.
He caught Xander’s eye. His lover nodded at him, and returned his own gaze to their sleeping friend.
Out there, the world was coming to an end, and yet being here at this moment seemed more important than anything else.
Jameson glanced over at Morgan. He wondered what the strange little boy was thinking. The boy had done something to him back at the way station—touched him and made him feel better. “Do you think he could help her?” he asked Xander softly.
Xander looked at the boy. “I don’t know. He helped you.”
“I can ask him.”
Xander nodded.
Jameson approached the boy. Morgan sat
as still as Quince, not acknowledging Jameson’s presence in the least.
Jameson knelt before him, putting himself between the boy and the window. “Morgan, I need your help.”
Morgan’s gaze shifted to look into Jameson’s eyes, and Jameson thought there was a flicker of recognition there.
“Morgan, Quince is sick. She was hurt in the battle. I don’t know if she’s going to make it.” It was at least partly his fault. He had left in a rush to find Xander. If he had known that Quince was injured, maybe he could have done something.
“She’s not part of the plan,” Morgan said flatly, and turned his gaze away again.
“What plan?”
The boy ignored him.
“Morgan, what plan?” He took the boy by the shoulders and shook him. “Tell me.”
A normal child would have cried. Morgan just stared back at him, his eyes empty of emotion. That frightened Jameson even more.
“Only you and Xander are necessary for the plan.”
The plan.
He was talking about the shift. He had to be. Or else there was a whole other grand plan Jameson didn’t know about? “Do you mean the plan to bring Oberon and Titania back together? That plan?” He searched the boy’s face for some sign of humanity, but found only that impassive stare.
Morgan nodded. “Only you and Xander are necessary for the plan.”
He had some leverage, then. “What if I refuse to go along with the plan?”
Xander stared at the two of them from the bedside, his brow creased.
“That makes no sense. You must do your part for the plan.”
Jameson shook his head. “Not without Quince.” He glared at the boy. “She was like a mother to me when I was a child. She protected me and sent me off-world to keep me safe. She saved my life more than once.” He squeezed Morgan’s hand. “No Quince, no plan. Look at me—see how deadly serious I am.”
Morgan looked at him again.
Jameson kept his gaze steady and open, drawing on his psych training to evoke the boy’s trust, his agreement.
He had no idea if he was reaching the boy. Time stretched out as they stared at one another. Then at last, Morgan looked away. “Quince is necessary for the plan,” he said softly.
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