by Chant, Zoe
Gizelle gave a frightened squeak of alarm, shrinking away in shock. “Conall!”
Jenny stood and stepped back, nearly colliding with Scarlet, and Lydia reached for Gizelle and clasped her hand, murmuring a prayer.
The rest of the staff gasped and whispered and swore in surprise.
Mal cursed and brought his scattered thoughts to bear, naming the runes as he gestured to them. Conall’s body arched as the last tattered remains of Mal’s magic knit his bones back together and mended crushed organs. He had underestimated the amount of damage the man had taken, and for a bad moment he feared he wouldn’t be able to do as he’d promised.
Then Scarlet’s pure power was bolstering him again, flowing into him like water after terrible thirst.
Life, her power was life.
Her entire forest, now both sides of the island, gave her a deep wellspring of energy without even trying.
Mal would have laughed, if he had the energy left for it. It all made so much sense.
Then Conall began to cough and rolled to one side with a moan of pain. Gizelle reached for him, weeping and shaking.
“I can’t... hear...” he said breathlessly, when her hands were on him. “No, I can... but it’s so quiet.”
“The door is shut,” Gizelle said simply, laying her head on his shoulder. “I only hear things that are now.”
Mal couldn’t stand any longer, every muscle in his body trembled as badly as Gizelle ever had, and he felt like he had worked his brain into the same kind of weak exhaustion. He could not have managed the most basic of portals or simplest of power sights. He could barely handle the effort of his own thoughts.
He sat down in his tracks, and he might have fallen over on his side, but Scarlet was suddenly behind him, holding him cradled in her arms. The scent of her damp hair swirling around him made him feel utterly, completely safe.
We are safe, his dragon told him, feeling equally stretched thin. We are safe and we have fulfilled our destiny and our mate will protect us while we rest.
It wasn’t the destiny that Mal had come to Shifting Sands expecting, and he didn’t have answers for their future: Would he move his hoard from New York? Would she agree to marry him, or was she too independent to accept such an earthly conceit? Would there be children? Could there be? Would her staff ever accept him as one of them? Wasn’t there something else he had to tell her...?
Blackness darker than the sky of Gizelle’s place took him at last.
Chapter 32
Scarlet could feel the tiny flicker of life in Mal’s chest, the slow, tired sparkle of it, just as she could feel the soul-deep weariness that had driven his body to collapse. For a long moment, she only held him, while the warm rain slowed to nothing as the wyrm’s power dissipated.
She had expected victory to feel... like victory.
But there was no sense of celebration to the scene.
The wyrm, frozen out of time, was stretched from the edge of her battered rain forest, across dozens of crushed cottages, to the cracked, tiled expanse of the pool deck. Columns lay scattered in coins of concrete, as if she had gone for Greek ruins in her architecture aesthetic.
She did not need to be an engineer to know that the central buildings were a complete loss. What wasn’t caved in had been badly shaken, wind-damaged, and nearly washed away in the torrential rains. The pool had cracked; the water features were silent for the first time in years. The slopes were eroded, her trees—her precious, life-giving trees—had been toppled. The event hall appeared to have collapsed. Hedges had been stripped of flowers and leaves, leaving only bare sticks.
It was weirdly quiet, except for the sound of running water. All of the bugs and frogs and birds had been driven to ground by the rain and wind.
Scarlet closed her eyes, looking further. Mudslides showed dark scars through the green forest. Water still ran in rivulets all down the slopes of the island. Great swathes of jungle had been ripped up by the roots, washed away, or shredded in place.
Graham’s garden and greenhouse had been flattened. The Den was still standing, but all of the windows had been shattered and half the roof ripped off; the interior was drenched and Bastian’s hoard was scattered across the island. The other manors along the cliff were in similar shape. Half of the hotel had collapsed in on itself. Her office and her courtyard were sodden; the entire outside wall of her bedroom had fallen down, leaving the bones of the roof over an open room.
Tyrant...
She found him at once, safely—if not happily—huddled with Sweet One under the dumpster behind the kitchen, and relief flooded through her.
Tyrant was safe. They had evacuated in time. Everyone trapped here had survived. Her tree still stood. That was all that mattered.
But she couldn’t quite keep tears from tracking down her face.
“Is he... dead?”
Scarlet looked up in alarm, to find Conall standing above them, Gizelle plastered against his side. The rest of the staff was picking through the rubble, clinging to their mates and assessing their wounds; no one was unscathed.
“No,” she said swiftly, her arms tightening around Mal. “Only... tired.”
She had never been so exhausted, either. Not even after Gizelle had tried to poison her.
“He... saved me,” Conall said numbly. “But... you brought me back.”
“Gizelle made it possible,” Scarlet said wearily. “If your mate-bond had not kept you here a little while, I would not have been able to help you.”
Slowly, painfully, Conall knelt beside her, hampered by Gizelle’s iron grip on his side and his own obvious pain. “I am in your debt.”
Scarlet laughed humorlessly. “That’s probably good, because your share of the island doesn’t have a lot of resale value right now. I’m afraid it has depreciated greatly over the last few hours.”
Conall put his head down and for a moment Scarlet thought he was shaking in pain. Then he began to laugh, a halting, hesitant chuckle that bloomed into a great guffaw of humor.
Gizelle stared at him in alarm for a moment, then began to giggle helplessly.
Scarlet couldn’t help herself, joining them in hysterical merriment, and soon everyone was in stages of shocky laughter, interspersed with tears and chatter.
“I’m fine,” Amber assured Tony. “I promise, I’m fine.”
“The baby...” Tony insisted. “We should get to the mainland and have you both checked. Does anyone have a working phone?”
No one did.
“I barely have working clothing,” Breck pointed out, lifting the drenched shreds of his shirt.
“The baby is fine,” Scarlet could tell Tony, at least. “A healthy, happy life spark.” A sense of mischief overcame her. “And so is Laura’s, and Lydia’s.”
“You knew?” Laura exclaimed over her mate’s arm as Tex enfolded her in a protective hug.
Wrench was staring at his mate in surprise. “You... you’re...”
Lydia’s smile was slow and stunning. “I only knew I might be,” she said, shaking her head. She gave Scarlet a sly, sideways look. “It was going to be a surprise!”
“He looks surprised to me,” Travis pointed out.
Wrench was still standing with his arms limp at his side and his mouth open, unable to form complete sentences, or even, apparently, full words.
“What about me?” Breck joked irrepressibly. “Am I pregnant?”
Darla punched him in the arm and said, “Ouch! We have a bruise there.” She twisted her arm to inspect her purpling flesh.
Scarlet gave a sigh, and felt it ripple through the island.
The clouds overhead were beginning to thin, with shafts of sunlight burning through. Mist clouded over the ground, and gradually the surviving insects started to sing. The breeze from the ocean was friendly again and Scarlet could feel her trees getting down to the business of growing again, slowly putting out new branches and sprouting new leaves to replace the ravaged canopy.
They were all alive.
>
Scarlet carried Mal to her room and salvaged enough of a bed to make him comfortable while he regained consciousness.
Chef insisted on feeding everyone, and somehow managed to make a hot meal from the ruins of his powerless kitchen; Travis assembled a working grill from broken parts and Graham and Alice scavenged fruit and vegetables from destroyed greenhouse. Bastian bandaged up anyone who needed it, though no one was in worse shape than he was... except Mal.
They found enough tables and working chairs to put together a makeshift feast. The mood was light, and still a little stunned.
Tyrant and Sweet One, desperately offended by the day’s events, made an appearance as Chef brought out dessert. Gizelle tried to cuddle with Sweet One, but the young cat had no interest in the gazelle shifter’s comfort and yowled her way out of Gizelle’s arms after only a few moments.
Tyrant, by contrast, wanted nothing more than to attach herself to Scarlet’s ankles, constantly underfoot as Scarlet investigated the debris for anything that could be salvaged.
She was standing at the back of the restaurant deck holding a dented soup ladle when Gizelle found her.
“Be careful, Gizelle,” Scarlet warned. “The deck isn’t sound here.”
Sweet One was being groomed vigorously by Tyrant on a broken table that was starting to dry in the baking sun.
Gizelle crept forward carefully to stand next to Scarlet.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” she said mournfully.
“I know you didn’t,” Scarlet said. “I don’t blame you.”
“It was...”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“But I...”
Scarlet turned to face her. “Good people blame themselves, Gizelle. Because good people take responsibility for what they do. I can only guess what it was like with that wyrm in your head, and you did the very best you could and I would never hold that against you.”
“Am I a good person?” Gizelle asked plaintively.
“The very best,” Scarlet assured her. “You are braver and better than anyone I know. And you are merciful, which is much, much harder than being merely good.”
Gizelle stood still a moment and the loudest sounds were Sweet One’s trilling protests as Tyrant held her down and licked her ears.
“It’s quieter now,” she observed. “In my head, I mean.” She cocked her head at Scarlet curiously. “Does this mean I’ll be normal?”
“I am not sure any of us are normal,” Scarlet said dryly. “But that’s not something you should aspire to anyway.”
Gizelle gave her a swift, grateful hug. “I can hear your forest,” she said, while her head was leaning against Scarlet’s collarbone. “It sounds like growing.”
Scarlet squeezed her back and let her go gather Sweet One into her arms. The kitten decided that Gizelle’s attention was preferable to being further mauled by Tyrant and purred as she was picked up.
Scarlet collected Tyrant into her own arms and was given purring head-butts and vocal complaints. “Let’s go see if your cat food survived,” Scarlet suggested.
Chapter 33
Mal jerked awake at the attack, blindly reaching for his magic and finding that his stores were still empty.
It was just as well; the ferocious assailant was only Tyrant, who had decided that Mal’s toes beneath the light quilt were clearly prey.
Mal sat up, precipitating a strategic retreat on the part of the kitten, and tried to figure out why Scarlet’s room felt so odd.
He finally realized that it was missing an entire wall.
Where there had been tall windows and French doors, there was now... nothing. There was still a roof above, but the rest of the room was in ruins.
Ruins seemed an apt description for the entire resort, Mal decided. He hauled himself from the bed, which was only an air mattress on a sodden box spring; the original mattress, soaked, was standing on end in a pile of broken glass.
His muscles were reluctant to answer his demands, and he was glad to find a column that had survived the damage to lean against, looking out over the resort.
All that remained of the storm were tatters of dark clouds reflecting sunset colors across the darkening sky.
“It would be nice if we could take care of that before the civil guard got here,” Scarlet said.
The doorway she stood in didn’t hold a door any longer, and the jamb was splintered.
She, of course, looked perfectly put together in the midst of all the chaos: her hair swept back, her expression unruffled. Tyrant twined around her ankles, purring.
“Take care of what, now?” The sight of her drove every thought from his mind but one.
“The giant, frozen, feathered, two-headed beast that is crushing half of my resort. Most of the damage can be attributed to the storm and the earthquakes... but it’s a little hard to explain that part.”
“You know, you aren’t supposed to disturb things until the insurance adjuster has had a chance to see the site,” Mal said lightly. “You can get ugly lawsuits doing that.”
“I’m pretty sure my insurance doesn’t cover attack by angry ancient creatures, anyway,” Scarlet said dryly. “And I’m vastly underinsured for this anyway.”
“Insurance policies are put together by amateurs,” Mal scoffed. He started to step towards her, and decided that holding onto the column was a better choice.
In a blink, Scarlet was at his side, her arm up under his. “It can wait,” she said softly. “You should rest more.”
As she led him back to the bed, giving him no choice in the matter, Mal had to ask, “Everyone? Everyone is okay?”
“Bruised and battered,” Scarlet said gravely. “But no injuries that won’t heal after a few shifts and some good meals.”
“Your tree?” Mal asked reluctantly. Visions of the great rainforest trees being sucked into the raging storm had been firmly placed into his collection of nightmare fodder.
“A few fallen branches,” Scarlet said calmly, helping him settle back into the bed. “But my leaves will grow back. I’ll flower again.”
“What happens now?” Mal asked, not releasing her.
Scarlet gazed at him. “I... don’t know.”
“Do you want to rebuild?”
Scarlet sighed and sat beside him. “I... I want to. But...”
“Money’s no object,” Mal reminded her.
Scarlet regarded him thoughtfully. “It doesn’t feel right,” she admitted.
“Would it feel better if it came through your staff?”
Scarlet smiled faintly. “It might. But they’ve already tapped everything they had just to buy this place.” She looked wryly through the missing wall over the savaged resort. “For all the good it will do them. I bankrupted us all when I asked you to accept the offer.”
“But you saved the world,” Mal pointed out. “Oh, and they haven’t begun to tap their resources.” He had remembered the other thing he needed to tell Scarlet.
She looked at him suspiciously. “What are you on about now?”
Mal didn’t have the energy to bait her further, though his dragon wearily admitted it might have been fun. “Darla’s hoard. It’s not locked.”
Scarlet blinked at him and furrowed her brow. “What?”
Mal chuckled. “It’s not locked. Those bracelets that were sent for Darla’s engagement? Those were a gift commissioned by her father. That they were activated shows his blessing; she never needed her mother’s. The hoard is hers. She has wealth that pales even mine, and she could give you enough to rebuild the entire island, pay off your debt, pave the road from the airstrip, put in an amusement park, and hire celebrity musicians every night without even noticing the difference.”
Scarlet’s face went from astonished, through amazed, to angry in the blink of an eye. “You’re telling me that you’ve let Darla and Breck believe that they gave up the hoard to be together and this whole time they’ve had access to it?”
“Resources hold amazing bargaining power,�
�� Mal said apologetically. “I knew I’d lose that advantage over you if I told them because they would already give you the shirts from their backs if you asked.”
Scarlet opened and closed her mouth several times, then sighed and laughed helplessly. “I suppose I understand that,” she admitted, shaking her head. “It doesn’t mean I entirely forgive it,” she added threateningly. “They suffered so needlessly!”
Mal took her hand. “I shall endeavor to earn your absolution in the future,” he promised. “And I will tell Darla and Breck myself and fall upon their mercy.”
“I think that they are feeling fairly merciful,” Scarlet said, amused. “Given that you’ve just saved the world and healed Conall.”
“We’ve saved the world,” Mal reminded her. “And you are the one who brought Conall back.”
“We make a good team,” Scarlet murmured, leaning her forehead against his.
Mal kissed her, and ran out of air long before he wanted to.
“I have a question for you,” he said, when Scarlet released him.
“Ask,” Scarlet said gently.
“Will you marry me, Scarlet Stanson? Will you be my partner as well as my mate? Will you allow me to bring my hoard here and give you half of it as my wife? You can fund your own rebuild, with your own money, and keep your pride as well as your resort.”
Scarlet wiped her eyes. “Are you trying to offer me a buyout in order to get me to marry you?” she demanded.
“Dammit,” Mal said with a laugh. “Old habits die hard.”
She was smiling like the sun behind her tears and surely, somewhere, there were riots of rainbows from the combination.
“Yes,” she said. “I will marry you. I will take half of your hoard and give you half of my island and all of my heart and the rest of my life. I love you, Mal Padrikanth Moore.”
Mal gathered her into his aching arms and kissed her until the resort burst into bloom around them.