Quince laughed. “Close enough to where I started out, and yet, here I am with you.” She finished her berries and washed them down with a swig of lukewarm water, handing the canteen over to Robyn. “We were chosen, by fate or the nimfeach—or both. Once that happened, I think our chance at a normal life was over.”
“Probably. At least I found you in the bargain.” She leaned over and kissed Quince tenderly.
The touch of her lips was like fire. Her face burned, and an electric sizzle raced up Quince’s spine.
She broke away, embarrassed. She should be in better control of herself than that. Besides, they had little time to waste.
Robyn frowned.
“We have a lot of ground to cover.” Quince turned away first. She brushed the crumbs off her hands and put away the canteen. “Ready?”
“Whenever you are.”
She regretted the biting tone in Robyn’s words, but there was nothing to do about it now. They really did need to go.
She spread her wings and took off into the sky, and Robyn followed.
AS AFTERNOON shaded into evening, the host from Gaelan reached the waystation where Quince, Xander, Jameson, and Morgan had stayed the week before. Jameson blushed as he saw the place, far below, where he and Xander had first consummated their relationship.
They landed on the rocky top of the island. Xander was surrounded by his new lieutenants.
“I want the camp set up along the southern side of the Orn.” Xander took in the denuded banks of the river. The floodwaters had mostly subsided, but the river was still partly clogged with fallen trees. “Far enough from the water to be safe, just in case. No fires, everyone under tree cover. We can’t avoid being seen with this many skythane when we fly, but we can make it harder for them to find us at night.”
“Should we forage for more food? Our supplies will run out before we reach Errian.” Venin glanced toward the east. “There are hoarberries, auxen, and verils in these woods.”
“Perfect.” Xander had no idea what two of those three things were. “Just remember, be careful.” Xander looked at Jameson and Alix. “We’ll join you shortly.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Venin bowed, and he and Alia took off to direct the rest of Xander’s host.
Xander sighed, and Jameson laughed. “You’re not going to win that battle.”
“You’re probably right.” He leapt off the ledge, swooping down to the waystation, and Jameson and Alix followed.
Xander alighted on the broad terrace that fronted the waystation itself. It was just as he remembered it. He’d been standing there just a few short days before with Quince, staring up at Titania’s sun. How much had changed in a week.
He and Jameson went inside, looking for Quince’s carry sack.
Outside, Alix closed his bi-wings and followed.
The room was untouched, except for their bags, which had been rummaged through. “We may be out of luck.” Xander picked up his own carry sack.
Strangely his old pulse pistol was still inside.
Jameson held up a holo. “Jessa,” he said, by way of an explanation. “Why didn’t Dani’s men take these?”
“This wasn’t Dani. It was Morgan.”
Jameson looked to him questioningly.
“He rummaged through the bags. Remember, he brought us our clothes? Maybe Dani was sloppy and didn’t come down here to check.”
“Maybe so.”
“Is this Quince’s bag?” Alix asked, holding up a third carry sack.
Xander nodded. “Is the key still there?”
Alix pulled out the contents, including some clothes, the jar of salve, and finally the key. “Is this it?”
It was a smooth round sphere made of amalite. Jameson took it and held it up to the light. The surface of the metal squirmed and twisted. “Looks like it.”
“Do you know how to use it?”
Jameson shook his head. “I….” He stopped, getting that faraway look Xander had come to associate with a memory storm.
Xander steered him toward one of the cots. “Breathe, Jameson. In and out.”
He put his hand on Jameson’s chest like he’d seen Alix do, and Jameson’s hand on his. “Follow me. Like this. In. Out.” He demonstrated, and Jameson nodded, his eyes still strangely unfocused.
Come on, dammit. You can overcome this.
Elyra stretched her black wings, holding the key aloft. It was warm to her touch. She reached inside….
Jameson felt Xander’s hand on his chest, felt Xander take his own.
The key began to glow, warming to her touch. It hummed, too, the vibration traveling up her arms. In her mind, she pictured the place she wanted to go.
Jameson breathed slowly, one breath in, one out.
“Are you okay?” Xander asked.
“I… I can see it.”
She could smell the sea, hear the sound of the waves crashing against the massive stones of Torr Talam, near Errian. Hear the cries of the imprean as they soared over the sea, looking for fish among the waves.
“See what?”
“How she did it.”
She pushed the image into the key, and the air before her spit and tore, opening a doorway between the House of the Sky and the Argent Sea. Still holding the key, she leapt off the balcony and into the rift, to where her lover awaited her.
“Who?”
“Elyra. She knew how to use it.” He was aware of being simultaneously in two places at once. Of being two people at once—Elyra and Jameson/Lyrin. It was unsettling, and yet it was a marked improvement on the whole knocked-out-by-memories thing.
“Good. Now come back to me. Jameson?”
The sound of the ocean waves faded away, and the waystation reappeared in his vision. Jameson’s eyes focused on Xander’s. “That was… better.”
“Yeah?” Xander’s brow was knitted.
“I was more in control. I think.”
Xander nodded. “You didn’t go into freefall, anyhow. That’s something.”
ALIX STARED at the vial.
He shouldn’t do it. He’d watched Xander and Jameson over the last two days. They belonged together. Or at least, they fit together really well.
And yet… they should know. He would want to know if someone had betrayed him. If someone had manipulated his emotions. Wouldn’t he?
If they were strong enough, they would overcome it, and if not… “Guys?” he held up the vial. “Is this what I think it is?”
Xander took it and turned it over, looking at the black liquid inside. “Probably? It looks like the vial Quince gave to Rogan.”
“Rogan, the Syndicate boss?” Alix growled.
“One and the same. It’s a long story.”
“Oh God, Xander.” Alix pulled him close, hugging him tightly. “I didn’t want you to ever have to see him again.”
Jameson frowned, and Xander tensed under Alix’s touch. He let go.
“I wonder why she had it.” Xander pushed Alix gently away.
“Can I see your hands?” Alix asked.
Xander nodded, frowning. He held them out for Alix to inspect.
Alix turned them over and looked at his fingernails. “When did you take pith?” Alix asked.
“I didn’t.” Xander pulled his hands back. “I’m not a pith addict. Why would you ask me that?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just—”
“What?”
“I hate to say this.” He really did, but there was no going back now.
“Something worse than calling me a pith addict?”
Alix nodded. “Pith users show a few physical signs after using the drug for a prolonged period. One of those is double ‘moons’ in their fingernails. It’s subtle…. You have to look for it.”
Xander looked at his nails.
“Let me see.” Jameson looked at Xander’s hands. “He’s right about the nails. I’ve seen it before, in patients. But why would Quince….” He curled up his own fingers to look at his own hands.
Alix knew
what Jameson would find there. “Holy shit.” He sat down hard on the cot.
“What?”
“Mine have the double moon too. That means….”
Alix knew what it meant. Pith was psychoamoratic. It could induce feelings that felt like love in its users.
Xander sank down next to Jameson, and they looked at each other. Alix could imagine their thoughts. Does he really love me? Do I love him? Jameson could see it mirrored in Xander’s eyes.
“I’m going to give you two a moment.” Alix backed out of the room, leaving them alone.
JAMESON STARED at Xander, replaying their time together in his head.
Their first kiss. The night right here at the waystation. The electric feeling he associated with Xander’s touch. The fated connection they had.
“Is it all a lie?” he whispered at last.
“I don’t know.” Xander reached for Jameson’s hand. The familiar electricity ran up Jameson’s arm. He pulled his hand away as if it were burned.
“How do we know if this thing between us… if any of this is real?” He was cast away at sea. Loving Xander and coming out had required a leap of faith, a belief in the growing feelings in his heart. It was a repudiation of everything he’d been taught growing up, but he’d done it, had trusted his heart.
What if it was all just manipulation? Had Quince done this to them because she needed them to be together, at the end? Would any of this have come to pass without the drug?
The pith was like poison in his veins.
“Jameson… I—”
“I need some air.” He got up and ran out of the room, leaving a surprised Xander behind. He ran past Alix and took to the sky, wanting to put some distance between himself and both of them.
He needed to be alone.
Chapter Ten: Bolt from the Blue
IT WAS midafternoon, and the sun shone warmly across the world as if nothing had changed.
Quince wondered about that. Surely the turbulence of the storm that had all but destroyed Gaelan wasn’t the last of the rough weather they were in for. Two settled weather systems had been thrown together as one, and it would take a while for it all to work itself out.
She wondered, too, if it was even possible to send the Oberon half of Titania back to the human universe, or whether they were all trapped in the Titania one forever. Well, maybe trapped wasn’t the right word.
“River cat got your tongue?” Robyn asked, her brow furrowed.
“Just trying to make sense of it all.”
Robyn laughed, and warmth spread through Quince’s chest. It was the first time in decades she’d heard that beautiful sound. “Which part? The shift? Your friend Morgan?” She paused. “Me?”
“All of that and more. I should be back there with Jameson and Xander…. Lyrin and Davyn.”
“Old habits die hard.”
Quince nodded. The wind slipped past her wings, and the sun warmed her back.
“We could still go back.”
“Can’t. Morgan needs me.” Quince frowned. The forest canopy was nearly unbroken below, a tapestry of greens and purples that tugged at her heart. She’d been away from Titania for too long.
It was Erro now. She remembered one of the old legends:
Split in twain as two lost souls
Erro now two simm’ring coals
Titania in her purple robes,
and Oberon his disaster sows….
“I misjudged Morgan and his importance before. I won’t make the same mistake again.” Morgan was the tip of the iceberg. She was sure of it.
Robyn looked troubled. “What do you think we will find?”
“I don’t know. Something terrible, I fear. I—”
Pain lanced through her shoulder, and something was burning. “What in the Split?”
“Pulse rifle! Dive!”
A blaze of light shot past her right wing, and Quince obeyed Robyn’s command. She tucked her wings back and plummeted, making herself a harder target. She wobbled in flight, her right wing radiating pain.
Next to her, Robyn also dove, her bi-wings pulled in too.
As they approached the canopy, Quince pulled up short to fly low above the trees, an action that caused her intense pain, making her gasp. Tears formed in her eyes.
Robyn was right behind her as they soared rapidly over the treetops, skimming the trees of the Riamhwood. “How… bad… is it?” she managed.
“It looks like a glancing blow… some singed feathers, maybe a flesh wound. How does it feel?”
“Like someone shoved a hot poker into my wing.”
“Fly for as long as you can stand it, and then we’ll find a place to land. We need to put some distance between ourselves and those OberCorp bastards.”
“You… sure it was them?”
“Who else?”
Some of the escaped enforcers. Quince nodded. “I can go farther.” Each beat of her wings sent a shockwave of pain down into her shoulder.
They flew on, and Quince could feel concern radiating from Robyn, though she didn’t say any more. That was a blessing. Quince was having a hard enough time just concentrating on flying, and every now and then, she flinched at the pain and dipped closer to the treetops.
At last, Robyn pointed ahead. There was a clearing by a small lake.
Quince nodded. Just a little farther….
The last of the trees passed beneath them, and then she was going down. She aimed for the shore but overshot it and plunged into the cold waters of the lake.
She sunk like a stone, opening her eyes to a world of bubbles and slanted green light. Startled yellow fish darted out of her way, and then she was clawing herself back toward the air, toward the sky.
She surfaced with a great gasp, and Robyn was there to help her to shore.
Together they crawled out of the water and onto a verge of purple grass that offered a soft place to lie down.
Quince just lay there for a few moments, letting her breathing slow, her eyes closed, willing the pain to stop.
Robyn put her cool hands on Quince’s wing.
“Is it bad?”
“It could be worse.” Robyn kissed her. “I’m going to start a fire so we can heat some water. The pulse cauterized the wound, but I don’t want to risk an infection.”
Quince grimaced. “Fire means smoke… unless you have croyol here? Or wrenwood bushes?”
Robyn shook her head. “Neither, I’m afraid. We’ll have to make do with regular wood.”
“They’ll find us.” The darkness underneath the canopy of the Riamhwood now seemed much more threatening.
“That’s what I’m counting on.” Her face was both terrible and lovely to behold in its anger. “We’ll just have to be ready for them.”
JAMESON FLEW up and up into the sky, his wings lifting him until the island and the Orn River itself were mere spots on the curve of the world far below.
His new foundation had been severely shaken. One more sharp blow might shatter it altogether.
He’d given up so much of himself for Xander, for these worlds. This world. He’d let it erode at his sense of who he was until that old self had all but collapsed in a torrent of emotions and memories that weren’t his own.
For the moment, they remained mercifully silent.
He was in love with Xander. He felt it. He knew it in his bones. He’d kept that part of himself at bay for so long. For years, a decade, even. His attraction to the man, at least, that much he could say was true. If he were honest with himself, he’d felt it the day they’d first met, and unless Quince had figured out a way to slip him some pith on the shuttle ride down to Oberon City, he was sure she wasn’t responsible for that.
What about all the rest?
If she’d been steadily dosing the two of them, how could he separate what was real and what was the drug?
He soared in lazy circles high above the ground where all his troubles were distant, all his fears and cares and joys left behind far below.
He needed
this space.
What if he’d thrown away his old life for something that was false?
Who was real? Jameson or Lyrin?
You always do this. When something was hard or new or scary, he ran away. From Beta Tau. From the enforcers he’d killed. From Xander, more than once.
He’d tried to break the pattern with Xander, and yet here he was, literally running away once again at the first sign of trouble.
Surely Xander must be wrestling with this too. Talking it over with Alix.
Jameson’s blood ran cold. This was just the opening Alix needed, just the wedge to push between them.
Jameson didn’t know if all of what they had was real, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let Alix take it away before they had the chance to sit down and figure it out. No more running.
Decided, he tucked back his powerful golden wings and dove toward the waystation and Xander.
XANDER SAT despondently on one of the cots in the waystation’s room, staring at the doorway through which Jameson had just disappeared.
“Dammit, Quince, what the hell were you doing?” He looked down at the bottle of pith in his hand. There was enough of the potent drug there to dose half of Oberon City.
They didn’t know she’d been using it on the two of them. Not really. But it made sense. She’d needed the two of them together for the shift, and what better way to guarantee it than to make them both pith-happy and in love? Fuckitall.
“I’m sorry, Xan.” Alix sat down on the cot next to him. “Give Jameson time. He’s got to work this out too.”
Xander looked over at his ex. Alix sounded sincere. “Was any of it real?” He shook his head. “Would he even have liked me without this?” He held up the bottle, looking at the black liquid inside. Black as death. “I was a total bastard to him when we first met.”
“I don’t know.” Alix sounded uncomfortable. “It was so strange to see you two together. To find out you didn’t wait for me—”
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