Darkness fell over her. Rousing, she opened her eyes. Dragos knelt and held out his hands. He had borrowed someone else’s shirt—the scent told her it was Graydon’s—and it was filled with wild berries and edible greens: dandelion, chickweed, and fennel.
“I knew you wouldn’t leave him. This is the best I could forage on short notice.”
It looked like a banquet to her. “Oh, thank you.” She fell on the food and ate every piece of green, every berry.
It wasn’t enough, just like the jerky wasn’t enough for the others, but it would do for now. She felt her energy return. He laid a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll eat properly when we get back.”
She nodded. Just then, the white dragon shimmered and disappeared into Liam’s human form. Rolling to her knees, she leaned over him and stroked the blond hair back from his strong face. “Open your eyes, honey. Everything’s okay now.”
Raising one hand, Liam groped for hers while he opened his eyes and stared at the sky. Like his father, he didn’t need to squint when he looked at the sun.
When he didn’t say anything, she asked, “What do you remember of what happened?”
His gaze shifted to hers. “I remember fighting him and Dad pinning me down. And I remember my wings hurt.”
His expression was so empty. She had never seen him looking quite so fragile. “Your wings are fine,” she told him strongly. “You’re perfect in every way. You will fly again just as soon as you feel up to it.” She wasn’t sure how seraphim miracles worked, and their dragon bodies were so heavy, so she added, “We’ll get you examined by a proper Wyr doctor, because you might need to wait a month or so like Aryal did. But there’s nothing wrong with them that time won’t heal.”
His gaze clung to hers as his lips shaped one silent word. Promise?
Bracing one hand on the ground, she leaned down to press her lips to his forehead. “You, Dragos, and Niall are my heart. Would I ever lie to you?”
A sigh shook out of him, and he relaxed. “Never.”
As she straightened, she caught sight of Dragos watching them. The bitter self-recrimination in his expression jolted her. He strode away. The open, affectionate love that shone between father and son was missing.
Frowning, she fell into troubled thought.
People began to head back to the settlement. They left in twos and threes, then in greater groups, until finally there was no one left except Morgan, Eva, the sentinels, and Pia, Dragos, and Liam.
As tired as Pia was, she had a debt to repay and a promise to fulfill. With a sigh of relief, she strode over to Graydon and finally relinquished control of the backpack with the null spell shackles. “Don’t let Aryal have these again.”
“Oh, I won’t. I guaran-damn-tee you that,” he promised with feeling. The last time Aryal had control of them she had lied and said she had dropped them in a volcano. While that had worked out to their advantage, nobody was about to trust her with them again.
Pia looked around. Dragos was talking to Grym and Quentin, and Rune and Bayne squatted by Liam, who had sat up and was stretching his shoulders. She was painfully aware that Liam and Dragos had not spoken directly to each other since Liam had regained consciousness.
She could only fix one thing at a time. And right now, there was no time like the present for evening the scoreboard.
She pulled Morgan aside. “I need the scepter now, please.”
He raised his eyebrows, but obligingly opened up his pack. “I was hoping to study it. It’s imbued with a magnificently unique Power. What are you going to do with it?”
Reverently she gathered it up and held it in the crook of her arm like it was a baby. “I need to take it back where it belongs. If Dragos asks where I’ve gone, tell him I needed a private moment in the woods and I’ll be right back.”
Speculation filled the sorcerer’s narrowed gaze. “Are you sure you don’t need some company for…wherever it is you’re going?”
He was too smart, that one. She gave him a lopsided smile. “I’ll be perfectly safe. And I also don’t need to have a long, drawn-out argument with Dragos over this.”
The corners of Morgan’s eyes crinkled. “I’ll tell him you needed a private moment. If he asks.”
“Thank you.”
As she walked away, Eva fell into step beside her. “Where are we going?”
Mentally she rolled her eyes. She couldn’t even pretend to take a pee by herself when her warrior Wyr got riled up. “Just keep quiet and follow me.”
They walked until the voices in the clearing faded away. Then Pia paused, set the scepter on the ground and shapeshifted into her Wyr form.
Waiting seraphim surrounded them, shining like stars in the woods. By the mystified look on Eva’s face, Pia could tell that the other woman couldn’t see them.
None of them stepped forward. Changing into her Wyr form had taken her part of the way, but not far enough. She told Eva, Don’t call for help. Just wait here.
Bending her neck, she picked the scepter up with her mouth and walked forward. The forest scene around her shimmered and faded.
Rhyacia disappeared, and she stood again in the seraphim’s realm. Saw again the Tree, and the Dancer.
One seraph approached. Gently, she laid the scepter in its waiting arms. Then she turned to bend one knee in homage to Taliesin. As the Dancer whirled, she could have sworn she saw them smile.
Her promise was fulfilled, the debt for the life of her son repaid.
She turned and headed back home.
Chapter Twelve
Eva and the surrounding woods reappeared. The other woman’s eyes were wide. “You disappeared. What the righteous fuck just happened?”
The seraph’s realm was still too personal for Pia to talk about. Maybe someday, but not yet. She shapeshifted back into her human form and slung an arm around her best friend’s shoulders. “Never mind that for now. It’s a story I’m not yet ready to talk about. Eva, I am not merely done. I am really most sincerely done.”
Eva slipped an arm around her waist. “Okay, but you’ve got to tell me someday.”
Maybe she would, but maybe she wouldn’t. Occasionally some things happened that needed to remain private. As they walked back to the others, she asked, “Do you still have that pup tent you use when you go camping?”
“Of course.”
“Can I borrow it for a while, along with your bed roll?”
Eva squeezed her. “Anything you want, baby girl. Just ask, and it’s yours.”
When they reached the others, the avians changed into their Wyr form and took on passengers. Pia touched Dragos’s shoulder. “Are you okay for flying?”
His bleak expression lifted somewhat, and he nodded. Good enough.
Liam rode Rune, Eva settled behind Pia in her usual spot, Quentin and Bayne paired up, and this time Morgan hitched a ride on Graydon. They flew back to the settlement in a casual formation. Nobody pushed it. There wasn’t an emergency any longer. Dragos flew in silence, and Pia let him.
They each took turns landing in the clearing by Hell House and changing into their human forms. Mates reunited, hugging each other tightly, and people came up to Pia to hug her too. She patted Bel on the back, gave Carling a brief smile, and said to Eva, “Would you be so kind as to set up your pup tent and bed roll in some shade down at the beach?”
“Of course, right away.” Eva was beginning to look worried, but she loped off to do it.
“We have fresh food waiting inside,” Bel told her.
No doubt they did. Pia nodded, and the other woman seemed to take it as acknowledgment and turned her attention back to her mate, Graydon.
A few minutes later Pia slipped away and walked down the path to the beach where Eva was just finishing with the tent set up. The bed roll fit perfectly inside the pup tent. Pia touched Eva’s hand in thanks, crawled inside the tent, and pulled the flap down. Then she finally, finally let her body go prone. Finally let go of the interminably long, horrid day, and the relief was indesc
ribable. Listening to the waves, she began to drift off.
She felt him approach rather than heard him. When Dragos wanted, he could move as silently as a cat. The tent flap lifted, and he looked inside. “What are you doing?”
“I live here now,” she told him. Her limbs felt weighted with lead.
He gave her a fierce frown. Liam peered over his shoulder, looking baffled and worried. Dragos said, “My shoulders don’t even fit in there.”
“I know.” A giant yawn cracked her jaw.
Dragos ordered, “You need to eat and drink. And you’re filthy—I know you’re exhausted, but you’ll feel better when you’re clean. Get your ass out here.”
She contemplated that for, oh, maybe a split second. “No.”
“Pia,” he said between his teeth.
“Don’t you ‘Pia’ me in that tone of voice, mister. I will not put foot inside that house again. I won’t eat or drink anything there, I will not shower, I will not rest there. I will not wear a single stitch of clothing from it, I will not use the toothpaste. I reject that experience entirely, and I don’t care if that doesn’t make sense to anybody else. All that matters is that it makes sense to me. And I’m so goddamn tired I could lie here and die.”
At those last words, his expression tightened. He put a hand on her head and stroked her hair. The hair she had left, anyway.
She continued, “So since we don’t have a house I can stand to be in any longer, this is my house now. If you don’t like it, go do something about it. You’re richer than Croesus.” Looking beyond him, she added to Liam, “And you can lift a million tons with your little finger.”
Reluctantly, one corner of Liam’s mouth notched up a fraction of an inch. “Maybe not a million tons.”
“You know what I mean.” She loved them both so much. But everybody had issues, and whatever was going on between them, they would have to work it out for themselves, because she couldn’t fix one more thing. Hopefully, they would take the prompt and work on the project together and get past what happened. If not… She closed her eyes again. Her voice wobbled as she told them, “I need to sleep, and I need my baby. That will be all for now. You may leave.”
A taut silence greeted that. She wasn’t surprised. She’d never behaved like this before. Then, Dragos said to someone, “Get her food and drink. Lots of calories, liquid, and fat.”
Someone raced off, probably Eva. Pia lay still, not caring.
He leaned into the pup tent as far as he could and pressed his lips to her mouth. “You’ll get your baby, and we’ll have a new place for you to stay by nightfall. I promise.”
She believed him. She fell asleep.
The next thing she knew, Eva was there, shaking her awake. Eva held a straw to her lips. “Don’t bitch at me. I don’t care how tired you are. Wake up and drink this.”
She sucked on the straw. It was a refreshing cold smoothie, filled with coconut milk, fruit, and greens. She got half of it down before falling asleep with the straw in her mouth.
Someone shook her awake again. She didn’t open her eyes. “What does a girl have to do to get a nap around here?”
Niniane said, “We have your hell baby.”
That made her eyes pop open. She reached out with hungry arms. Niall screamed at her. She gathered him close. “Oh, sweetness, I’m so sorry.”
Tearfully, Niniane told her, “We never let him cry it out. Someone was always available to lavish love on him, and when they couldn’t take it any longer, they handed him to someone else, and Hell Baby. Never. Shut. Up. He drank every drop of milk you sent, so I don’t think it was trauma, I really don’t. I just think he was really mad.”
“Are you my precious Hell Baby?” Pia crooned at him. Niall screamed louder. As she unbuttoned her bra, she told Niniane, “Thank you for everything.”
“You, and he, are so very welcome. But I gotta say, I’m really scared about having my own baby now.”
As she bared her breast, Niall latched onto her nipple, drew a couple sucks, then pulled away to yell wordlessly at her before latching on again. Both she and Niniane began to laugh.
Pia told the faerie, “Nothing could possibly be as bad as Hell Baby, so I’m sure you’ll do just fine.”
Niniane slipped away, and after Niall finished feeding, he and Pia fell asleep. At some point a very warm dog wriggled into the tent. Skeeter alternated between putting his chin on Pia’s ankle and panting, and between the baby and the dog’s added warmth, she quickly grew clammy and uncomfortable, but she didn’t have the heart to send the dog out and nobody was taking her baby away again, so she curled onto her side and dealt with it.
When she next opened her eyes, she heard the sound of canvas ripping. Dragos lifted away the top of the tent. “You just ruined Eva’s pup tent.”
“I’ll get her another one.” He gathered her up, baby and all, and carried them down the beach. “We got your new house done. It’s very temporary.”
“I don’t care. I’m sure it will be wonderful.” She’d almost told him earlier she would be happy with a cave, but she hadn’t wanted to lower the bar too far. She looked around blearily. The heat of the day had eased, and the sky was filled with the brilliant colors of sunset. In the distance, she could hear drumming. “What’s that noise?”
“Some people decided they wanted to have a real beach party. No weird, dangerous ghosts invited.”
“Good for them.”
He had showered and shaved, and he wore a pair of khaki shorts. His short black hair was still wet, and he smelled so good it made her realize just how rank she was. “I’m so stinky you shouldn’t be touching me.”
“I will always want to touch you,” he told her. “No matter how stinky or cranky you get. If you want, I’ll roll in the mud with you.”
“Now, there’s true love.” She snuggled against his chest.
His arms tightened. “How’s the baby?”
“He’s perfect in every conceivable way, but he’s really mad. He might yell when he wakes up again.” She peeked at Niall’s tiny, exhausted face. “Hopefully he wore himself out and won’t wake up for a while.” After a moment, she asked, “How are you?”
He stopped walking to kiss her. “Better. I took Liam to a Wyr doctor, who confirmed his wings healed just fine. To be on the safe side, he still wants Liam to avoid flight for a few weeks. Then he and I got to work on your new place. It was—strange and difficult at first. I—” He stopped talking and the pause turned excruciating. Then, from the back of his throat, he forced out, “I killed him. I killed my own son.”
“Put me down,” she ordered.
His arms tightened jealously. “No.”
“Then look at me.” For a moment he resisted, then he met her gaze. The anguish in his eyes made her heart constrict with compassion. “You didn’t kill him. You saved him.”
“I understand what you’re saying,” he said carefully. “But my visceral experience says otherwise. I bit into his throat. His blood filled my mouth. He stopped breathing, and his soul left us, and he’s only back through the kindness of others.”
This was so difficult. It might be one of the most difficult things they had ever gone through, and they had gone through a lot together. She lay a hand against his cheek. “What did he say about it?”
“He said, ‘Thank you.’” Dragos gave her a bitter smile.
She breathed through that and let her gaze wander over the beautiful scenery. Then she said, “You know, sometimes, things don’t magically get better. Things happen, and we have to endure the experience, and then we need to leave them in the road where we found them and move forward. He loves you so much. He said ‘thank you’ because he’s grateful, and I am too, because you saved him. And I am so sorry that you had to pay the price by going through that experience. But I am so glad and grateful you are strong enough to take this hit and move on. You won’t let that monster hurt our family anymore.”
He closed his eyes and tilted his head down to her as he listened. �
�No, I won’t. He doesn’t get to do that to us.”
That was when she knew they had turned a corner, and things would be better now. Maybe not all at once, but day by day, moment by moment, they would be. Every happy experience they shared, every kiss, every holiday with family and friends, every sunset, and every joke took them further away from Senusret and made him irrelevant.
Dragos resumed walking. “Anyway, Liam and I ended up spending the day together as we worked on this. It was good. And word got around, then people started showing up with donations, and I hope you like what we came up with.”
She pressed a kiss to his collarbone. “I already told you. I know I’m going to love it.”
She was getting tired of being carried, but she thought he might be enjoying himself, so she put up with it. He rounded a bend, and then in front of them, a gigantic, magnificent tent came into view. It was different from anything she had ever seen before, with several peaks at the top. Warm light spilled out from a spacious opening.
“Oh…” she breathed as she took it in.
“It’s fashioned after a Bedouin tent,” he told her. “The roof is waterproof, and you can roll up the sides. It will be cool in the daytime, warm at night, and dry underneath. We have rug hangings to delineate rooms, and more rugs on the floor. People gave us furniture, and you have all kinds of new clothes. They were happy to help. They know what you did for them. If Senusret had been allowed to go unchecked, things would have gone very badly here.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Were you serious about the toothpaste?”
Toothpaste? What was he talking about? She drew her brows together, then remembered and gave him an abashed grin. “I’ve slept since then and am feeling a bit more sensible.”
“No need. We have new toothbrushes and toothpaste too. I was just curious.”
Finally at the edge of the tent, he set her on her feet, and she handed the sleeping baby over to him and walked forward wonderingly, staring at the Elven rug hangings and sophisticated Dark Fae furniture. There were couches, and a low table made of burnished wood with cushions set around it. It was every bit as spacious as Hell House had been, with room for guests.
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