Lena had the horses against a nook in the cliff, back around a bend in the road. She’d weighed down their dangling traces with rocks. Right now, the exhausted creatures weren’t going anywhere, but that would change if they were sufficiently spooked. The rocks wouldn’t hold them against any serious pulling.
Stella morphed from jaguar into running human in her fighting leathers. That meant he was able to catch up to her. “Where are your daggers?” he shouted, jogging beside her.
She cast him a startled look. “Go help Astar!”
Jak shook his head grimly. “His orders. I’m on you two while you close that rift.”
“Then I don’t need my daggers, do I?” she shot back, a mulish tilt to her mouth. “I have you.”
He could wish she didn’t sound so annoyed about it.
“Besides,” she added as Lena jogged toward them, “I have to hold the Star.” She showed him the glowing topaz orb in her palm.
“Hold it in one hand,” he told her. “Dagger in the other. Look, Lena has hers.”
“Lena can actually use her dagger,” Stella snapped. “I’ll stick to magic.”
Lena looked back and forth between them. “What’s the plan?”
“We’re closing the rift,” Stella replied, turning her back on him.
His fingers twitched to throttle her, but instinct had him spinning, slicing a monkey-lizard in half as it flew toward them. “Get busy,” he advised, ignoring what sounded like a very feline snarl. It almost made him smile. He’d take her being pissed at him over that cool indifference.
By the time Rhy arrived to help—Gen and Zeph following right after—Stella and Lena had managed to slow, then halt the inrush of monkey-lizards. The shapeshifters helped with cleanup, which consisted of dispatching the remaining creatures and pitching them, or their remains, in the lake below.
“I really don’t think adding exotic animals to the lake ecosystem is a good idea,” Lena commented, frowning at the black water.
“What ecosystem?” Rhy snorted. “I thought Nilly and Gen said there’s nothing in it.”
“We don’t even know if they’re composed of the same materials as creatures from our world,” Lena continued as if Rhy hadn’t spoken. “They might not decompose properly.”
Astar grimaced as Stella tended to his wounds. She’d healed Lena first, then went to her twin, as Astar wasn’t able to heal himself via shapeshifting. Jak had assured Stella he was fine, and he needed to cobble the harness together or they’d be spending the night in the middle of the road. Though she’d given him the hairy eyeball, she hadn’t argued. “I agree,” Astar said, “but I also don’t want to leave these things littering the road.”
“Why don’t you take dragon form and incinerate them for us?” Gen asked.
“A better question is,” Rhy put it, “why didn’t you take dragon form and blast these monkey-lizards to nothing?” He kicked one limp body into the lake.
“I, ah, tried,” Astar admitted, looking pained. “I don’t know how I did it the first time, but it doesn’t seem to be a form I can just pull like my others.”
Zeph stroked his hair in comfort, and Stella gave him a thoughtful look.
“So,” Astar continued, “unless Lena and Nilly can figure out how to reopen the rift and send them back through…”
“First of all,” Stella said absently as she worked, “the rift isn’t closed, it’s just too narrow for the monkey-lizards to fit through.”
“It’s also entirely possible they ran out of the poor things on the other side,” Lena added.
“Poor things?” Rhy repeated, incredulous. “Those vicious beasties nearly killed you all.”
“They were tools, Rhyian,” Lena ground out with exaggerated patience. “Innocent creatures used as a weapon against us.”
He opened his mouth—and Jak readied himself to step between them—but Rhy clamped his lips shut. “Good point,” Rhy conceded.
Wonder of wonders. A small silence fell as they all processed that, and Stella flashed Jak a warning glance, as if she suspected him of being on the verge of making a smart remark. Hey, even he knew when to leave well enough alone.
“The harness is as good as it’s going to get without replacement parts,” he said instead. “It should hold us to get to the Cliffwalk Inn, the one the manse staff told us about. Or to get us back to the manse. One or the other. Staying near this rift is probably a bad idea.”
“The manse would be warm,” Lena observed wistfully, “but I hate to backtrack.”
“This is one of the only roads we can take,” Astar said, “unless we want to circle back to Castle Elderhorst, and that would add days to the journey. And complications.” He smiled ruefully into Zeph’s heated glare. Yeah, putting Zeph in the same castle—even one as big as Elderhorst—with Astar’s erstwhile potential fiancée, Princess Berendina, was just asking for trouble.
“We’ve already come this far,” Gen put in. “Let’s keep going. I have no desire to revisit old friends at Elderhorst either.”
Jak felt bad for Gen. That Henk had been a genuine ass, and Gen was simply too trusting, too earnest to see through that asshole’s façade. “Better to have seen his true colors early on, sweet Gen,” he told her, and she smiled gratefully. Why couldn’t he have fallen for Gen? She wasn’t enigmatic or moody. And she was an open book, much like himself. Generous, kind-hearted, familiar with mossback ways from so much time spent with her father’s family. Of course, they were farmers, so about as different from his footloose family as one could get and still be approximately the same species. She was lovely, too, in an understated way, with her soft blue eyes and rich chestnut hair. And she felt like a sister to him.
Why did it have to be Stella who fascinated him so? With her hair pulled back still, the widow’s peak showed clearly, her black hair forming a point on her pale forehead, marking her a queen, even without a kingdom. He wanted to kiss her there, then between those stormy eyes, on the tip of her sweet nose—and then plunder her full lips until she gasped his name. As if she sensed his gaze resting on her as he brooded, she glanced up just then, eyes thundercloud dark with magic from healing. Her solemn mouth twitched in wry acknowledgment. Danu take him—when would he learn to mind his thoughts?
“Jak is right,” Astar said.
“My favorite phrase,” Jak said, once again paying attention to the ongoing conversation. “What am I right about this time?”
“We shouldn’t stay here any longer,” Astar replied, unperturbed. “At any moment, whoever is on the other side of the rift might have restocked their monkey-lizards.”
Jak regarded him with some amusement, picturing a stockpile of quiescent monkey-lizards ready to be fired through the rift. “Do you think that’s what happened here?”
Lena glanced at Zeph, who nodded with uncharacteristic solemnity. “Probably,” Lena said. “When Zeph and I saw the creatures in their natural habitat, they were territorial, but not aggressive otherwise.”
“These were frightened,” Stella said, dusting off her hands, finished with healing Astar. She became aware of them all looking at her. “What? I can feel their emotions, just like with people. They were out of their minds with unreasoning fear. I think they thought they were defending themselves from us.”