She was right—already the first bloom of agony was fading into a dull, roaring ache. Forcing his eyes open, he found her lovely, serene face hovering over him, her eyes silver as the full moon, brimming with magic. Her dark hair spilled around them both, like the shadows of Moranu, the gentle, shrouding night embracing them. The fine point of her widow’s peak marked the apex of a triangle framed at the bottom by her winged brows, the center opening into a third eye that gazed at him invisibly.
“Welcome back,” she said with a sweet smile.
Lifting a hand, he slid it behind her neck and pulled her down for a kiss. Her lips, unbelievably sweet and soft, moved over his in a benediction, like life itself. With her healing magic thrumming through every cell of his body, it seemed she breathed him in with the kiss, the life flowing back through her cupped hands over his heart, pumping into his lungs, and breathing out again in an endless circle.
He kept it brief, aware of paining her, though he couldn’t imagine how he could be any more a part of her than in that moment. “I nearly died without kissing you. No way I’d risk letting that happen again.”
She smiled, eyes radiantly silver, and she seemed about to say something. Then her eyes dimmed, rolling up, and she collapsed over him.
It took some time to reassure Astar that Stella had only fainted. Thank the three for Zeph and her stern wrangling of Astar’s crazed concern, because she managed to calm him down before he became a rampaging grizzly and tore his arms out of his sockets. Jak might be cocky and arrogant enough to take on the shapeshifters, but no one really wanted to fight a grizzly with a few daggers and a sadly now-bent-beyond-repair sword.
By the time Jak drank down a third mug of Gen’s warm brew—Danu, he was thirsty!—Lena had confirmed that Stella was simply sleeping off the intensive healing, and Astar had come to embrace Jak in a bear hug that was all human and no claws. They’d stretched Stella out to sleep on the table in his place, and Jak sat near her feet, where he could keep an eye on her.
Jak had also taken in his changed circumstances, and had wit enough to ask questions. “Why am I wearing my Feast of Moranu outfit?” A memory came to him of the tentacle monster shredding the leathers from his body with each stinging lash. He groaned and raked a hand through his hair. “I’m out of clothes, aren’t I? This is all I have.”
Lena and Gen exchanged uneasy glances, and Gen nodded a bit too enthusiastically, while Lena shook her head. He raised a brow at them.
“We thought you were dead, Jak,” Zeph said, raising a hand when they all tried to shush her. “Why lie to him? He’s alive and with us, thanks to Stella. But we thought we’d lost you. So we washed you up and put you in your best clothes.”
Jak glanced around the table he now sat on the edge of, dangling his booted feet as he sipped a fourth mug of Gen’s tea. They’d draped the table with a blue cloth and had arrayed his weapons around him—though he’d already sheathed them all on his person. He was sitting on his own bier, a decidedly odd feeling. “Not every day a man gets a glimpse of his own funeral,” he remarked. They all groaned or scowled at him, and he grinned at their discomfort. “But thanks for at least burying me with my boots on.”
“It’s not funny, Jak!” Lena was one of the scowlers, fists on hips. “We were going to burn you. The ground is too frozen for digging. If not for Stella, we would’ve consigned you to death while you were still alive.”
“It’s not funny at all, Jak,” Gen chimed in, folding her arms and giving him a matching frown.
Zeph met his gaze, her sharp blue eyes glinting, and he knew she at least found it kind of funny. Astar looked too guilt-ridden to feel anything but that, and Stella slept peacefully.
“Where’s Rhy?” he asked, glancing around the room again. Just the six of them. “Is he—” Memory hit him like a fist. “Danu—he never came back?”
The grim expressions of the group verified it, Lena turning her stricken gaze to the window.
“How long has it been?” he asked, aiming the question at Astar. He’d do best to be thinking about next steps.
“Just since last night,” Astar replied, shaking himself as if shedding water. “It’s midmorning now.”
Hmm. How long had he been dead, or close to it? Most of the night, sounded like. Not worth dwelling on, though. “Were those your tentacle monsters, do you think?” he asked Zeph and Lena.
Zeph shrugged ruefully. “Now we know what they looked like under that leaf detritus.”
“Interesting,” Lena added, “but I didn’t need to know this badly.”
“So, the same thing happened again,” Jak mused. “They opened a rift and pushed some beasties through to attack us. And took Rhy back through?”
“Or he fell through,” Zeph suggested. “It’s easy to do, especially if it was on the ground or something.”
“It is,” Lena confirmed. “And it’s still there. I’m getting better at sensing them. There’s another out in the direction where the thing was taking Stella. Likely planning to take her with it back to the alter-realm.”
Remembering the tentacle monster’s determined trajectory, Jak had to agree. “If Zeph’s experience holds true, then Rhy is stuck in wolf form in the alter-realm. He’s canny and capable. Can he have survived this long?”
Zeph and Lena exchanged wordless looks again. “Zeph would’ve been fine,” Lena volunteered, “if she hadn’t been trying to save me. So I’m going to say Rhy will be sticking it out and waiting to be rescued.”
“Depending on what part of the alter-realm he entered,” Zeph cautioned. “That realm and ours don’t match up exactly. What if he emerged in their equivalent of Lake Sullivan?”
“Wolves can swim,” Lena replied staunchly.
“But they can’t fly,” Zeph pointed out. “What if he—”
“What-ifs are pointless,” Astar interrupted that depressing tack before Jak could. “We have to assume Rhy is surviving and waiting for rescue. We have to go after him.”
“I didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” Zeph said, sounding chastened. “I’ll go.”
“You can’t go alone,” Astar countered, looking like he really wanted to forbid her from going at all.
“I’m the only one who can go,” she argued evenly. “My gríobhth form is the only way we know of to consciously travel to the alter-realm.”
“And it nearly killed you to return last time,” Astar informed her tightly.
“Believe me, I remember.” She grimaced. “But we can’t abandon Rhy.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that.” Astar scrubbed his hands over his scalp. “We also can’t keep expecting Stella to keep yanking us back from the jaws of death.”
“I didn’t die on purpose,” Jak pointed out, stung.
“No, I didn’t mean it like that.” Astar inclined his head ruefully. “I’m just doing a piss-poor job of leading you all. I feel like we’re blundering from one disaster to another here.”
“Not blundering,” Jak corrected, his gaze on Stella’s fluttering lids. “We’re being hunted. And Stella is awake.”