“You’re right, Gen.” Astar tipped his head in acknowledgment. “And you’re not saying anything I haven’t been thinking, too.” His summer-blue gaze rested on Zeph, pain in his eyes. “I’ve been weighing the math. We’re risking two more people to rescue one. We stand to lose all three of you.”
Lena spun on him, fiery with outrage. “We cannot just leave Rhyian there! Or the innocent people from this inn.”
Astar held up placating hands. “I’m not arguing for that course of action, Lena. Just pointing out that the odds aren’t on our side here.” He looked to Stella. “Do you see anything at all that would be helpful? If you’re not too tired to look,” he added hastily.
She felt surprisingly good, in truth. Better than she should for the massive effort that healing Jak had required. Vigor and spring-green vitality circulated with abandon through her body, as if she herself had benefitted from healing. Recalling how it had seemed she inhaled her own magic back again from Jak’s kiss, she considered him thoughtfully—then set it aside to contemplate later, and cast her internal gaze to the future. “I see this inn in the near future, bustling with people. I can’t be sure they’re the same ones, but they seem familiar with the place, not new stewards of it. And I see us, all of us, including Rhy, arriving at a snowy castle that could be Marcellum.” Very carefully, she avoided looking past that moment in time. But the vision seized her anyway. Her alone in the tower in a field of lilies. Never leaving it.
Astar gave her a searching look. “Anything else?”
“No, that’s all.” She pasted on her most sincere expression, and Astar nodded solemnly in thanks, though Jak studied her with a too-knowing gaze.
Astar shrugged ruefully. “I think we have to try. I don’t like it, but perhaps Zeph and Jak—especially better prepared this time—will be able to return more easily.”
“I have an idea,” Stella said, thinking it through as she spoke. Though Astar would be the one to make the decision, she found herself positing the suggestion to Jak. “Lena and I will be staying behind. We can make ourselves useful. We’ve gotten better at closing, or at least narrowing the rifts,” she said to Lena, who nodded cautiously. “What if we work in the other direction—holding the rift open?”
Lena widened her eyes. “That’s a clever idea.”
Jak shook his head vigorously. “No, that’s a tremendously stupid idea.”
“Why?” she demanded, a bit stung. Even Lena, easily the smartest among them, thought it was clever.
“What about what comes through the rift from the alter-realm to here while you’re standing there holding the door open for it?” Jak demanded, stalking up to her, his anger—and fear for her—palpable. “You admitted you think the intelligence—and I still think we need a better name for it—is hunting you in particular. What are you going to do when, not if, it sends something even worse to grab you?”
She set her teeth against his scathing disdain for her skills. “I won’t be alone and helpless. Lena will be helping me, and Astar and Gen will be there to defend us. Their grizzly and saber-cat forms are formidable.”
“Let me remind you,” he snarled, dark eyes flashing, “of our battle with those tentacle creatures just last night. You had Lena helping you, and Zeph and Gen at their most fearsome fighting the thing. Plus you had me, and I’m a better bladesman than Astar—no offense.”
“None taken,” Astar replied soberly. “You are.”
“And that’s when he’s not doing double duty with claws,” Jak continued remorselessly. “And still you were snatched by that thing.” He gritted out the words as if each one pained him, which she knew they did, feeling with him that desperation and hopelessness as he chased after her. “Don’t risk yourself,” he said in a low voice. “I’m begging you.”
Even though her heart throbbed in sympathy with his, she firmed her resolve. “I could ask you the same.”
“I’m not risking myself foolishly,” he retorted. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Oh, and I don’t?” she spat back. “Don’t pull that Dasnarian manly-man-must-protect-the-fragile-females attitude, lest you begin to sound like my brother.”
“Hey,” Astar protested, but Zeph shushed him.
“It’s not because you’re female.” Jak was fully incensed now, much too close, almost close enough for her hard nipples to brush his chest.
“Then what is it?” she spat back at him, the jaguar in her snarling, the woman wanting to claw and taste.
“Where the fuck were your daggers?” he demanded.
Her daggers? “Don’t shout at me, Jak.”
“I will shout at you when it’s important,” he countered, though he lowered his voice. “Answer my question. Your Silversteel daggers that I showed you how to use not two days ago. Where were they when the tentacle creature seized you?”
Oh. Hrm. She couldn’t quite meet Jak’s gaze and looked past him. “In my bags.”
Nobody said anything, the expectant silence thick. She found herself flushing for no good reason at all. Jak didn’t speak a word, but he audibly fulminated from a handsbreadth away.
“Why,” he asked, very quietly, though no doubt their audience could overhear just fine, “are your weapons packed away where they won’t do you any Danu-cursed good?” He finished on a near shout again, flinging the not-a-question at her.
Wetting her lips, she looked to Astar, who only regarded her with a neutral expression, making it clear that if she didn’t want him to interfere in her relationship with Jak—such as it was—then he wouldn’t interfere at all. Zeph’s eyes glittered sapphire bright with fascination, Lena and Gen also watching with great interest. So lovely to know they were entertained.
“Answer my question, Stella,” Jak said with fevered intensity. When she still couldn’t quite meet his eyes, he took her chin in his hand, making her look at him. His touch sang through her skin. Not hurting her. Had he even noticed? He’d kissed her, too, when he’d first awakened. Firm, arousing, devastating—and too quickly over. Dropping her gaze to his mouth, she craved that taste again. Those enticing lips moved, curling with demand. “Answer me,” he repeated.
“You don’t get to order me around,” she finally answered, though her voice trembled.
“In this, I’m going to,” he replied, sounding calmer as he released her, but his eyes held a wildness. “If you’d had your daggers on you, where they should be at all times, you could’ve cut yourself loose from those tentacles like Lena did.”
With a sinking sensation, Stella realized she had no argument there. She nodded slightly, conceding the point.
Jak relaxed, but barely. “If you don’t want me out of my mind worrying about you getting dragged off again while I’m possibly fighting for my life in the alter-realm, then you are going to get those daggers and satisfy me that you will use them.”
She wanted to argue. She hated the idea of shoving those blades into another living creature. “There’s no time for that,” she ventured, glancing to the others again.