Opening her eyes, she found him staring up at her, dark gaze sparkling with wry amusement. “Bringing me back from the dead is becoming a full-time occupation for you,” he commented.
~ 16 ~
“Funny,” Stella replied with a quirk of a smile. “I was just thinking the same thing.” Though her expression sat in her usual solemn lines, her gray eyes were dazzlingly clear, bright with happiness.
“See? We even think alike. Another sign we’re destined for each other.”
“Or simple logic: a reckless idiot who thinks he’s immortal needs a healer on retainer.”
He reached up to touch her smooth cheek, missing the rain of her dark hair around them. But she had it tightly braided back still, and she wore her black fighting leathers. Because she’d been prepared to battle creatures coming through the rift she and Lena had been holding open.
Memory—and with it, alarm—flooded him, and he sprang to his feet, momentarily confused that no blades leapt to his hands. That’s right—he’d thrown his last daggers in a desperate attempt to kill the snake. He drew the sword instead. Looking around wildly, he saw nothing but the empty landscape, a few scales from the copper viper, and the perilous defile nearby.
“Did you happen to see a really big snake?” he asked Stella, who gazed up at him in bemusement. He offered her a hand, and she took it, rising gracefully to her feet.
“I think I would’ve noticed,” she replied gently. “I’ve seen only you since I arrived here.”
Then he hadn’t dreamed it. He had dodged in time, and the snake had gone over the edge. “The others? Zeph and Rhy?”
“All safely back. You are the only one who didn’t make it.”
He studied her, her luminous presence so very odd in this sterile landscape. “And how is it that you are here?”
She raised a black-winged brow. “The same way you got here,” she replied very seriously.
“And Astar just let you come after me?” He couldn’t imagine that happening and began to have a bad feeling.
“No, Jak,” she replied patiently. “I didn’t ask for or need permission.”
Wonderful. And he had no daggers left. Only the Silversteel sword. A chill of dread washed over him, and he scanned the landscape. “It isn’t safe for you to be here.”
“It isn’t safe for anyone to be here. What are you doing?” she demanded as he grabbed her hand and pulled her into a jogging run.
“We have to get back to the rift,” he informed her shortly, then skidded to a halt. She’d been limping as they ran. He looked more closely at her, observing her disarray—and the rent in her pants with bloody flesh showing through. “You’re injured.”
She grimaced, putting a hand over the wound as if to keep him from noticing. “A monkey-lizard bit me.”
It hadn’t just bit her—it had chewed on her for some time, by the look of it. “Where were your daggers?” he asked after taking a deep breath.
“In my hands!” She widened her eyes just a trifle too much for true innocence. “Belatedly,” she admitted. “And then I couldn’t get it off me.”
He dropped her hand to wave his in the air. “You had daggers for that!”
“Can we discuss my poor fighting skills later?” She pulled her Silversteel daggers. “In fact, you take these for now, since you’re better with them, and you seem to have misplaced yours.”
“Yeah, well, a snake ate them.” And didn’t that sound ridiculous? “If you’d been there, you’d understand.” He took her blades and sheathed them. “Why didn’t you shift to heal yourself?”
“I didn’t have time. I had to come rescue you.”
He set his teeth. They’d argue about that later, too. “Go ahead and shift now. You can’t run like that.” And they might need to.
She shook her head slowly and somberly. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I might not be able to in this realm. And even if I can, what if I can’t shift back?”
Well, she had a point there. He sheathed the sword and turned his back. “Climb on, then, and I’ll carry you. We have to get back to the rift before the intelligence notices you’re here.”
She cast a wary gaze to the sky, wise enough to look worried about that possibility. “I think it already has,” she confided quietly.
He swore viciously. “Get on. We have to run.”
“Jak—the portal is closed.”
“It’s… what?”
“Lena was exhausted, so I pulled it closed behind me so nothing else could get through to attack them.”
Nothing else. He glared at her, unclear how he could both want to throttle her and cover her in kisses. To prevent either impetuous action, he punched his fists to his hips. “You closed it behind you,” he echoed, hoping it would make more sense if he said it. Nope.
“There was a dragon trying to push through,” she explained. “A real one. Without me to restrict the size of the portal, it might’ve been able to push through into our world. I had to close it.”
All right, then. He took another deep breath. Let it out. It didn’t help. “What in Danu was your plan?”
“I thought I might be able to open a portal from this side,” she said. “I’m getting better at it. I was able to step through to the right time and place, so I was hoping I could simply take us back through again.”
“But no?”
“But maybe. My empathy and healing are working, but the sorcery isn’t. It would help to find an existing rift.”
“There might not be any more on this section of grid,” he explained through gritted teeth.
“That would be a problem, then,” she replied evenly.
“We’re going to die here,” he mused aloud, then focused on her. “Explain to me again why you thought this was a good idea?”
“Because I needed to rescue you,” she snapped, poking him hard in the chest. “Which I’m regretting now.”
“You should be regretting it because that was an incredibly foolish decision. And you call me reckless!”
“You are reckless,” she shouted back at him. “What kind of stupid man thinks he’s such a heroic warrior that he stays behind to single-handedly battle a giant venomous snake?”
“What kind of person thinks she’s such a powerful sorceress that she waltzes between worlds to rescue that stupid man?” he countered.
Abruptly, she smiled, one of her rare smiles like the sun breaking through storm clouds. “A sorceress in love with that stupid man,” she said, her voice quiet and shy.
That stopped him cold. Floored, all frustrated indignation draining out of him, he stared and her, mouth working to speak words his numbed brain had yet to supply. “You have an incredibly bad sense of timing,” he finally said.
Her smile took a rueful twist. “You’re no doubt correct there. But I also thought you should know. In case we die here.”
“Yeah.” He studied the toes of his boots, keeping his hands on his hips. Then he looked up at her again. So breathtakingly beautiful, so incredibly tempting. She was everything he’d ever wanted. The only woman he’d ever truly wanted. And she was in love with him. The moment should be celebrated, and they couldn’t because they might be swatted like bugs at any moment. “I’m in love with you, too,” he offered.