“I hurt too much to be dead.”
“Good point. And I’m too fucking cold. Should it burn like this?”
“Cold might be good,” she ventured. They should probably get up. Eventually. “It could mean we’re back in Erie.”
“Next time find us a portal to Annfwn. Or Nahanau,” he suggested. He pushed himself up, groaning as he did, and brushed snow off his face and hair before scanning the landscape. “This looks like Erie, unless our chameleon shapeshifter has created an alter-realm to mimic ours.”
“I can’t think about that.” What if it started doing that, though? They’d lose all sense of what was real and what was manufactured to… to do whatever it was the intelligence wanted from them. Jak leaned over her, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. “Shift, my star. Heal yourself.”
She didn’t think she was seriously injured from the fall, but there was the monkey-lizard bite that ached all up and down her leg now. Still, she sighed, laying a hand on his cheek. He flowed into her, but she was becoming familiar with him, feeling him inside and out. It was beginning to feel more right to have his presence inside her skin than not. “It doesn’t seem fair that I can and you can’t.”
He grinned and kissed her nose. “Except you can work your healing magic on me. And you can shift into a horse and carry us out of here.”
“Oh! Really good idea.” She shifted into her jaguar First Form, so comfortable in its long familiarity, and took a moment to sniff the air before returning to human form, showing Jak her relief. “We’re not far from the inn.”
“Thank the three,” he replied fervently. He’d been running some forms to warm and limber up. “Let’s go.”
“Don’t you need healing first?”
He shook his head. “The venom-purging stuck. I’m feeling good—if cold. Honestly, all I want is to get by a fire as quickly as possible, so I’ll take a ride. If you’re willing.” He cocked his head, searching her face. “I shouldn’t assume.”
Absurdly, she found herself blushing. Though the shapeshifters in their crew had become accustomed to giving the others rides of various kinds, it was a kind of intimacy. And though Jak had ridden her before, it felt… different now. She blushed harder, imagining Zeph’s risqué remarks on the subject.
“Hey,” Jak said, touching her cheek lightly. “We can walk.”
“It’s not that,” she assured him.
He smiled, not his cocky grin, but knowingly, a sensual mischief behind it. “Not how you imagined getting between my legs?”
“Jak!” Her face went near to bursting with the flaming heat. “You’ve ridden me before.”
“I know.” He trailed his finger down her cheek, caressing the underside of her jaw so she shivered, and not from the cold. “I understand how you feel. Things are different between us now. You said you love me.”
She took a deep breath. “I do, but Jak, I—”
“Let’s save the ‘but Jaks,’” he suggested wryly. “I have a feeling I’ll want plenty of whiskey to have that conversation.”
She hated to put off the conversation, or lead him on to believe they could have more than would ever be. Being in love when you were about to die was one thing. Trying to work that into a life with no place for being in love was something else entirely.
But she closed her mouth and shifted into horse form. Jak wasted no time vaulting onto her back, his agile weight barely a burden, he balanced himself so well, aligning to her movements as she galloped over the snow. She tried not to think about the way his strong thighs gripped her sides, but by the way he stroked a hand over her neck as he lay low against the wind of their passage, she knew without reading his emotions that he was savoring the contact too.
And, like her, he was craving more. Her skin against his. She wanted that, too, more than anything. But he’d have to understand it could only be for a short while. The vision of that lonely tower pressed on her, ever closer in her immediate future. If she stood at a crossroads, then the other roads, if they’d ever even been possibilities, were shrinking away. A single future squeezed out all the others. Jak wasn’t in it.
Well, they would discuss it. And perhaps she’d have some whiskey, too.
They reached the inn just after full dark, their friends plus locals all pouring out into the once-empty torchlit circle with cheers and exclamations of relief. Jak tensed as they approached, and she heartily agreed. She hated the sight of the snow-packed circular drive too. And if she’d been thinking, she would’ve shifted back to human before they were spotted. She hadn’t been thinking, though. She was so very tired. Shifting put flesh back together as she intended it to be, but it didn’t restore vitality. Jak’s exhaustion permeated her consciousness, too. After all they’d been through, it was a wonder they were on their feet at all.
“We’ll tell them to save the interrogation for morning,” Jak told her. “I’ll tell them we’re refusing to open our mouths except to stuff food in them and ask where our beds are.”
She bobbed her head in weary agreement. And even after Jak sprang down and she shifted back to human—drawing gasps from the local crowd—she was more than happy to let him take the lead. Astar wasn’t at all happy with her, but he embraced them both, informing them that they would be having a long conversation the following day, particularly about following orders. That last was delivered with a significant glare for his twin, though Stella was too tired to care.
They left the inn so early the next morning that the northern winter darkness had yet to pale. That wasn’t saying much, and Stella found herself agreeing with Jak’s suggestion that they take a portal somewhere warm and sunny, if only for a few hours. Too bad they didn’t seem to work that way.
Though they’d all gone to bed early—stuffed to the gills by the inn’s grateful and enthusiastic cook—everyone was still tired, in mind and heart, if not in body. Rhy had continued to avoid her, which was just as well, as Stella had no more idea of what to say to him now than ever.
True to his promise, Astar rode in the carriage with Stella and Jak, lecturing them on their reckless behavior until she irritably told him to stuff it. Astar looked frankly shocked, hurt wafting off of him, though Lena, riding inside also, had to smother a giggle. Beside Stella, Jak kept a solemn expression on his face, but his amusement crackled lightly off the air, his affection for her like a caress.
“Willy,” Stella said on a sigh, then reaching across the space between them to take his hand. “We’re all being pushed to our limits here. Including you. I’m trying to remember that you’re doing the best you can. I’ll ask the same consideration from you.”
Astar set his jaw, the muscle there twitching, then he ran his free hand over his face and squeezed hers where they were joined. “Fair enough. I know I’ve been making a hash of leading this quest.”
“You haven’t,” Jak said firmly, Lena nodding in solidarity. “This is unknown territory. Stella is right that we’re all just doing the best we can.”
“Well, we need to start doing better,” Astar replied bitterly, “or we’ll all end up dead.”