That was when she found her center.
She whispered, I will not leave you, and I will not lie to you, and if you will be patient and forgiving, I will learn how to forgive too. Because you’ve become the most important thing in the world to me. I’ll give everything I have to you, along with everything I can be, if only you will do the same.
And remember, there’s more, Quentin said. Because somehow it’s going to be okay.
She rested in the adamancy in his gaze. Then she said, Because I could never endanger my mate by throwing my own life away.
He smiled at her. She didn’t understand why he looked so proud, because she still felt whacked-out and slashy.
And paragliding is not stupid, he said. He tilted his head and kissed the harpy’s lips. As long as we do it together.
That’s a bargain, she whispered.
The best bargain of all. He was a magician, all right. By using only smoke and mirrors, he had somehow managed to banish the last of her panic.
That was when something really odd happened. Speaking with brisk authority, Kathryn ordered the rest of the surgical team out of the room. Murmuring in puzzlement, they filed out. As the last of them left, the scent of someone else’s blood—Pia’s blood—filled the air.
Aryal said out loud, “What the f**k are you guys doing back there?”
“Hold on a few moments longer, Aryal,” said Kathryn somewhat breathlessly. “You’re doing an awesome job. We’re almost finished.”
A new Power began to fill Aryal’s body, and it was simply ravishing, cool like moonlight and exquisitely clear, like the finest crystal. It filled her entirely and took all the pain away, all of it, and bathed her spirit tenderly with the finest hope.
“My God,” Kathryn said. “Will you look at that.”
While Aryal heard the words, they didn’t hold any meaning for her. She was lost in rightness and a floating sensation like freedom. Through it all she watched Quentin as he swallowed hard.
Vaguely she grew aware that Dragos was speaking again. This time, quite unlike his beguilement, his tone was harsh and commanding. “Nobody speaks about what just happened in this room. Not to anyone, do you understand?”
Quentin’s gaze shifted from Aryal’s face to the people who stood behind her. She watched as his expression turned careful. He nodded.
“I’m bound by doctor-patient confidentiality, and I’ve already given you my promise,” Kathryn told him. “I won’t say a word.”
“See that you keep it,” Dragos said. He never had to say “or else.”
Aryal turned her head as Dragos and Pia walked out.
Then Kathryn laid a hand at the back of Aryal’s neck and squatted to look her in the eyes. The surgeon pulled down her mask. Her honey brown gaze was teary, and she was beaming. “We’re done,” Kathryn said. “Everything looks so much better than I could have hoped.”
She shivered spasmodically. “It looks good?”
“It looks more than good. It looks amazing.” Kathryn kept a steady, firm pressure on the back of her neck. “But I’m going to tell you something before I let you up, and you need to listen. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“What happened just now is a miracle, and I do not use that word lightly. From the hopeless mess that I first saw to what I sense right now—there’s no comparison.” The surgeon’s expression sobered. “So pay attention when I say this to you. Do not take any chances with this opportunity. Your wings were so bad I was convinced you would never fly again. Now you have a real shot, but you must stay out of the air for two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” she whispered. Her mind went blank. She had never been out of the air for two weeks in her very long life.
Kathryn’s eyes were sharp and stern. “You’re a big girl. You can make your own choices, and I don’t order my patients around. It’s up to you whether or not you decide to take my advice. But you have injured and then reinjured your wings. If you don’t give your body a real chance to recover, you might rip away everything of the very great gift that has just been given to you. You are not cleared for work. No crises, no excuses, no exceptions.” The doctor paused to let her words sink in. “Do you understand what I have just said?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Good.” Kathryn patted her. “Now I’m going to release the numbing spell and let you sit up. I want you to shapeshift back into your human form and stay that way for fourteen days.”
Aryal and Quentin looked at each other. Quentin said, “She will.”
It would be fourteen days before she knew for sure whether or not the miracle had taken hold.
Before she knew if she could fly again.
Fourteen days.
The wait was going to kill her.
TWENTY-TWO
When Aryal shapeshifted back into her human form and sat at the edge of the operating table, Quentin was ready with a clean set of folded scrubs. He helped her into them. Then he stroked her hair as she leaned against his chest.
Dragos and Pia had already disappeared, and so had the surgeon. The door opened, and a nurse approached with a wheelchair. “I’m here to take you to your room now.”
Aryal’s head snapped up. She stared at the wheelchair with wide-eyed repugnance.
Quentin told the nurse, “Hospitals are for sick people, and we’re going home.”
The nurse’s face froze. “Okay,” she said uncertainly. “Just wait a few minutes while I get some release forms for you to sign. I’ll be right back.”
They didn’t wait. Instead they walked slowly down the hall, arms around each other’s waists. He asked, “Your place or mine?”
“There’s awesome delivery in the Tower,” she said, enunciating each word with the carefulness of the extremely tired. “No need to cook.”
“There’s pretty awesome delivery over the bar too,” he told her.
“Then I don’t care.”
“We’ll go to my place.”
While he had waited for Aryal as she had gotten x-rayed, Quentin called Dragos’s assistant Kris, who had shown up shortly afterward with a new iPhone for each of them, each one already downloaded with all of their contacts, along with two slim wallets with expense cards and cash.
He pulled his phone out of his back pocket. The time on the screen read 8:32 P.M. He thumbed the lock off and dialed Rupert at the bar. “Hey boss,” the half troll rumbled. “Glad you’re back in town. Aren’t you a little early?”
It took a few moments for Quentin to connect. Rupert was referring to their original two-week ban from New York. He said, “Never mind that, things have changed. I’m on my way home now. Stock my fridge with food from the corner grocery, would you?”
“Sure thing,” said Rupert.
“Thanks.”
“Since we’re talking, can you answer some bar questions?”
“No.” He disconnected.
A hospital representative caught them before they could slip out one of the exits, and Aryal had to sign release forms after all.
By the time their taxi pulled up to Elfie’s, it was past ten o’clock. After the summer heat in Numenlaur, the early April evening was pleasantly sharp and chilly. The bar was going strong, which was a good thing because he just remembered he didn’t have his keys. They could slip upstairs through the interior entrance, except …
He looked at Aryal’s pale, angular features as she watched the crowd in the bar. No way was he up for that kind of explanation. Not until tomorrow. Or maybe next week. “Are you all right with waiting on the stoop while I go inside and let us through?”
“Yep,” Aryal said. She looked kind of dreamy, like she was stoned.
“Are you okay?” he asked suspiciously.
“Yep,” she said again. “I feel pretty good, considering.”
He left her and went through the bar. People hailed him, and everybody hitched to a stop, staring at his face and at the scrubs. He waved to them all, ignored the chorus of comments and shocked questions, strode through to the stockroom, let himself into his private stairwell and found Aryal sitting on the stoop outside, leaning against the corner of one wall.
He opened the door and bent over her—and found her sound asleep.
He gathered her up gently, carried her upstairs and put her, and himself, in bed.
His exhausted, overstimulated mind ran compulsively through the survival list.
Food, water, shelter, clothing.
Love.
He pulled Aryal’s sleeping form against him, tucked her head into his shoulder, put his face in her soft, clean hair and slept.
Sometime in the middle of the night, they both woke. Their body clocks were all screwed up. They made love with silent urgency and fell asleep afterward while Quentin was still inside of her.
That dictated the pattern of the next few days.
Waking, making love. Eating, making love. Sleep. There was a disjointed rhythm to all of it, like tacking in a zigzag pattern in a sailboat against a crosswind.
He lost himself in the sensual evidence of her, her scent, her skin, her deadly, sleek muscles, the startling softness of her br**sts and the incredibly lush prison of her inner flesh as she gripped his penis. And he moved, and moved, and moved inside of her until they both sobbed for breath and shuddered helplessly from the ecstasy of it. That wild, dangerous part of him that had been running so hard knew that it had found what it was looking for, and had finally come home.
When they talked, there was no beginning or end to the conversation. It was as if it had gone on forever. He began to wonder if that was a little bit like what Aryal had referred to the night of the sentinel party, when she had talked of immortality.
His father had always sworn that while Quentin could change into a Wyr form, his energy felt Elven. He had a feeling he was going to find out with Aryal what immortality was like.
“What could Pia be?” Aryal asked. “Did she bleed when she healed you too?”
“Yes,” he said. They lay with their limbs tangled, and she cradled his head on her breast. He mouthed her nipple without urgency. They had already spent each other. “I can only think of one creature.” He said it slowly, because the idea was so outlandish. “But I thought they were a myth.”
“A myth like dragons, or harpies?” she asked, her mouth tilted, and he had to concede her point. “If she is one, then I understand now why she hasn’t revealed her Wyr form to the public. She’ll be hunted for the rest of her life if she does, and what about the baby? No, that’s not right. We know his Wyr form is a dragon. That’s why they thought her gestation period was going to be so long, until he managed to flip into a human baby before she went into labor.”
“If she is one,” he said grimly, “it doesn’t matter what the baby’s Wyr form is. He’ll be hunted too.”
“I guess I can understand why Pia came with Dragos to Numenlaur,” Aryal said sleepily. “But I don’t know why they brought Liam with them.”
Quentin shook his head. “Actually, you’ve got that backward. This time Dragos came with Pia. She told me when she healed me. Originally he had only intended on sending the rest of the sentinels, but Pia insisted on coming because she was worried we might be hurt. Then Dragos wouldn’t stay behind, of course. Since Dragos wasn’t going to go into battle, Pia felt safe to bring Liam too. She wanted to keep the baby with her, because they were concerned that the time slippage might be significant.”
Aryal coughed out a chuckle. “Did she really insist? Good on her. I wondered when they all showed up. I mean, Galya was a handful, but come on. It only took two of us to take her down.”
Quentin grinned. “That it did.”
After that they fell into a thoughtful silence.
They began to recover their strength and stamina. Not that the mating urgency let up, not by any means—it was far too soon for that—but they began to have room to consider other things.
Quentin checked his voicemail and text messages, and he discovered that Pia had returned the phone call he had made before he left New York, and she had left a message for him too.
“Hi, Quentin,” she said. “I appreciate you calling, and I know that you’re sorry for what happened. We’ve both made some pretty big mistakes, and it’s okay to forget about it. Just don’t do it again, and we can let it fall into the past where it belongs. Okay?”
As he listened, at first he didn’t remember his apology for his fight with Aryal in the hallway. For a moment he thought she referred to what he had done last year, and he felt shocked into newness, washed clean. Then the context of her message came clear, and he had to smile at himself, albeit a bit crookedly.
Still, a touch of that newness remained, and he took her message to heart, setting it all behind him to concentrate on now, and the future.
Ferion had also left a message, one filled with deep, heartfelt thanks to both of them. Quentin told Aryal about it as he texted Ferion in reply. You’re welcome. Ever heard of something called the Phoenix Cauldron?
Ferion replied almost immediately. No. What is it?
What the witch was looking for in Numenlaur.
Then, because the question remained on his mind, he shrugged and texted Dragos. Galya was hunting for an item called the Phoenix Cauldron. Do you know what that is?
The silence lasted just long enough to make him wonder. He had already heard from the older sentinels that Dragos didn’t like to put sensitive information into writing of any kind.
His phone rang. He answered.
Dragos said without preamble, “If Galya was looking for a physical item, it’s no wonder she didn’t find anything. The name is misleading—that’s a resurrection spell, not an item. The results are monstrous. Any records of how to cast it were supposed to have been destroyed a very long time ago. But you know how that goes. What people are supposed to do, and what they really do, are often two different things.” He paused. “How are you two doing?”
She whispered, I will not leave you, and I will not lie to you, and if you will be patient and forgiving, I will learn how to forgive too. Because you’ve become the most important thing in the world to me. I’ll give everything I have to you, along with everything I can be, if only you will do the same.
And remember, there’s more, Quentin said. Because somehow it’s going to be okay.
She rested in the adamancy in his gaze. Then she said, Because I could never endanger my mate by throwing my own life away.
He smiled at her. She didn’t understand why he looked so proud, because she still felt whacked-out and slashy.
And paragliding is not stupid, he said. He tilted his head and kissed the harpy’s lips. As long as we do it together.
That’s a bargain, she whispered.
The best bargain of all. He was a magician, all right. By using only smoke and mirrors, he had somehow managed to banish the last of her panic.
That was when something really odd happened. Speaking with brisk authority, Kathryn ordered the rest of the surgical team out of the room. Murmuring in puzzlement, they filed out. As the last of them left, the scent of someone else’s blood—Pia’s blood—filled the air.
Aryal said out loud, “What the f**k are you guys doing back there?”
“Hold on a few moments longer, Aryal,” said Kathryn somewhat breathlessly. “You’re doing an awesome job. We’re almost finished.”
A new Power began to fill Aryal’s body, and it was simply ravishing, cool like moonlight and exquisitely clear, like the finest crystal. It filled her entirely and took all the pain away, all of it, and bathed her spirit tenderly with the finest hope.
“My God,” Kathryn said. “Will you look at that.”
While Aryal heard the words, they didn’t hold any meaning for her. She was lost in rightness and a floating sensation like freedom. Through it all she watched Quentin as he swallowed hard.
Vaguely she grew aware that Dragos was speaking again. This time, quite unlike his beguilement, his tone was harsh and commanding. “Nobody speaks about what just happened in this room. Not to anyone, do you understand?”
Quentin’s gaze shifted from Aryal’s face to the people who stood behind her. She watched as his expression turned careful. He nodded.
“I’m bound by doctor-patient confidentiality, and I’ve already given you my promise,” Kathryn told him. “I won’t say a word.”
“See that you keep it,” Dragos said. He never had to say “or else.”
Aryal turned her head as Dragos and Pia walked out.
Then Kathryn laid a hand at the back of Aryal’s neck and squatted to look her in the eyes. The surgeon pulled down her mask. Her honey brown gaze was teary, and she was beaming. “We’re done,” Kathryn said. “Everything looks so much better than I could have hoped.”
She shivered spasmodically. “It looks good?”
“It looks more than good. It looks amazing.” Kathryn kept a steady, firm pressure on the back of her neck. “But I’m going to tell you something before I let you up, and you need to listen. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“What happened just now is a miracle, and I do not use that word lightly. From the hopeless mess that I first saw to what I sense right now—there’s no comparison.” The surgeon’s expression sobered. “So pay attention when I say this to you. Do not take any chances with this opportunity. Your wings were so bad I was convinced you would never fly again. Now you have a real shot, but you must stay out of the air for two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” she whispered. Her mind went blank. She had never been out of the air for two weeks in her very long life.
Kathryn’s eyes were sharp and stern. “You’re a big girl. You can make your own choices, and I don’t order my patients around. It’s up to you whether or not you decide to take my advice. But you have injured and then reinjured your wings. If you don’t give your body a real chance to recover, you might rip away everything of the very great gift that has just been given to you. You are not cleared for work. No crises, no excuses, no exceptions.” The doctor paused to let her words sink in. “Do you understand what I have just said?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Good.” Kathryn patted her. “Now I’m going to release the numbing spell and let you sit up. I want you to shapeshift back into your human form and stay that way for fourteen days.”
Aryal and Quentin looked at each other. Quentin said, “She will.”
It would be fourteen days before she knew for sure whether or not the miracle had taken hold.
Before she knew if she could fly again.
Fourteen days.
The wait was going to kill her.
TWENTY-TWO
When Aryal shapeshifted back into her human form and sat at the edge of the operating table, Quentin was ready with a clean set of folded scrubs. He helped her into them. Then he stroked her hair as she leaned against his chest.
Dragos and Pia had already disappeared, and so had the surgeon. The door opened, and a nurse approached with a wheelchair. “I’m here to take you to your room now.”
Aryal’s head snapped up. She stared at the wheelchair with wide-eyed repugnance.
Quentin told the nurse, “Hospitals are for sick people, and we’re going home.”
The nurse’s face froze. “Okay,” she said uncertainly. “Just wait a few minutes while I get some release forms for you to sign. I’ll be right back.”
They didn’t wait. Instead they walked slowly down the hall, arms around each other’s waists. He asked, “Your place or mine?”
“There’s awesome delivery in the Tower,” she said, enunciating each word with the carefulness of the extremely tired. “No need to cook.”
“There’s pretty awesome delivery over the bar too,” he told her.
“Then I don’t care.”
“We’ll go to my place.”
While he had waited for Aryal as she had gotten x-rayed, Quentin called Dragos’s assistant Kris, who had shown up shortly afterward with a new iPhone for each of them, each one already downloaded with all of their contacts, along with two slim wallets with expense cards and cash.
He pulled his phone out of his back pocket. The time on the screen read 8:32 P.M. He thumbed the lock off and dialed Rupert at the bar. “Hey boss,” the half troll rumbled. “Glad you’re back in town. Aren’t you a little early?”
It took a few moments for Quentin to connect. Rupert was referring to their original two-week ban from New York. He said, “Never mind that, things have changed. I’m on my way home now. Stock my fridge with food from the corner grocery, would you?”
“Sure thing,” said Rupert.
“Thanks.”
“Since we’re talking, can you answer some bar questions?”
“No.” He disconnected.
A hospital representative caught them before they could slip out one of the exits, and Aryal had to sign release forms after all.
By the time their taxi pulled up to Elfie’s, it was past ten o’clock. After the summer heat in Numenlaur, the early April evening was pleasantly sharp and chilly. The bar was going strong, which was a good thing because he just remembered he didn’t have his keys. They could slip upstairs through the interior entrance, except …
He looked at Aryal’s pale, angular features as she watched the crowd in the bar. No way was he up for that kind of explanation. Not until tomorrow. Or maybe next week. “Are you all right with waiting on the stoop while I go inside and let us through?”
“Yep,” Aryal said. She looked kind of dreamy, like she was stoned.
“Are you okay?” he asked suspiciously.
“Yep,” she said again. “I feel pretty good, considering.”
He left her and went through the bar. People hailed him, and everybody hitched to a stop, staring at his face and at the scrubs. He waved to them all, ignored the chorus of comments and shocked questions, strode through to the stockroom, let himself into his private stairwell and found Aryal sitting on the stoop outside, leaning against the corner of one wall.
He opened the door and bent over her—and found her sound asleep.
He gathered her up gently, carried her upstairs and put her, and himself, in bed.
His exhausted, overstimulated mind ran compulsively through the survival list.
Food, water, shelter, clothing.
Love.
He pulled Aryal’s sleeping form against him, tucked her head into his shoulder, put his face in her soft, clean hair and slept.
Sometime in the middle of the night, they both woke. Their body clocks were all screwed up. They made love with silent urgency and fell asleep afterward while Quentin was still inside of her.
That dictated the pattern of the next few days.
Waking, making love. Eating, making love. Sleep. There was a disjointed rhythm to all of it, like tacking in a zigzag pattern in a sailboat against a crosswind.
He lost himself in the sensual evidence of her, her scent, her skin, her deadly, sleek muscles, the startling softness of her br**sts and the incredibly lush prison of her inner flesh as she gripped his penis. And he moved, and moved, and moved inside of her until they both sobbed for breath and shuddered helplessly from the ecstasy of it. That wild, dangerous part of him that had been running so hard knew that it had found what it was looking for, and had finally come home.
When they talked, there was no beginning or end to the conversation. It was as if it had gone on forever. He began to wonder if that was a little bit like what Aryal had referred to the night of the sentinel party, when she had talked of immortality.
His father had always sworn that while Quentin could change into a Wyr form, his energy felt Elven. He had a feeling he was going to find out with Aryal what immortality was like.
“What could Pia be?” Aryal asked. “Did she bleed when she healed you too?”
“Yes,” he said. They lay with their limbs tangled, and she cradled his head on her breast. He mouthed her nipple without urgency. They had already spent each other. “I can only think of one creature.” He said it slowly, because the idea was so outlandish. “But I thought they were a myth.”
“A myth like dragons, or harpies?” she asked, her mouth tilted, and he had to concede her point. “If she is one, then I understand now why she hasn’t revealed her Wyr form to the public. She’ll be hunted for the rest of her life if she does, and what about the baby? No, that’s not right. We know his Wyr form is a dragon. That’s why they thought her gestation period was going to be so long, until he managed to flip into a human baby before she went into labor.”
“If she is one,” he said grimly, “it doesn’t matter what the baby’s Wyr form is. He’ll be hunted too.”
“I guess I can understand why Pia came with Dragos to Numenlaur,” Aryal said sleepily. “But I don’t know why they brought Liam with them.”
Quentin shook his head. “Actually, you’ve got that backward. This time Dragos came with Pia. She told me when she healed me. Originally he had only intended on sending the rest of the sentinels, but Pia insisted on coming because she was worried we might be hurt. Then Dragos wouldn’t stay behind, of course. Since Dragos wasn’t going to go into battle, Pia felt safe to bring Liam too. She wanted to keep the baby with her, because they were concerned that the time slippage might be significant.”
Aryal coughed out a chuckle. “Did she really insist? Good on her. I wondered when they all showed up. I mean, Galya was a handful, but come on. It only took two of us to take her down.”
Quentin grinned. “That it did.”
After that they fell into a thoughtful silence.
They began to recover their strength and stamina. Not that the mating urgency let up, not by any means—it was far too soon for that—but they began to have room to consider other things.
Quentin checked his voicemail and text messages, and he discovered that Pia had returned the phone call he had made before he left New York, and she had left a message for him too.
“Hi, Quentin,” she said. “I appreciate you calling, and I know that you’re sorry for what happened. We’ve both made some pretty big mistakes, and it’s okay to forget about it. Just don’t do it again, and we can let it fall into the past where it belongs. Okay?”
As he listened, at first he didn’t remember his apology for his fight with Aryal in the hallway. For a moment he thought she referred to what he had done last year, and he felt shocked into newness, washed clean. Then the context of her message came clear, and he had to smile at himself, albeit a bit crookedly.
Still, a touch of that newness remained, and he took her message to heart, setting it all behind him to concentrate on now, and the future.
Ferion had also left a message, one filled with deep, heartfelt thanks to both of them. Quentin told Aryal about it as he texted Ferion in reply. You’re welcome. Ever heard of something called the Phoenix Cauldron?
Ferion replied almost immediately. No. What is it?
What the witch was looking for in Numenlaur.
Then, because the question remained on his mind, he shrugged and texted Dragos. Galya was hunting for an item called the Phoenix Cauldron. Do you know what that is?
The silence lasted just long enough to make him wonder. He had already heard from the older sentinels that Dragos didn’t like to put sensitive information into writing of any kind.
His phone rang. He answered.
Dragos said without preamble, “If Galya was looking for a physical item, it’s no wonder she didn’t find anything. The name is misleading—that’s a resurrection spell, not an item. The results are monstrous. Any records of how to cast it were supposed to have been destroyed a very long time ago. But you know how that goes. What people are supposed to do, and what they really do, are often two different things.” He paused. “How are you two doing?”
