The Dragon’s Daughter and the Winter Mage by Jeffe Kennedy
~ 3 ~
“If you don’t want to bed Wim, maybe I should,” Lena said, pretty much out of nowhere.
The healers had long since gone, leaving Jak clean, bandaged, and resting more or less peacefully. He occasionally muttered curses in his sleep, but he stopped thrashing and calling for Stella when Lena and Gen rolled them closer together. Once he had his body curled around Stella, Jak calmed considerably. Lena had fetched Stella’s nightgown, and Gen had sponge-bathed her. Except for the bandages and the many bruises they both sported—though Jak won that contest easily—they looked normal.
It would just be nice if they’d wake up already.
Gen and Lena were sitting vigil in the otherwise empty room, having promised to immediately alert the others the moment Jak or Stella awakened. “I’m serious,” Lena insisted, as if Gen had argued, “but only if you don’t want him.”
“I thought you weren’t interested.” Gen was actually sure Lena wasn’t interested, but hearing her rationale could be entertaining.
Lena shrugged, wiggling her rear down into the cozy armchair, adjusting her lap blanket. “I’m just leery of giving him ideas, because you’re right—our princeling is looking for a princess to marry, and I am not signing up for that job.”
“I’m sure it’s not always winter in Erie,” Gen said with a wide smile, and the princess of tropical Nahanau glared at her.
“Not funny.” Then she sighed. “I just want to go back to my weather research in Aerron. Is that so much to ask?”
“I’m sure Astar would give you leave to go, if you did ask.” Especially given how much Lena still struggled with the aftereffects of the trauma she’d undergone.
“No.” Lena sighed again. “Queen Andromeda said I’d be needed, and I’m not going to turn tail and run just because it gets difficult.” She was thinking of Rhy, Gen knew, and how he’d apparently ditched them and the quest before unexpectedly turning up again.
“So, you want to bed Wim, so long as he doesn’t get any funny ideas about marrying you and making you the queen of Erie?”
Lena gave her an owlish look, cupping her warmed wine in her hands. “When you put it that way, it sounds like a stupid idea.”
“Then why are you contemplating it?”
Wriggling in the chair, Lena gazed on Jak and Stella, sleeping in each other’s arms, sadness in her face. “I have got to do something to get Rhyian out of my system,” she said quietly.
Ah.No surprises there. “And sleeping with someone else will do that?”
“Yes. No. I mean, I’ve had other lovers since Rhyian,” Lena replied, sounding almost defensive. “Quite a few, in truth.”
“How many?” Gen asked, fascinated enough to be rude. Stella had been a virgin until Jak, and Zeph had been with so many lovers she had no idea where to begin counting. But Lena would know, and not only because she loved data so much.
“Twelve,” she replied immediately, confirming Gen’s assessment. “At least for full intercourse, as opposed to a little fooling around. Including Rhyian, naturally, who was my first,” she added, lips curling unhappily. “I know a dozen isn’t a lot compared to someone like Zeph, but…”
“It’s a lot compared to my one,” Gen pointed out. “Does Henk even count as one? Maybe he should be something like a half. Or a quarter.”
Lena grimaced sympathetically. “Well, if you couldn’t really feel if he’d put it in?”
Gen giggled. “I felt it all right, but it was just like nudge, nudge, nudge, pain, poof, over.”
“Is this what you girls always talk about?” Jak asked, startling them both. His dark eyes were open, sparkling with mischievous glee, though he hadn’t stirred.
“It is rude to eavesdrop, Jakral Konyngrr,” Gen retorted, though she couldn’t summon any anger, she was so happy to hear him speak lucidly.
“Hey, you’re the ones hanging out in my bedroom, gossiping while I’m trying to sleep.” Carefully, without disturbing Stella, he levered up onto one elbow and started to rake his brown curls out of his face, then stared, bemused at his bandaged hand.
“It’s not gossiping if it’s about yourself,” Lena informed him, also smiling with a wide and silly grin.
“Yeah, but you’re talking about Horrible Henk. On behalf of my gender, Gen, I formally disown that ass as a member. Nudge, nudge, nudge, pain, poof, over is a disgrace to us all.”
Her face hot, Gen glared accusingly at Lena. “How does he know that it was Henk?”
She raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think it took a lot of guessing.”
“Nope. Besides, I was eavesdropping for a while.” Jak grinned, then glanced down at Stella, his grin fading into concern. “Is Stella all right?”
“We think she’s recovering from expending magic,” Lena replied, a question in her voice. “She certainly didn’t use energy healing you.”
“Oh, right.” Jak grimaced. “She created a rift to portal us out of that tower. Probably took a lot out of her.”
“Tower?” Gen repeated.
“The really tall one I climbed to get to her.”
“That explains the hands,” Lena said.
Jak climbed a freaking tower to rescue Stella.Gen’s romantic heart turned over with a little dreamy sigh. “What happened?” she asked. “Where did you go?”
“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll take a page from Lena’s book.” Jak tossed her a little salute. “Let’s wait until everyone is together so I can tell it only once.” He scowled at the mitten of bandages on that hand. “These mitts have to go. No way I can throw a blade hampered like this.” Looking for a free end, he nipped at it with his teeth.
“Don’t you dare!” Lena’s voice cracked out, startling everyone with her vehemence.
“Shh, lovely Lena,” Jak said. “You’ll wake Stella.”
“An earthquake wouldn’t wake her,” Lena snapped.
“I feel like you shouldn’t jinx us by suggesting stuff like that,” Gen put in. All they needed was to contend with earthquakes, too.
“Well, Jak is keeping those bandages on until Stella can complete his healing, or I’ll let Rhyian coldcock him to keep him subdued like he wanted to.”
“Some friends you are,” Jak grumbled, lying back and making a show of flopping his bandaged hand heavily on the bed. “At least Gen can pull out saber-cat form to protect us if that alter-realm intelligence comes roaring through a portal over the bed.”
“Is that likely?” Gen asked. Maybe she should take saber-cat form as a precaution. She felt powerful in that form. Not like she would in dragon form, but she liked it best of all her forms, even if it did alarm people like Henk. The look of utter revulsion on his face when he’d seen her… Monster. That was a good reason not to shift unless it was necessary: she hadn’t decided yet if she wanted to have sex with Wim, but she wouldn’t be able to take it if his admiring smiles turn to horrorstricken hate.
Not again.
“If I were putting money on it,” Jak was saying, propped up on his elbow again, “I’d bet that Stella killed the thing. But we’re talking about Stella’s life here, which means all wagers are off the table.” He looked down at the sleeping Stella, then brushed his lips over the widow’s peak of black hair on her pale forehead. “I’m taking no chances with her.”
Even self-admittedly bitter Lena looked moved by that. She and Gen exchanged glances, both of them misty-eyed. Lena snapped out of it first, standing abruptly and dusting off her gown as if ridding herself of unwanted sentimentality. “I’ll go fetch the others. They only agreed to leave on condition that we tell them immediately when you woke. We’re already in arrears. I’ll leave Lady Saber Cat to guard you.”
“Just plain saber cat,” Gen called after her, her skin itchy with irritation, for the first time understanding why Rhy bristled when people called him “prince.” Being addressed with an honorific you didn’t deserve—and couldn’t live up to—chafed with surprisingly sharp spines.
“I really am sorry, Gen,” Jak said, dark eyes somber, with no teasing sparkle. “You deserve better than someone like Henk. You should’ve had someone who could initiate you to the delights of sex who really cared about you, who valued what a wonderful, lovely woman you are.”
Jak meant well, she knew, but his words stung. Clearly she hadn’t had someone who cared about her like that. She took a breath to speak and swallowed it, finding she couldn’t meet his direct gaze. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable discussing this with you, Jak.”
“We’re friends, aren’t we?” He sounded a little hurt, so she made herself smile at him.
“Of course we are.” But there had been times she’d hoped Jak would see her as more than a friend. Yes, he’d only ever had eyes for Stella, but Stella had ignored him so thoroughly, had been determined that her empath’s sensitivity meant she’d never be able to take any lover, that Gen had sometimes entertained a painful fantasy that Jak would turn to her.
It had been a silly dream, one born of wistful loneliness. She’d entertained similar fantasies of Astar and Rhy, too. How surprised everyone would be if the golden crown prince or the dark and brooding son of the king and queen of Annfwn had fallen for her. Besides, all of them were such good men, staunch friends, all handsome and charming in their own ways.
All of them completely oblivious to her as anything but one of their buddies. The story of her life.
“You truly deserve better,” Jak insisted. “You’re, smart, gorgeous, talented. Any guy—or gal—would be lucky to have you. You might consider a gal for the next time. Women are usually more willing to go slow. They’re more sensitive.”
“Probably good advice.” Her face had to be on fire. “But I’m afraid it’s guys for me.”
“It was worth a shot.” He smiled ruefully. “Too bad I’m taken already. Otherwise I could have offered to—”
“Don’t!” she burst out, clapping her hands over her ears, abruptly on the verge of tears.
“What did I say?” Jak asked, bewildered.
“Something obnoxious, no doubt,” Stella said sleepily, smiling up at Jak as his gaze snapped to her, Gen completely forgotten. “Hi you,” she murmured.
“My star,” he breathed, cupping her cheek awkwardly with his mittened hand and sinking into a kiss. She melted under him, her fingers caressing the back of his neck.
Gen knew she should look away but couldn’t make herself. All that restless longing in her snarled with desperate envy, not helped at all by Jak’s almost-suggestion that he’d have been willing to take her to bed. Which was patently untrue, because if he’d been at all interested, he’d had years to make a move. Any kind of move. But no.
Why did everyone have someone but her? Even Rhy and Lena had loved each other for so long, with such consuming passion, that they were bound together. Lena might talk about getting him out of her system, but she clearly didn’t really want to. And even with that, she’d still had eleven other lovers. Eleven. And Gen had one and it had to be Horrible Henk and she couldn’t think about that without feeling vaguely nauseated. Even Jak pitied her for that one. Probably Astar and Rhy knew about it, too, also feeling sorry for their loveless buddy, Gen.
She tried to tear her gaze from Jak and Stella, who were sinking deep into the kiss and oblivious to all else. They were so beautiful together, like two halves made whole. The way love and intimacy should be. Graceful, sensuous, loving. Nothing like the jarring, awkward mess of her own experience.
“Some guard you are.” Zeph’s hand on Gen’s shoulder had her nearly leaping out of her chair. “Or maybe you’re just an excellent voyeur,” Zeph added with a salacious brow waggle.
Gen was too choked on her own embarrassment, her face scalding, her heart about to crash out of her chest, to come up with any kind of rational response. Fortunately she was spared that—and prevented from launching into a furious tirade at Zeph—by everyone else piling onto the bed, embracing the invalids. Lena was yelling at everyone to be careful, but they were all too caught up to listen.
Finally Astar called the group to order, everyone automatically obeying him as their natural leader. Given the opportunity, she’d normally go flying or running to burn off some of this humiliation and agitation, but no way did she want to miss this story.
To busy herself and help restore her composure, Gen passed out water and wine, depending on who wanted which—though Jak’s request for whiskey was resoundingly overruled. She passed around the tray of snacks, too, everyone thanking her absently, though Zeph eyed her as if she wanted to say something pointed. That was all Gen needed, another lecture from gorgeous, ridiculously popular Zeph, who would never understand how it felt to be overlooked.
“We were coming back to the room to practice weapons work,” Jak began.
Zeph snorted. “Is that what you kids are calling it?”
“Zephyr,” Astar said in a quelling tone, and she subsided, though a fair amount of gríobhth seethed in her aura. They were all upset, all showing it in different ways.
“We actually were,” Stella said in her quiet way. She and Jak were sitting up in bed, pillows mounded behind them, holding hands as much as Jak’s bandages allowed. “Jak was concerned that I be able to defend myself, given the possibility of something happening like… well, what happened.”
“A rift?” Lena asked.
Stella nodded solemnly. “Jak held the door for me, and I fell in as soon as I stepped over the threshold.”
“Why didn’t you sense it?” Lena persisted.
“I’d like to know that, too,” Jak put in. Of all of them, Stella was the best at sensing the presence of the rifts in reality that led to the alter-realms.
“I just didn’t.” Stella looked and sounded brittle as glass. “It didn’t feel like the ones we’ve encountered before. I was falling before I realized anything.”
“A trap,” Rhy observed. “Like a pit put in place, knowing you’d step into it.”
“It makes sense.” Astar shook his golden head, letting out a long breath. “Jak already theorized that the alter-realm intelligence is somehow tracking us and laying booby traps, that it recognizes Nilly and knows how to target her.”
“Even more, it wanted to acquire her,” Jak put in grimly. Stella gazed unhappily at her lap as Jak related for the first time the story from the alter-realm they’d encountered at Midway Inn, how Stella had rescued him and how the intelligence had assumed a form like Jak’s, confronting them and displaying an unsavory interest in Stella.
Everyone absorbed that unsettling information in silence. Astar lifted his head, staring hard at his twin. “You didn’t tell me all of that.”
“We didn’t want you to worry,” Stella replied evenly, her calm gray eyes holding his.
“It’s my job to worry,” Astar growled. “About you and about this team. You all are my responsibility, and you most of all, sister.”
“Wrong,” Jak said with firm conviction. “Stella is my responsibility most of all now. I’ve sworn it to her.”
“Oh, for Moranu’s sake.” Stella tugged her hand from Jak’s. “I’m my own responsibility.”
“Then you fucked up,” Astar spat at her, a rare temper making him curse as he almost never did. “You could have gotten yourself killed.”
“Do you think I somehow failed to notice that, Willy?” Magic gathered around Stella, shifting her dark hair so that red highlights glinted in the shadows like flickers of lightning in a distant storm, her eyes going silvery with it. “When I came to and saw I was locked in that cursed tower from my nightmares, I—” She broke off abruptly, everyone’s eyes on her.
“What. Tower.” Astar spaced out the words in a facsimile of patience that fooled no one. “What. Nightmares.”
Stella pressed her lips together, looking both full of regret and mutinous. This had to be hard on her, being the focus of all these sharp-edged emotions, Astar hurling such strong feelings at her. Jak glanced at her, then set his jaw, meeting Astar’s demanding gaze. “She didn’t want to tell you. She didn’t tell anyone, because that’s Stella. She doesn’t want anyone worrying about her.”
“But she told you,” Astar said flatly.
“Willy,” Stella said in a warning tone that held a hiss of her feline First Form, “I love you, but don’t you dare make this be about you.”
“Tell me,” Astar replied, unbending.
“All her life,” Jak continued, after glancing at Stella for permission, “Stella has had visions—sometimes nightmares—about being locked in a tower in field of poppies.” When Astar opened his mouth, Jak chopped his mittened hand through the air. “Listen. She was convinced she’d die there, all alone. She only told me because I demanded the answer. I had to know why she wouldn’t let me love her. And that’s why. Because she was certain she’d die alone.”
Stella met his gaze then, everything about her softening. “But I didn’t, because you came after me.”
“And I always will,” he averred, lifting her hand to kiss the back of it. “I don’t care how far you go, I’ll be right there with you.”
Lena cleared her throat. “I’m really sorry you carried that burden alone, Nilly. I wish you’d felt like you could have confided in us.”
“Exactly,” Zeph said, less gently, her gríobhth tail invisible in her human form but lashing nonetheless. “All those times I said that you always took care of everyone else, that was an opportunity for you to lean on us.”
“Don’t chastise her,” Astar said with considerable irritation.
Zeph’s mouth fell open in dramatic astonishment. “Excuse me? Who’s been roaring around like a wounded grizzly, demanding answers, telling her what she should and shouldn’t do?”
“That’s different,” he replied stubbornly. “Stella is my sister.”
“She’s my lover,” Jak shot back with narrowed eyes.
“And she’s our friend,” Gen snapped, exasperated with all of them. “Are we really going to compete over who loves Stella the most?” Jak and Astar both opened their mouths, and Gen stabbed a finger at them. “Don’t. Really, just… don’t.”
“Gen is in a mood,” Lena said as everyone stared at Gen.
“Maybe,” Rhy said, “just maybe, everyone is worn out, stressed, traumatized, and exhausted on every level. We’ve been transported to nightmare worlds, stranded without help, injured, believed each other dead or worse. You know, people, it could be that we are all just hanging by a thread, and the real concern would be if we were behaving calmly and rationally.”
A silence settled over them. “You know it’s bad when Rhyian is the voice of reason,” Lena commented.
“I love you, too, Salena,” Rhy retorted, holding her gaze, neither of them looking angry in that moment. With a little catch in her heart, Gen knew Rhy absolutely meant it. And that Lena knew that also.
Astar cleared his throat, shaking his head minutely. “Setting aside recriminations and debates over our relative sanity as a group, what happened after Stella found herself in this tower from her nightmares?”
Stella visibly steeled herself to answer. “The intelligence was there with me. It had made itself look kind of like Jak, though it wasn’t a close enough facsimile to fool me. Better than its giant gríobhth version of Zeph back at Gieneke, and better even than when Jak and I confronted it in the flat-grid alter-realm.”
“So it’s improving, refining its technique,” Lena murmured.
“I think so. But maybe it’s dead?” She looked hopefully at Jak.
“Maybe,” he agreed, though it sounded like he highly doubted it. “When I saw Stella disappear into the rift as she stepped over the threshold, I threw myself after her before it could close—and it was a near thing, it sealed that fast. If I hadn’t been right behind her…” He shook away that thought. “But I ended up in this field of poppies with nothing in sight. I figured there should be a tower, given the poppies matched the rest of her vision, but I couldn’t see one. Turns out it was invisible from the outside, at least to me.”
“How did you find it, then?” Zeph asked, fascinated.
“Stella spoke in my head and guided me to her.” Jak eyed Astar sideways. “We only recently discovered that she can.”
Astar nodded, saying nothing. That news obviously bothered him, but he was controlling himself.
“So, I ran toward her, basically until I slammed into the Danu-cursed thing,” Jak continued, rubbing the considerable bump on his forehead ruefully.
“Let me heal that for you,” Stella said, shifting to reach for the wound.
“Later,” he told her with a stern smile. “After I’m convinced you’re fully rested. Anyway, once I found the tower with my face, I climbed it.”
“But it was invisible,” Lena said, frowning.
“Made it a challenge,” Jak agreed cheerfully.
“You climbed an invisible tower for her,” Gen whispered, not aware she’d said it aloud until Jak looked her way, then dipped his chin in acknowledgment.
“It had to be done.” Jak shrugged. “It took a long time.”
“All of this seems to have taken much longer than you were gone from here,” Rhy inserted, gaze crawling moodily around the room. “It confirms something I noticed while trapped in wolf form in the flat-world alter-realm. Time moved more slowly there. I noticed the effects of being in wolf form for too long.”
“It makes sense,” Lena said, her gaze lingering on Rhy as if she’d like to comfort him, though she didn’t move. “Everything is different in the alter-realms, the worlds themselves, the laws of magic and shapeshifting. Why would time be exempt?”
They were quiet, absorbing that. Astar shook himself, pointing at Jak. “Then what happened?”
“We confronted the intelligence, and Stella defeated it. While it was distracted, Stella crept up behind it and slammed her Silversteel daggers into its ears, and it melted.”
“Silversteel seems to have that effect on the alter-realm creatures,” Astar noted as they all murmured in impressed surprise.
“Do you want your sword back?” Jak asked. He looked around. “That is, if I made it back with the thing.”
“Your weapons are all here, along with the clothes you were wearing,” Gen informed them, wrinkling her nose at the remembered filth and odor. “We’re having them cleaned.”
“Nice to have staff,” Jak remarked. “Our next digs might not be so comfortable.”
“We’re going on, then?” Astar asked. Everyone looked to him in considerable surprise.
“Do we have any choice?” Rhy queried in turn. His expression had gone brooding again, though he leaned against the wall near the window in apparent ease, his arms folded.
“Of course we have a choice,” Astar retorted. “We can go back to Castle Ordnung and report on what we’ve found.”
“We have gathered considerable data on the rifts,” Lena commented thoughtfully.
Zeph looked around at the somber group, incredulous. “And slink back with our tails between our legs, begging our mommies and daddies to save us from the big bad looming disaster that we still don’t know what it is?”
“Not all of us have tails,” Jak pointed out, but it lacked his usual fire. “I wouldn’t mind having reinforcements, frankly.” They sobered at that. Jak was the cheerful daredevil of the group. If he was having second thoughts… “But if the intelligence—are you sure we can’t discuss a better name for it than that?—is dead, then that changes things.”
“We don’t need to name it if it’s dead,” Astar replied instantly. “Is it destroyed?”
Stella shook her head, garnering everyone’s instant and focused attention. “The visions of the cataclysmic rift haven’t changed. Unless the intelligence isn’t related to that…”
“Then it isn’t dead,” Jak filled in grimly.
“And that means we can’t lose this window of opportunity.” Gen put in, feeling she needed to remind everyone, shore up their spirits. It was tempting. To go home, back to Annfwn, back to the tropical warmth and time spent doing little but practicing her shapeshifting. She could shift into a cold-hardy winged form and be home in a couple of days. It surprised Gen how much she longed to do just that. And yet… “If we go back, we won’t make it to the Isles by spring. You all convinced me of that earlier. The Isles and King Isyn are the key to averting the catastrophic rift.”
“I sure hope Isyn holds the solution,” Stella said quietly, “because so far, Lena and I don’t know what it is.”
“Before we left,” Zeph finally said into the fraught silence, “Dafne said something to me and Rhy. She said that we always think we want adventure until one throttles us, drags us out of our cozy nests, and guts us with its talons so we end up wishing for our boring lives again.”
Lena cocked her head. “My mother said that?”
“There were fewer talons in Dafne’s version,” Rhy commented wryly, “but that was the gist of it. And I’ve been thinking about that, too.” He inclined his head at Zeph. “Our parents didn’t back down from the challenges they faced.”
“Arguably they had no one else to turn to,” Stella put in quietly, the first words she’d said in a while. She lifted her chin. “It might be easy for me to say, since I already faced my worst nightmare and survived, but I’m for going on.”
“Sailing across the Strait of K’van in winter won’t be smooth,” Jak reminded them. “There’s a reason no one does it.”
“Has that changed since breakfast when we decided to go anyway?” Stella demanded, and he grimaced.
“No,” he conceded. “But can we rest another day?” He sounded almost plaintive. As Jak was fully human, with no shapeshifter blood or magic in him, Gen could only imagine how beat up he felt.
“At least a day,” Astar agreed, clapping his hands to his knees and standing. “Maybe a couple. We’re pressed for time, but not that much. We might as well find out everything we can about these mysterious isles and the elusive King Isyn before we go chasing after them. Everyone rest, heal. If anyone needs to talk, well, I’d say come to me, but Stella is better at that kind of thing. Go talk to her.”
He cocked a smile at his twin, and she returned it. For that moment, everything felt in harmony again.
