Myrinne nodded, seeming satisfied. “That I believe.” Implying that she could think the best of Rabbit, but would cheerfully think the worst of everyone around him.
Which, Anna realized, was exactly what he needed.
Turning her back on the others, Myrinne spun the chair Anna had been using, so she could sit sideways on it and lean over Rabbit’s limp form. “Hey,” she said very softly. “You did good. Now it’s time to come back, okay? We’ll figure out the rest of it together.” She leaned in and touched her lips to his.
And damned if he didn’t react, jolting like he’d been zapped with a Taser, then drawing a deep, shuddering breath very unlike the shallow rasps he’d been taking up to that point. A long shudder racked his body. Then, slowly, his arms came up to her shoulders, her face. His eyes opened as he traced her cheekbones, then her lips. And he smiled, probably the first pure smile Anna had seen from him since her return to Skywatch.
“Now, that was what I forgot to do,” he said, his voice husky from disuse, and probably a few other things as well. “That was what I wanted to come back for.”
Then, as Strike, Leah, and Anna looked on, Rabbit kissed Myrinne for real. And magic hummed in the air.
After sleeping off her postmagic hangover and eating way too many Oreos from the bag she’d brought back to her suite with her the night before, Alexis pulled herself together and went in search of Nate.
She’d just gotten out the door of her suite when Izzy turned the corner, headed in Alexis’s direction.
The winikin ’s face softened to a smile. “You look better.”
Before, Alexis might’ve checked what she was wearing, and maybe straightened her ponytail. Now she just nodded. “Thanks. I feel better.” She’d been pretty ragged by the time they’d made it back.
Sleep and food had fixed most of what ailed her. Now she needed to deal with the rest, which meant heading to the cottages out back. To Nate.
Izzy fell into step beside her, but stayed silent, as though unsure of what to say, or how. Which was a huge change in itself, because Alexis had never known her godmother to be at a loss for words.
When they reached the doorway leading out to the pool deck, Alexis stopped and turned to the woman who had raised and shaped her. “I owe you my life,” she said simply. “If it hadn’t been for you, I would’ve died during the massacre. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have known who and what I am when the time came to find out, and I wouldn’t have been able to deal nearly as well with the transition. I love you with all my heart, and much of who I am I owe to you.”
Izzy raised an eyebrow. “Why do I hear a ‘but’ coming?”
“Because you’re a smart woman, and you know me well.” Alexis risked a small smile. “I love you.
But I can’t be what you want me to be.”
“Sweetheart, you already are. You always have been.”
It took a moment for the words to penetrate. Another for confusion to set in. “Huh?” Okay, that wasn’t brilliant, but still.
The winikin’s smile went a little crooked. “Okay, maybe not always, but close enough.” She caught Alexis’s hands, squeezed them. “You’re not your mother, and I never wanted you to be. You’re what you were meant to be: a strong, independent woman, and a royal adviser. You helped save the world last night, and you’re probably going to do it again before all this is over. Just because I don’t agree with your taste in men, that doesn’t make you a failure.”
The look on her face when she said the last part brought a bubble of laughter to Alexis’s throat.
“You sure about that?” But then she sobered. “He’s a shifter, Izzy.”
“I know. Who are we to argue with the gods?” The winikin gave Alexis a little push. “Go on. Do what you have to do.”
Alexis opened the door, but turned back to say, “Don’t you want to know what I’m going to do?”
“Whatever your choice, I’ll be proud of you. I always am. Now go.”
Alexis went, and she went with a lift beneath her heart, a benediction she hadn’t expected, hadn’t needed, but one that mattered nonetheless. She wasn’t sure if she’d changed or if Izzy had, but she had a feeling things were going to be different between them from now on.
The buoyancy brought by that revelation sustained her all the way to Nate’s bungalow, then deserted her in an instant. In its place nerves flared as she raised a fist and knocked.
He opened the door immediately, as though he’d sensed her approach, or had been waiting for her.
Maybe both. His big body filled the doorway; he was wearing khakis and a button-down shirt that was open at the throat, revealing the medallion and the eccentric. Business casual with a twist, she thought, and felt a lump gather in her throat. She saw his laptop open behind him, his cell phone beside it. “You working?” she asked, her nerve faltering a little. “I can come back later.”
But he shook his head. “Just talking to Denjie about the new VW game. I guess between the writing delays and sagging sales on the other installments, the parent company that’s been handling the games doesn’t want Hera’s Mate. They’re ending the series instead.”
She winced, thinking that as far as omens and signs went, that wasn’t a good one. “I’m sorry.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I’m actually relieved. It’s time to move on.” He hadn’t leaned toward her, but it sure felt as though he had. His energy reached out to her, enveloped her, made her yearn.
“That’s new,” she said inanely, pointing to a carved black wrist piece that peeked out from beneath his left shirt cuff.
He shook it down and showed her the carvings. “I’m pretty sure it is—or was—the obsidian knife.
Part of the whole Volatile thing, I guess.”
She smiled a little. “Magic.”
“Yeah.” Now he did move, stepping out of the doorway and crowding her, looking down at her with everything she’d ever wanted or needed in his eyes. “You come out here to talk about my new man-
bracelet?”
Nerves shimmered just beneath her skin, warming her and making her jittery. “No. I came to ask you to take me flying.”
His eyes blanked, and he exhaled a long, slow breath. “Whoa. That was so not what I was expecting you to say.”
Her lips curved. “Well, actually I came out here to take you to bed, and stay with you for good, if you’ll have me. But I figured we should go flying first.”
Now it was his turn to smile as the shock in his eyes gave way to heat and a slow build of joy. But he said, “You don’t have to do this if it freaks you out.”
“I have to do it because it freaks me out,” she corrected. “At least, it does a little, and I need to get past that.” She leaned up and touched her lips to his. “This is your talent. I’ll love it because it’s part of you, and I love you.”
He leaned into her, leaned into the kiss, then murmured. “I love you too.” And as though the words had been the trigger, he stepped outside and began to change, the lines of his body blurring and shifting; his clothes tearing and falling away to reveal feathers and wings as he became a raptor the size of an SUV.
When it was done he stood there opposite her, his clawed feet balancing oddly on the flat ground, his wings half spread, as though he were ready to take off at any second, or shield her from an attack.
“Well?” he asked, the word a soft scree aloud, a translated thought inside her head.