“Oh, domi, please don’t cry.”
“I have to. If I try to keep it in, I’ll just go under again.” It still hurt, but it wasn’t the drowning flood of pain.
She was still crying when the door opened and Windwolf walked into the bedroom.
“Windwolf!” She pushed at Pony so she could get up.
Windwolf’s eyes widened at the sight of her on the bed with Pony. He shouted a command, summoning wind magic. It spilled into the room, the potential glittering at the edge of her teary vision.
Pony was jerked backwards off her and thrown across the room. His shields flared seconds before he hit the wall with a crash — elaborate inlaid paneling splintering under him. He landed on the floor, coiled to spring, one his swords miraculously in his hand.
“No!” Tinker leapt between Windwolf and Pony. Sword aside, she could guess which one was the more dangerous of the two. “Stop it, Windwolf! Don’t hurt him! He didn’t do anything.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing to me.” Windwolf glared furiously at the sekasha. “Did he hurt you?”
“No!”
“Why are you crying then?”
“I killed Nathan!”
Windwolf went still and quiet, gazing down at her. “You did?” he finally asked.
“Yes,” Tinker said.
“No, she did not.” Pony murmured. “I killed him, as is my right.”
“He only did what I told him to do!” she cried and realized that in the same manner, Pony had made love to her. He had thought it unwise, but he had done what she asked of him.
Oh gods, she made love with Pony.
“Oh, shit,” she sniffed. “I think I’m going to cry again. I’m sorry, Windwolf. I didn’t realize Pony would do anything I told him. Anything. That he trusted me to do — the wise thing — not the stupid. This is all my fault.”
Windwolf sighed and glanced to Pony. “Leave us.”
“Domnae.” Pony used the non-possessive form, bowing slightly to Windwolf, but didn’t otherwise move.
“Pony,” Tinker murmured in Elvish. “Go, I need to talk to Wolf Who Rules alone.”
Pony sheathed his sword and bowed out of the room.
That left her alone with her husband, wrapped in Windwolf’s silence.
He reached for her and she flinched back. “I would never,” he said huskily without dropping his arm, “strike you.”
She closed the distance between them and allowed him take her in a loose embrace. “I’m sorry. I was so hurt and confused. I’ve been through so much lately. Do you know that there’s a slickie out there with pictures of me in my nightgown? That when I get attacked, it makes headlines in the newspaper? That women scream when they see me?”
He said nothing for several minutes and then whispered into her hair. “Are you unhappy being my domi?”
She hugged him then, suddenly afraid of losing him. “It’s just — it’s just…” she sobbed. “When humans get married there’s a ring, and a church and people throw rice at you and you get your picture next to the obituaries, and there’s just the two of you, together, all the time, and no body else to get in the middle and confuse things. There’s no oni or royal princes or dragons or nudie pictures!”
“Beloved,” he said after a minute of silence. “I’m not sure if that’s a yes or a no.”
“Exactly!”
He considered another minute and picked her up and carried her to the bed.
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m sorry. I’ve broken us.”
“We are not broken.” Windwolf eased her down and lay carefully beside her. “You are hurt and need healing — that’s all.”
Tinker was trying to write her full elfin name in the sand of the enclave’s garden. She knew the runes but any time she went to scribe them out, the letters would creep and crawl oddly.
“You’re dreaming,” Stormsong stood beside her, a ghost of sky blue. “Those kind of things never work. The part of your mind that processes them is asleep. You need dream runes. I could write what you want.”
“No, no, I have to be able to do this. I’m the only one that can do this.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
Something moved in the darkness of the garden around them. Stormsong activated her shields and they enveloped both of them, brilliant pale blue that was nearly white. “Go away. You’re not wanted here.”
“Give her to us,” Esme prowled the darkness. She was the color of old blood. Black stood weeping in the woods with her host of crows oddly silent — only a rustle of many wings in the night. “We need her. We murdered time and now it’s always six o’clock.”
“No. I won’t let you have her.”
“You’re not stopping us.” Esme pressed a dark hand to the gleaming shell of Stormsong’s shield, the light shafting through her spread fingers like solid spears. “You might be able to keep them out, but not me.”
“You’re hurting her!” Fear filtered into Stormsong’s voice. “Leave her alone.”
Esme moved counter-clockwise around them, trailing her hand across the shield’s radiant, a dark mote on pale brilliance. “There is too much to lose to worry about hurting her.”
“Go away.” Stormsong growled.
Esme had made a complete circle around them, testing the boundaries of Stormsong’s protection. They stood as odd mirror reflections of each other — hair short and spiked — red dark to the point of almost black versus blue paled to nearly white.
“I won’t let you in,” Stormsong said.
“We don’t have time for this!” Esme balled up her hand into a tight fist of blackness, and punched into the light.
Stormsong’s shield failed like a candle snuffed. Tinker fell into darkness.
“…focusfocusfocus…,” she whispered into the black.
A world snapped into being around her, but she ignored it to focus on the control panel in front of her. She punched a set of keys, ones she practiced until her hands ached. Even as she entered the codes, and the world jerked hard to the right, alarms screamed to life.
She hit the intercom pad. “All hands suit up! Suit up!” She shouted, knowing what was coming. “Brace for impact!”
She looked up and found she hadn’t seen the full truth. Instead of one colony ship looming in the great blackness of space, the feed from the front cameras showed several ships colliding together — heaving, twisting, and buckling. For a moment, she could only stare — stunned. Compartments of the ships were collapsing like crushed soda cans — their atmosphere spraying out in plumes of instantly freezing gushers.
She wasn’t able to stop it. It was going to happen anyhow.
“We’re going to hit! We’re going to hit!” Alan Voecks screamed those hated words that had haunted her nightmares for months.
Something cartwheeled toward them, jetted on a haze of frozen oxygen. As it grew larger, she realized it was a human — without a spacesuit. There was time to recognize the face — Nicole Pinder of the Anhe Hao — before the body hit the camera. That front screen went to static…
Tinker bolted out of the dream. She was tight in Stormsong’s arms, panting from the remnants of her terror. “Oh gods! Oh gods!”
“It is over,” Stormsong rubbed her back soothingly. “You are safe with us.”
“Something went wrong,” Tinker cried. “That’s what they’ve been trying to tell me. Something went wrong.”
“Well?” Windwolf spoke from the foot of the bed.
Tinker sat up to discover the room was full of silent people, all watching her sleep. In addition to Windwolf and Pony, Wraith Arrow and Bladebite stood guard. “What the hell?”