“Do you really think it’ll work?” Maeve bit her lip, and Arawn resisted the urge to suck that lip and lick over it. Later.

“It is worth a try,” he answered and nudged her forward with a hand on her lower back.

She dug in her heels right outside the door to her father’s room at the nursing home. Merle’s voice drifted out, her sister already inside telling Frank MacKenna the latest of what had happened in their lives.

Anxiety zinged along the twofold bond. Maeve’s hand tightened around the cup of tea she’d brought for her father.

You have nothing to lose, Arawn said in her mind, and everything to gain.

Her throat muscles worked as she swallowed. I just…don’t know if I can do this.

There is a good chance it will work.

She was silent, then— That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. Barely more than a whisper in his thoughts.

After a moment of consideration, he replied, No matter the personal outcome for you, do you not think he deserves this chance?

Her breath hitched. Of course. You’re right.

It was the mental nudge she apparently needed, for she opened the door, walked into the room, and crouched next to her father. Frank was sitting in an armchair in front of the panoramic window displaying the nursing home’s backyard rose garden, his expression blank, his eyes unseeing. His ash-gray hair framed a face carved with years of wasted living, his skin pale.

Merle stopped speaking when Maeve entered, and for a second hurt flashed over her features, before she caught herself and sent Maeve a friendly smile, oblivious to her sister’s plan.

“Here,” Maeve said to her father, holding the cup to his lips. “Drink this. It’s Earl Grey, your favorite.”

Frank didn’t move his hands, but he was responsive enough that Maeve could pour the tea into his mouth, making sure he swallowed. She set the cup on the small side table, her hands shaky.

Turning back to her father, she touched his cheek lightly. “I love you, Dad.”

She got up just as he drew in a rattling breath. Maeve froze, glancing at Frank again, and what she must have seen on his face had her inching away, toward the door. While Merle rose from her seat and went to his side to check on him, Maeve quietly snuck out and plastered herself to the wall outside the room.

From his vantage point in the shadows of the hall, Arawn had a good view through the open doorway, watching as Frank’s expression sharpened, his eyes cleared. Maeve’s father raised his head, looked around.

“Dad?” Merle asked, leaning forward and grasping his hands.

Frank’s eyes fell on his oldest living daughter, the one he hadn’t seen in close to seventeen years. The one he never recognized, even in his rare moments of clarity, unaware of the hurt he caused her.

He frowned, opened his mouth. According to what Maeve had told Arawn, this was always the moment he would ask for her instead of Merle—breaking her heart without even meaning to.

“Merle?” It was but a rasp, Frank’s voice rusty from years of neglect.

Merle uttered a sound close to a sob. “Dad? You can… You see me?”

Frank raised a shaky hand to Merle’s face, stroked her cheek. “I see you, pumpkin.”

At that moment, Maeve turned carefully to peek around the doorjamb, her pulse loud enough for Arawn to hear. He reached out with his energy, caressed her with a tendril of his power.

Shivering, she closed her eyes for a second. Is this really happening?

Courtesy of your phoenix magic.

She released a shuddering breath, grabbed the doorjamb tight with one hand.

“You look so much like your mom,” Frank whispered, still touching Merle’s face. “Among the three of you, you’ve always resembled her most. She called you her Mini Me. Mini Me Merle.”

Merle hiccuped, smiling through her tears. “I remember.” Hugging her father, she added in a thick voice, “I’ve missed you, Dad. So much.”

“Me, too, pumpkin.” He squeezed her back, his arms shaking from the effort.

After a long moment of tearful embrace, Merle withdrew, her face creased with worry. “Do you know…that Mom and Moira…”

“I know.” A pained rasp. “I remember.”

A beat of silence.

“Where is she?” Frank asked.

Merle looked toward the open door, met Arawn’s eyes for a second before glancing to the side—to Maeve’s face still peeking around the doorjamb. Maeve startled and jerked back to plaster herself against the wall again, her chest heaving.

Arawn leaned close to her, his mouth at her ear. “He is coming.”

Maeve let out a choked squeak and made as if to skip away, but Arawn caught her with a tug on their bond. Laying his hands on her shoulders, he turned her around to face him.

“You are meeting him. Now. It is time.”

He squeezed her shoulders once, kissed her hard with a hint of teeth, and retreated to a position farther down the hall, leaving her to face her father.

* * *

Arawn’s presence was a dark reassurance at her back, even though he stood far enough away to give her some privacy with her dad. Who, at this moment, stepped out of the room, grabbing the doorjamb for purchase, his legs a little shaky. His eyes landed on her—and widened.

Maeve flinched. Of course…her scar. Her dad probably reacted not only to the fact it was glowing, but to the scar itself. In all the months since her rescue, she only made it out here to the nursing home once, and her dad didn’t have a moment of clarity that day. This was the first time he saw it.

“Merle told me…” He swallowed hard, took a deep breath. “I know he’s dead, but I sure wish he wasn’t. So I could have him tied up tight in a room, alone with me and a knife.”

She barely kept herself from crumpling. “Rhun made him suffer,” was all she could choke out.

“Not enough.” He shook his head. “It would never be enough.”

Tears spilled over as she pressed her lips together. Arawn’s power wrapped around her, a loving stroke of darkness.

“I’m so sorry, Dad.” A broken whisper, her heart splitting open.

His brows drew together. “What for? It wasn’t your fault. That rotten bastard—”

“Not that.” She fought for air. “What I did… Mom—Moira. Y-you. I’m so, so sorry.”

Unable to face him any longer, she turned away, shoulders hunched and chest too tight to breathe. A thousand things to say to him, and not enough air to speak. I wish I could make it okay. I wish I could bring them back. I love you. I understand if you’d rather not see me again.

And she wouldn’t even blame him. When every time he looked at her face, he’d be reminded of how she took everything from him. Even if he loved her still, how could he stand having her around? After what she did?

Arawn waited in the shadows like the dark specter he was, arms crossed over his massive chest, his forest-green eyes glinting.

You must think me pathetic, she whispered in his mind.

I might just spank you for that thought, was his silken reply.

Heat shot up to her face—not least because she found that suggestion inappropriately appealing.

“Maeve.”

Her father’s rough voice made her straighten her spine.

“Look at me.”

Hauling in air with a shudder, she turned, met his eyes…which shimmered with unshed tears.

“I’ve spent the last seventeen years locked in the past, mourning those I have lost.” He stepped closer, steadying himself on the wall with one hand. “I want to spend what time I have left with those who are still here.”

“Dad, I’m sorr—”

“And I don’t ever want to hear my daughter apologize again for something that was beyond her control. Stop it. No one blames you but yourself.”

A sob broke from her throat.

“Now,” her dad said gruffly, “are you going to make me stagger across the hall, or will you come here to give me a hug, sweetheart?”

Succumbing to the sobs racking her chest, she dashed over to him, flung herself in his arms. He held her close, rocked her, petted her hair, and murmured soothing words, each one a balm to her bleeding soul. When Merle joined them, they pulled her in as well, until they were huddled together in one big knot of sobbing joy.

The last three living MacKennas, reunited in spite of loss and pain.

Merle’s reddened eyes found Maeve’s when they pulled apart eventually. “How?” she whispered. “I know it was you. How did you bring him back?”

Maeve wiped the tears off her cheeks and turned her fingers so Merle and her dad could see. “My tears. They heal. It’s one of my phoenix powers.”

Merle’s brows rose as she understood. “The tea.”

Maeve nodded. “I didn’t know if it would work.”

Arawn had suggested she try, having connected the dots of her true nature and potential powers with the miraculous healing of the bobcat. When she thought back to it, she remembered some of her tears dropping on the cat, on its open wounds. And seconds later it was healed.

It wasn’t her blood that did it.

“You’re a what?” asked her dad, his forehead creasing.

Apparently Merle hadn’t gotten to that part yet when she talked to him earlier. “I’ll tell you all about it. But let’s get you out of here first.”

Because, with his mind healed, Frank MacKenna would never have to spend another day at the nursing home.

They dove into the process of checking him out and tackling the amount of paperwork that went along with it, but by late afternoon, he had the okay to leave with them, and they went straight to the old Victorian.

Where, after a long evening spent talking, reminiscing, catching up, their dad retired to the room he once shared with their mother—still furnished and kept clean through all these years—while Rhun, who’d joined them at some point to meet his father-in-law properly for the first time, carried Merle to bed muttering something about being “hungry.”

Maeve strolled out to the backyard, lacing fingers with the man who held her heart, who stood waiting for her in front of the charred stump of the old cherry tree.

The one she burned to the ground when her phoenix exploded seventeen years ago.

It still hurt, would probably always pain her to look at this symbol of their loss, but…the wound was healing. Slowly, gradually, like the progress she was making in reclaiming her life, her body, her mind. She still had spells of panic and slithering, paralyzing fear, moments when she was with Arawn and they’d have to stop so she could root herself in the present, fight back the lingering shadows of her nightmares.

But they were getting rarer.

Talking to Tashia helped. Having Arawn supporting her with endless patience helped. And in response to every inch of reclaimed dominion over herself, her phoenix preened and rustled her feathers, stroking along her senses and underneath her skin.

She squeezed Arawn’s hand. “I’d like to introduce you to my father tomorrow.”

They hadn’t taken that step yet, having decided to not overwhelm her dad with too many revelations all at once.

Arawn peered down at her. “Think he can handle it?”

“Well…” She shrugged sheepishly. “I figure once he’s gotten used to the idea of Rhun as Merle’s mate and husband, we can try to give him a heart attack with you.”

One side of his mouth lifted in a sensual half grin. “I want to show you something.”

“Oh?”

He curved one arm around her waist, pressed her close. “Hold on.”

Whipping wind and lightning whirled her into shadows and mist, and the next second she was standing on the lava-crusted slopes of a mountain. Her hands still gripping Arawn’s shirt hard, his arm a reassuring heat around her waist, she glanced around, the cold night breeze barely affecting her, courtesy of Arawn’s warmth.

“Mount Hood,” she whispered as she recognized her surroundings. She stared at Arawn. “How?”

“It seems,” he said, sliding his energy around and over her like a blanket of tingling heat, “that I gained some of Velez’s powers when I destroyed him.”

“And now you can teleport.” She exhaled on an incredulous laugh. “If I weren’t so breathlessly in love with you, I’d find that scary as hell.”

He made a disbelieving sound. “You were never scared of me.”

“No.” She gave him a lopsided smile.

“And I might take offense at that”—he cupped her face, stroked over her lips with his thumb—“if I did not consider it such a precious gift.”

She rose on tiptoes, tugged him down to her and kissed him, long and slow and soul-crushingly thoroughly.

When they broke apart, he murmured, “Where would you like to go? I can take you anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye.”

Her heart flipped at the look on his face, and her chest ached with love so deep it almost hurt. “Take me home.”

He paused just long enough that she had to make sure he knew what she meant by sending him the image—and he smiled and flashed her into the heart of his dominion, into the room where he’d given her his heart.

Home, she whispered in his mind as he laid her out on their bed.