“I thought I told you.”

Parisa shook her head.

Fiona drew in a deep breath. “It was Carolyn’s birthday and I had thought her long dead. It never occurred to me that she might have ascended. But that day, the fact that I had been separated from my daughter, from both my children, from my husband, all that I knew as life in Boston, that I had been abducted and used for such a horrible reason—it all crashed down on me. Carolyn would have been a hundred and fifteen.” She smiled. “And so she is, but I still have you to thank for everything. Without you and Antony, I would still be here, in this place, serving up an elixir that sustains Greaves’s army.”

Fiona shook off the heavy sensations, and asked if there was a chance in hell Parisa could come back to Phoenix Two for a couple of days. “I need some girl-time.”

Parisa smiled. “Me, too. I love being with Antony but I think even he’s getting weary of playing that role, you know, How do you like my hair? What do you think about these jeans and this shirt? And how many times has he looked at me in that funny way and asked, ‘Are you getting your period?’”

“I know, right? I hate that question. Especially when there’s truth behind it.”

Parisa sighed. “I need a break.”

“Don’t we all.” But everything seemed to be moving so fast. Events crowded her just as they crowded Parisa.

Fiona looked back at the porch. The men, their men, stood on guard duty, bodies tense, foreheads wrinkled, eyes skating back and forth, always looking, searching, hunting. Their voices were quiet as they spoke to each other.

Fiona’s heart lurched. Jean-Pierre still had his hair slicked back, and though he wore battle flight gear, she couldn’t help but recall that just a little while ago he’d worn a tux that had weakened her knees. Or maybe it was just him.

She shifted her gaze back to Parisa and, dropping her voice to a whisper, asked, “So what’s it like … the breh-hedden, I mean, completing it, going all the way?”

She watched Parisa’s complexion change, a very soft blush covering her cheeks while a glow seemed to radiate from beneath her skin. Her amethyst eyes sparkled. “I wish I could explain how magnificent it is. The connection is profound. Like right now, I can feel Antony, in an external physical sense—that the royle wings exhibition we put on in Puerto Rico Two last night has chafed him under his left arm, that kind of thing. He can feel me as well, probably that the wet grass has made my feet cold.

“And yes, all of that is amazing, but it’s so much more. The connection is … spiritual, if that makes sense.” She tipped her head closer to Fiona and added, “And the sex. Oh. My. God.” She then shivered from head to toe.

Antony called out, “Everything okay over there?”

“See what I mean?” she whispered to Fiona, then aloud over her shoulder, she said, “We’re fine.”

Fiona found it hard to steady herself. She actually spread her fingers on both hands as though trying to find her balance. But the thought of sex being more than it already was with Jean-Pierre had put her mind in a tailspin. She was a small aircraft plummeting to the earth, then righting her wings at the last second and flying upward … fast.

Because of all that had happened at Dark Spectacle, the breh-hedden was suddenly a possibility that it had never been before, and a strong, intense longing gripped her chest.

She turned and met Jean-Pierre’s gaze. The christening at the outdoor chapel had happened just a handful of days ago, but the distance she had traveled in her relationship with Jean-Pierre felt like miles and miles. He frowned slightly and dipped his chin, a question in his eye, but she could only look at him and imagine just what the breh-hedden would mean for her, or for him.

“Are you thinking of doing it?” Parisa asked, again her voice very low.

Fiona looked back at her. She smiled suddenly. They were like teenage girls asking the age-old questions, Are you going to do it? What do you think it’ll be like? Everyone says it hurts.

She had only one reasonable response to Parisa’s question but it came out as a simple nod.

Parisa squealed. “You’ll love it, and believe me it changes everything. I mean, hello, we perform a royle wings spectacle event nearly every night.”

“Does it get old, the royle wings show, I mean?”

Her face drew into a knot. She shook her head. “Not really. It’s an amazing experience because we bring peace and I can actually feel the crowd’s response. But Antony is not happy.”

“He doesn’t like the performances?”

“It’s not that. He hates, I mean he really hates, not fighting with his brothers at the Borderlands. I think the whole thing, as important as it is, makes him feel like a traitor. He’s not, but he knows what Jean-Pierre and Thorne and the others are going through.”

Fiona nodded. “And with Jean-Pierre serving as my guardian, Colonel Seriffe has had to put more of his Militia Warrior squads on the front line. Yeah, the whole thing is out of control. But I guess you know the latest, the explosion in Las Vegas Two.”

Parisa nodded. “Marcus let Antony know what was going on. He said you were instrumental in getting all those people out. How?”

Fiona explained all about obsidian flame and Endelle. “That’s why I was able to do what I did here, with Rith I mean.”

“But I thought Jean-Pierre—”

Then she explained about the knife and the sensory memory she had acquired from having been possessed by him.

“Wow,” Parisa said succinctly.

“You said it.”

“Then we both stabbed him.”

Fiona was surprised. “When did you—?”

“The day we got you out of the New Zealand facility. He’d intended to abduct me again, but Antony had been training me to use his weapons. It all happened so fast and the next thing I knew I was plunging a dagger into his stomach. I always regretted that I didn’t hit his heart, but I can see now that it wouldn’t have mattered.”

“No, it wouldn’t have.”

“And he’s really gone?”

Fiona felt tears touch her eyes again. “Yes.”

The men drew near. Antony was just putting his phone away. “I have some good news, Parisa. I just talked to Endelle. We get a holiday, three days at the villa. Maybe longer. She said that because of the recent incident in Las Vegas, some of the High Administrators have been canceling the royle wing exhibitions.”

Fiona watched Parisa’s shoulders slump in relief. “We get a break.”

“Yeah. You do.”

“We,” she said emphatically, but Antony just looked at her. There was pain in his eyes.

Parisa straightened her spine. “Of course. I wasn’t thinking. You’ll want to be at the Borderlands. Of course.”

Jean-Pierre drew close to Fiona and slipped his hand into hers. She looked down and saw their joined fingers. What would it be like to feel not just his fingers against hers but her fingers against his, all at the same time, a shared external physicality? They had already shared an obsidian flame possession, an internal sharing, but what would the external be like?

She knew from Alison that the strongest benefit of completing the breh-hedden was that communication was instantaneous. Because Kerrick could always feel, at will, what Alison was experiencing in a superficial physical way, he could fold to her location in a heartbeat. It was the prime reason that Alison, who had been in the process of her ascension, also became a bona fide Guardian of Ascension in her own right, and felt as secure on Second Earth as she did.

Looking up at Jean-Pierre, meeting his gaze, she wondered if she was looking at her future—that whether she liked it or not, as an obsidian flame, someone capable of channeling the powers of others, she would always need that added layer of connection with the man, the warrior, beside her?

You are thinking very hard, he sent.

She smiled. “I am.”

* * *

Jean-Pierre felt a warm wind within his chest, moving around in great swirls as he looked down at Fiona, as he held her hand clasped within his own. Who was this woman who had pierced Rith’s heart with a blade?

She had been a mother on Mortal Earth, a woman who kept an elegant home in Boston for a very successful businessman. Then she had her life obliterated by Rith’s minions who took her from Boston and brought her here, to this house, where she had lived since 1886.

Unfathomable, the sort of spirit required to live all those decades, not to lose hope completely, not to fall into a kind of despair that always led to death. The admiration he felt for her mounted wings of its own and flew up into the sky and beyond, to the stars.

He loved her so very much but what did this mean for them, for the future?

He knew only one thing: that he wanted to complete the breh-hedden with her. He had never thought he could do this, even when the terrible mythical experience slammed him hard during those first days and weeks, five months ago. The entire time that he was out of his mind, whether near her or separated from her, he had resisted the call of the breh-hedden. He wanted nothing to do with it. On some level, he still did not, as though his spirit understood very well—too well, perhaps—the sacrifices that would be required of him in the coming weeks, months, and years as the bonded breh to a woman who had the gift of obsidian flame.

But he no longer held to that part of him that wished to remain aloof and separate, with all his relationships superficial.

He glanced at Medichi, who stared at him with a knowing light in his eye. Medichi nodded to him very faintly. His lips curved just a little. Perhaps the brother could read his mind, dissect his thoughts.

Jean-Pierre had missed Medichi. “I hope this tour of duty ends very soon,” he said.

Medichi nodded. “You and me both. I see its value. I do, but”—here he planted a fist on his chest—“everything that I am calls me back to the Borderlands.”

Jean-Pierre nodded. Fiona squeezed his hand. When he looked down at her she dipped her chin two times very quickly. He knew she understood that he felt the same way. Not to be fighting, when the rest of the Warriors of the Blood were carrying too heavy a load, was unbearable.