Bria would have been proud.
Iestyn withdrew from her body, the dragging friction setting off aftershocks in her sensitive flesh. She shivered.
He dragged her up, tucking her head under his jaw, cradling her against his body. His chest was warm and damp.
She turned her face into his neck and closed her eyes.
Should she say something? What could she say? Usual y she was better with words than with feelings, but his F o r g o t t e n s e a 21 1
assault on her senses, her own carnal craving, had left her speechless, sore, and unsettled.
And oddly free of regrets.
Iestyn raised his head and framed her face with his hands.
“I was rough with you.”
Sudden moisture sprang to her eyes. She could handle rough. His tenderness threatened to destroy her. “Are you apologizing?”
He watched her careful y. “Do I need to?”
“No, I liked it. It was nice.” She winced at the woeful y inadequate word. “Different.”
The laughter sprang back into his eyes. “Different good or different bad?”
“Different for me,” she clarified. “I’m not usual y so . . .”
“Different for me, too.” He stroked her hair back from her face, tucking a strand behind her ear. His golden eyes were warm, searching. “You’re different.”
More than anything, she wanted to believe him. “I bet you say that to al the girls.”
“Only you. Two lost souls,” he murmured.
She swal owed the sudden lump in her throat. “We’re not lost. Maybe we don’t know exactly where we’re going, but we’re here now. Together. For the first time in my life, maybe that’s enough.”
*
*
*
Zayin’s vision fractured. Splintered. The world below him broke like a shattered kaleidoscope, escaping its ordered patterns, the mosaic of field and forest, rock and road, fragmenting. Fal ing apart, as his spirit was fal ing apart, bright, broken slivers of his soul. “Zayin.”
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His heart pounded,
Pain burst in his skul , rocked his head, jerked him back into his heavy, human body. The ground spun and solidified under him.
He gasped, dragging air into his inefficient lungs, and felt the cold, hard floor beneath his shoulders, the weight of his bones. He opened his eyes.
Mews mistress Moon knelt over him, scowling, her long hippie hair hanging down around her face.
Jude blinked as shadow returned to his sight, obscuring his bright bird vision. “I lost them.”
“I thought I was going to lose you.” Moon rol ed to her feet and went to the sink of the smal keeper’s room, leaving him lying on the cold linoleum floor. “Next time you decide to have an out-of-body experience, do it with your lady doctor in attendance.”
He flexed his fingers, restoring flexibility to his hands and wrists. “You know I can’t.”
Miriam’s unquestioning loyalty to Simon made it impossible for him to trust her completely. He was rarely vulnerable, even in sex. But spirit casting left him open. Weakened.
“You’l end up in the infirmary anyway,” Moon said darkly.
“Twelve crows, was it, this time? The spirit isn’t meant to divide into that many pieces. You left me with hardly anything to cal you back.”
“You should be grateful for the excuse to hit me.” He rubbed his jaw where the imprint of her hand stil burned.
“Anyway, I had a wide area to cover.”
She turned, a glass of water in her hands. “Here.”
He raised one eyebrow. “No cookies and orange juice?”
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“Fuck off.” But she supported him up with one arm behind his back, guiding the glass to his lips as he drank.
“What did you see?”
“Flyers.” He swal owed. “They thought I was spying on them.”
“There’s a shocker. What about our runaways?”
“Stil headed north.” He sifted through his scattered memories, picking through images and snatches of conversation from the parking lot, reconciling his human knowledge with the crows’ perceptions. Dizzied, he closed his eyes. “World’s End.”
“Where’s that?”
He opened his eyes. “Maine, I imagine.”
Cautiously, he sat up. His spine popped and stretched.
Birds’ vertebrae were fused for flight. The return to his human body left him feeling heavy and unsupported.
“You’l go out again,” Moon said. “After them.”
“I must.”
Simon wanted the girl. And Jude wanted Simon in his debt.
Moon’s round face creased. “This boy . . .”
“Is irrelevant. He’s an elemental. A
Jude added for emphasis.
“You see enemies everywhere.”
He climbed painful y to his feet, leaning on a table for support. His head swam. “Because we have no al ies.”
“Heaven has no al ies. We’re on earth now. Maybe we should put more faith in those who have been here the longest, the fair folk and merfolk. God’s creatures, Jude.”
It was an old argument between them. One he’d given up on winning.
He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Simon thinks the boy is possessed.”
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Moon’s blue eyes clouded. “And if he is?”
