“Sex,” Kaze added helpfully. “Although I’m pretty sure there was some A-grade cosmic sex magic offered to multiple gods last night.”
Ward groaned without looking up. “Please tell me that’s not something this realm of yours paid attention to.”
“It did.” Oisín was perfectly solemn. “But it is pleased.”
Kaze snorted. “Well, shit. I hope it bought you dinner first.”
Zero didn’t lift his eyes from the carving in his lap. “The trees were whispering. I think they enjoyed the show.”
Viper shot them all a warning glance. “Enough.”
But Ward surprised him by laughing softly. He sat back on his heels and dragged a hand through his hair as the wind caught the ends. “It’s fine. If the price of getting home is that I accidentally turned on the local forest, I’ll take the hit.”
“You’ve done more than that,” Fionn stepped fully into the circle of standing. “You’ve given us a chance to reclaim what we lost. A path between realms that was once carved in honor and offered to our greatest allies.”
“Does that mean we can go back without risking the veil collapsing again?” Juice asked.
Oisín exchanged a glance with Fionn before answering. “Not yet. The doorway must stabilize. Three anchors—land, blood, and memory—must align.”
“We have land,” Trace said. “And blood.”
Viper felt the weight of the next answer before anyone spoke. He turned to Ward. “What about memory?”
Ward didn’t flinch. “We’ll need a place to anchor the other side. A tether to something sacred that still remembers us. Something rooted in the human world.”
Trace straightened. “The Dolmen in my forest.”
Viper’s excitement grew. “Then that’s our memory anchor. That’s where we’ll open the other half.”
Fionn inclined his head. “Begin the tethering. We will lend the land’s strength. But from here on, the door answers to you.”
Ward rose beside him, quiet and resolute. “Then let’s finish what we started.”
They gathered in the inner ring of stones where the ground hummed low with an old and slumbering power. Trace knelt at one point of the triangle with Juice behind him, their joined hands glowing faintly with their gold glittered bond-light. Across from them, Viper stood with Ward, his palm clasped tight over his mate’s, their marks flaring brighter as the pulse of the land answered. At the third point stood Fionn, his blade buried tip-down in the earth, ancient Irish etched along the flat of the steel like veins of light.
“Begin when you’re ready.” Oisín’s tone was almost reverent.
Viper nodded once and turned toward Ward. “You’ve got this. But if you think it’s going to cause you pain, or if it feels like it’s going to hurt you, promise me that you will stop.”
Ward tilted his chin in a calm and composed way Viper didn’t think he could ever manage—not with the weight of two worlds stretching thin between them. “I’m not going to let you down.” He looked toward the horizon. “I’ll get you home.”
“Promise me,” Viper growled.
“Okay, okay, I promise.”
They dropped to their knees, palms pressed to the soil, and Viper felt it again—the way the energy curled around Ward first before touching him.. Heat surged up his spine, hot and bright and almost painful.
But Ward didn’t flinch; he leaned into the energy and spoke in an ancient cadence as he read from the scroll Oisín held underhis nose. The veil answered, and the ground vibrated beneath their knees, sending a wave of pressure out in all directions.
“Is that Irish?” Juice whispered.
“It’s way older than Irish,” Trace replied, awestruck. “That’s the First Tongue of the fairies, never mind of man.”
The standing stones flared to life, their runes burning blue, then gold, then white-hot. Light arced between the three points of the triangle like lightning, crackling in the air and sinking into the ground in streams of living fire. Viper’s mark burned as it reacted to the pulsing in rhythm in Ward’s. Then the light shot straight up, a pillar of magic exploding into the sky—and somewhere far, far away, Viper felt the Dolmen in Trace’s forest answer the call. The magic threaded out like a spiderweb, one strand anchored here to their location, and another reaching toward the mortal realm, linking what had been torn apart.
Ward gasped, his fingers tightening in Viper’s. “I can feel it. I can feel the Dolmen. It remembers Trace and Bran. It remembers all of you.”
“The tether’s locked,” Fionn said, his voice filled with reverence. “You’ve done what no Fianna has managed in centuries. You’ve opened a Fianna door and anchored it with the love and honor in your soul.”
