“Bring it in. Bring it in.” Sabina grabs us all, and though one wouldn’t think she’s strong, she is.
I get my puppy pile.
We fall in a tangle of limbs. The hug just escalates that quickly. One minute I’m standing, reaching for them, and the next we are on the ground laughing. Legs tangled, heads on shoulders, and fingers threading through hair.
Sisterhood.
There’s an old ache in my heart. One that never quite eases. It pangs gently right now. Right in the center of my chest, at my heart.
Some wound whispers,you don’t deserve this.
So I hug them a little tighter.
Behind us, everyone moves away, giving us space. Leaving us in this little protective snow globe of old hurts and present happiness. The two colliding in a storm that no one could have predicted.
“So—” I start, because how does one exactly ask how their journey through a foreign world was? Even though oddly enough their own journeys have taken them on a similar ride.
Pepper leans back, the dual sun on her face. “This place is weird. Everything keeps trying to kill me.”
“Everything is alive in a way that Earth isn’t,” I whisper back, lying in the field of clover.
“Well, it’s gorgeous,” Sabina says, pulling a piece of clover from between her teeth. “But yeah. I shot seven things on the way here. Three of them were already dead.”
“How do you shoot something that’s already dead?” I ask.
“Aggressively.” She shrugs.
“The sentries were the worst,” Vanessa says, stretching her arms above her head. Her fingers are still slightly scaled at the knuckles. “The little ones that hide in trees? Delicious but they give you heartburn.”
“You cannot keep eating the wildlife, Nessy.” Pepper doesn’t open her eyes.
“They attacked first.”
“Did they?”
“They were thinking about it. I could smell the intent.”
Pepper makes a sound that’s half laugh, half surrender. The kind of sound you make when you’ve been arguing with someone about their eating habits for three solid days and have accepted defeat.
I missed this. Gods, I missed this so much my chest aches with it.
The clover beneath me hums. Soft. Responsive. The Wild Court magic in this soil recognizing something in my blood and reaching up through the roots to say hello, we’ve been waiting.
“So.” Sabina rolls onto her side, propping her head on her hand. The movement is casual. The look in her eyes is not. “Three men, huh?”
And there it is.
“News travels fast.”
“Ash. A dragon flew us over a tavern where three very large, very intense Fae males were standing in the doorway lookinglike they were about to commit murder on our behalf.” She raises an eyebrow. “It wasn’t subtle.”
“Ah.” I scratch my nose. “That tracks.”
Pepper opens one eye. “Which one’s which?”
I could deflect. I could redirect. I could do the thing I’ve spent years doing, which is fold the real answer into a smaller answer and hand over the version that doesn’t cost me anything.
I don’t.
