Page 64 of Beds and Blades

Then I looked at Caen.

“Do you understand,” I said, “that I have several objections?”

“That is understandable.”

Caen went quiet.

“Now that I am being fully transparent,” she said, “there is something else you should know.”

I waited.

“The women who cross are not only dissatisfied with Earth. That would not be enough. The barrier does not open for ordinary unhappiness.” Her eyes stayed on mine. “It opens for women who are finished with Earth and whom Earth has, in some way, finished with.”

The room seemed to go very still.

I thought about Philadelphia. The seminar room. The sweat. The pressure closing around my chest from the inside. The pain radiating down my arm and into my jaw. My notes falling from my hand. Calloway moving toward me. The floor coming up hard.

“Are you saying,” I asked carefully, “that I died on Earth?”

Caen looked down.

“I am saying it is possible.”

Possible.

A clean word. A terrible word.

“Every account I have read describes an experience like death before arrival.”

I sat very still. I might have died in that room in Philadelphia. Literally.

Earth was no longer a door I could count on opening. Going back was not possible.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

I looked down at the deeproot in my cup.

“Well,” I said. “This makes my concerns about getting a tenure-track professor job somewhat less pressing.”

That earned the smallest possible smile from her. Then she reached across the table and took my hand.

I looked toward the window.

The sun had shifted while we were talking. The morning brightness had softened into late gold, pouring across the tower floor at a lower angle.

Skip had told me to be in my quarters before nightfall. Preferably well before. I still had time.

My thoughts returned to the ring. The claiming. Permanent. Empathic. Sacred. Terrifying. A bond with no quiet exit, no careful separation.

I was afraid. Of course I was afraid. Fear was not the same thing as doubt. I set the cup down.

“I need to go,” I said.

Caen looked at me as if she already knew where.

I stood.

“I need to tell Skip.”