all, and was desperately afraid that I wouldn’t be for much longer.
And when I wasn’t, would they turn on us?
Would they do to us what they had just done to the fey?
“Hold on,” Ray said, as water splashed us and the rain of blood from above doused us, and the remains of countless fey went rushing downstream pursued by screeching black clouds, still feeding. I watched them, feeling my control slipping away.
Then it snapped, my hold over the murderous colony above us completely gone. I watched them through bleary eyes as they spiraled up into the sky, almost as one, just as I had seen them do right before they attacked the fey. And then they dove—
Straight for the caves and crevasses from which they’d come, desperate to get away from this awful, lighted world and back into the cool dampness of home.
I watched them go, half disbelieving. And then exhaled a shaky breath, and sagged against Ray. He sagged back, having freed the raft but being too exhausted to paddle.
We let the river carry us downstream.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Dory, Hong Kong
“What the—where are we?” Louis-Cesare asked, his voice strained.
I flipped the light switch, showing the bare cement blocks and shiny weapons of my armory. He stared around for a second, his eyes wide, a pulse pounding madly in his throat. As if he’d expected a very different view, like maybe of the afterlife.
Finally, he looked at me. “You brought us back here?”
“Was there a choice?”
I sat down in the chair, feeling a little dizzy. The squashy old thing had come from a thrift shop, bought because it was the right size and shape to fit the space I had left, and because it was comfortable. I hadn’t actually noticed until this moment that it had a print on it, composed mainly of pastel yellow pineapples on a faded pink background. I looked away.
I did not want my last glimpse of the world to be polyester kitsch.
Unfortunately, that left me looking at my captives, some of whom were awake and unhappy. They were going to be a lot unhappier if this didn’t work. Or possibly even if it did, since we’d been over the dead zones when we fell.
But I didn’t have to think up a speech, because Louis-Cesare grabbed me. “We are falling to our deaths!”
And, okay, if I’d wanted a phrase to get everyone’s attention, I couldn’t have done any better. Eyes widened, breaths caught, and yet nobody spoke. They just looked at me.
I didn’t respond or explain, because I didn’t know what you said to that. And because it didn’t matter anymore. I just pulled my husband’s face close and kissed him, because that was what I wanted my last sight to be.
For a moment, it was perfect: the slight scrape of bristles along his jaw, the warm fullness of his lips, the silk of his hair falling all around us, and the hardness of the chest under my hand—
Until he pulled back and shook me, which, yeah.
Not really part of the fantasy.
“Did you hear me?” His face was wild and his hair was everywhere, probably because I’d forgotten to put the clip back in place earlier. I absently looked around for it, and the shaking recommenced. “Dory!”
“I heard you. But it’s kind of taking a long time, don’t you think?”
Louis-Cesare stared at me some more. Then he did exactly what I should have expected from my impetuous husband and threw open the door, poking his head out of the portal. That wasn’t exactly recommended operating procedure, and on a regular portal would have had the effect of sending his head somewhere very far from the rest of his body, while spaghettifying his neck.
However, this was a fixed portal, so he came back in after a moment, looking shaken and deathly pale, but otherwise fine.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
He nodded.
Together, we looked back outside, which . . . yeah. Still not recommended, I thought, as it left us sticking out of the top of my wide-mouthed purse like two disembodied heads. That was bad, but charging down a foggy street at about fifty miles an hour was worse. Not as worse as it could have been, but still . . .
I didn’t understand what had happened until I looked up. And then I still didn’t, although there was a large, golden horn sticking through the purse’s handles. We’d obviously gotten snagged on something when we fell, but what, I wasn’t sure.