And . . . more. So much more.”
I stopped and I waited, because getting him to talk was rare, while I talked all the time. The least I could do is be silent for once, while he had his chance. So I was, and it worked.
After a moment, he sighed and then spoke again. “So much has happened recently. So much change. Some of it bad, with the war and the constant fighting. But much of it, for me personally, has been good. And some of that has been beyond good. I was afraid, no, I was sure, that the other shoe was soon to drop.
“My life has always been a rollercoaster, one with far more lows than highs. I suppose I have gotten into the habit of assuming that it will always be so, and that any high is begging for a correction. And meeting you, all that we are together, all that we could become—”
“Is a hell of a high.” I felt a little dizzy with it myself, half the time.
He nodded. “I don’t doubt your abilities—yours, apart from Dorina. I was simply afraid, and I did not know what to do about it. I wanted to protect the most important person in my life, but . . . I acted badly.”
“I forgive you.”
He quirked a brow. “That was fast. You should make me work for it a little more. I am, after all, rarely wrong.”
I managed not to roll my eyes—just. “I intend to,” I said. “We’re going to get Dorina back so you can bite me and I can stop having idiots like Tomas ask if we’re ‘really married’.”
He smiled.
“But, since that may be a while, I think you owe me a little down payment.”
He looked slightly wary. “In the form of?”
I smiled and put my arms around his neck. “We can start with what you heard in that room at Lily’s.”
Dorina, Faerie
The crab was as large as a car, but mottled green and brown, which was why it could not easily be seen among the treetops. It had been fitted with two seats in front and a long, bench type one in back. Ray and I were on the back one, with ropes across our laps to help us keep our seats. Our guide, who occupied one of the front seats, had informed us that these creatures could climb up completely perpendicular trunks as easily as they could skitter through the forest canopy above, so we would have to hold on.
The camp was a flurry of activity, as everyone packed up their substitute for horses. The group of fey we had met with were hunters, on a food-finding trip for a larger gathering—much larger, from what I understood. And now we were going back.
“How are the legs?” Ray asked, looking at the bright green leggings I had acquired.
“They are well.”
“Are you sure? I mean, I know you’ve been walking around and all, but can you run? Fight?”
I looked at him curiously. “I have been quite active all week. Why do you ask?”
“It’s just . . . we don’t know what we’ll find at this new camp, okay? We need to be ready for anything.”
“Did the fey say something to upset you?” I could not talk to them as yet, but Ray had been working hard to learn the local language. It had some things in common with a widespread trade dialect that he had used before, although not as much as he would have liked.
“I can’t be sure, since I get all of one word in ten,” he said fretfully.
“But?”
“But it sounded like . . .” He repeated a word in their tongue that I didn’t know. “It means ‘similar’, or ‘like you’,” he explained. “They said we were going to meet someone like us.”
Now I was the one frowning. “That could be either good or bad.”
“Yes! Yes, it could. So be ready.”
I nodded, and then said no more, as our unusual ride suddenly rose from a crouch to its full height. And immediately took off for the trunk of a very large tree. Our guide said something in their language, and Ray gripped the side of the seat.
“What did he say?” I asked, as the pincers gripped the wood.
“He said hold on!”
And then we were climbing. It was so fast that I barely realized what was happening before we were bursting out above the tree line. It was a beautiful view, with vividly colored trees—green and yellow and orange and deep purple—spreading out all