body. I put my crown on the rock to my left and Hayyel sat to my right. I picked a sprig of rosemary from the herbs and dropped it on the burning wood. The strong scent of the burning herb rose on the air. “Okay. You’re Beast’s guardian angel. And Angie Baby’s. And you fight demons. And save werewolves. And help with vision quests, assuming that’s what this is. You’re a busy angel. I’m dying. I figure you’re here to take my soul to be judged, right?” He didn’t reply and my eyes narrowed as I watched the flames climb along the dry wood and char the rosemary to ash. Tone sour, I said, “But you’ve got something you want me to do first.”
Hayyel chuckled. “I have nothing planned for you, Dalonige’ i Digadoli. This choice is yours, to live or to die, as it has always been. To serve as queen or to slip into the next world.” He stretched out his arms, wrapped his fingers around one knee, pulling that leg up. He rocked back against the support, shoulders straining the fabric of his tunic, wings gone again. “I am merely here as an interested observer as you choose your next pathway.”
“I let go and got sucked into the water. I either went to another world in the rift or I’m drowning. Oh. And I have Dudley cancer. And the shadow’s talons in my body. And I’ve bled to death. Kinda out of my control.”
“Or you bubbled time and are ready to be healed.”
“That’s what got me in trouble and gave me Dudley in the first place.”
Hayyel shrugged. “Live or die.” He smiled. “However. You already braided the powers and magics together. It seems a shame to waste them. And you do have the scale . . .”
I sat up straight and reached into the belt wrapped around my waist. In its folds I found the Glob, the Anzu feather, and the arcenciel scale. Once upon a time I had used it as a mirror and untangled some of the mess that was my DNA. “Humph. How about that?”
I looked at my middle, seeing the tangled, twisted, shredded, knotted, doubled, broken DNA. And all that magic from too many species, too many sources. “It would take forever to get that all fixed.”
“Magic broke you. Perhaps magic can fix you.”
“Or . . . giving up magic.” I lifted the Glob in my other hand and held the two magical items close together. In my mind, I found the coil of braided magics in my belly and wrapped them all about the Glob and the scale. It was a messy tangle, much like a present wrapped by a kid. I added le breloque and the medicine bags containing the DNA from my five-year-old self into the mix. “If I’m going to do this, I can’t do it alone. I need power other than timewalking. I need the power of the beloved woman, the warrior who makes peace. I need—”
Heat shot through me as if Dudley had caught fire. A blistering pain, as if a red-hot branding iron had been dipped into my middle and boiled my juices. It stole my breath, stopped my heart. I tumbled back, off the warm rock to the cold stone floor, and landed hard. Smacking my head. Stars swam in my vision and through me, joining with the star magics in my middle. Whirling and spinning. The Glob sucked up the magic, ripping the spinning energy out of me. It drew in all the magics, all the broken bits of power and shredded DNA. Taking with it the pain. Stealing the tumor, sweeping Dudley into the maelstrom. A tornado of power and intent and purpose.
I took a deep, pain-free breath and sighed it out. The scale and the tail of my braided magics floated inside me. Together they began to unravel the mess that was my DNA. The extra strands disappeared. The shredded strands mended before my eyes. The scale spun and danced along with my own skinwalker magic, and the tail of the braided energies joined in.
Time passed. I had a feeling it was a lot of time. Days. Maybe weeks. I slept. I dreamed. I felt the passage of the moon and the tides and the movement of winds.
I came to slowly, first my hearing, then my sense of smell. I could tell by the ambient sounds and the wet-cave and old-fire scents that I was still in my soul home. I opened