Annwyn told him, “Thank you.” The other woman turned her attention to Sophie. “You should stay here, rest, eat, and warm up. You are in no shape for another ride with the puck.”

“No,” Sophie said so fiercely the other woman looked taken aback. “Tie me to Robin’s back if you must, but I have to go back.”

“If you insist,” Annwyn said.

* * *

After Sophie and Robin disappeared, the night felt even more cold and bleak with emptiness.

Finally Nikolas forced himself to stop looking after them. As he turned back to the other men, he found Braden standing at his elbow.

“Vicansha and the children are so close,” Braden whispered.

Nikolas’s chest tightened. As difficult as the last decades had been for him and the other men, they had been even harder for Braden.

He gripped Braden’s shoulder. “When we get reinforcements, I’m releasing you from duty. You can go to your wife and children.”

Tears spilled down the other man’s taut face. “Thank you, sir.”

Nikolas paused. “How do you do it?” he asked. “How do you make that kind of commitment, when we live such dangerous lives?”

Braden shrugged and wiped his face. “The love has to be bigger than everything else. The isolation, the separation, the danger. When the love is bigger than all that—you just do it. You pay the price in uncertainty and sometimes bereavement, because every moment you’re together is worth the cost. If the love is big enough, yet you don’t take that chance… man, it doesn’t matter what you’re fighting for. You’ve lost.”

Nikolas tightened his fingers, then let his hand drop and bent to pick up the skull again.

Watching him with a grim expression, Gawain said, “We might have known that poor bloke well. He could have been a friend.”

“Whoever he was, we need to give him a proper burial,” Nikolas said. “Sophie promised.” He tucked the skull aside carefully so that it could be attended to later, and he told the others, “We need to get a fire going and build a wind barrier.”

They set to work. After some quick effort, they had a large lean-to built and propped against the hillside to cover the hole that led to the oubliette. It was constructed of pine branches heavy with needles so that it blocked the worst of the wind.

While some worked on building the lean-to, others sourced deadfall wood, and soon they had a fire going. It didn’t feel like it warmed the area so much as eased a little of the bitter chill, but at least they could heat some of the water and the food they carried in their packs for calories and warmth, which helped.

Nikolas thought of Sophie, riding the puck in the elements, and clamped down on a surge of worry. None of them were dressed for deep winter, but they were hardier than her, and they had the advantage of some rudimentary shelter.

Time passed, and the moon traveled across the sky. Most of the others huddled close to share body warmth while they napped, but Nikolas couldn’t rest. He fed the fire and kept watch.

Sophie and Robin had to have reached Raven’s Craig by now. He imagined them talking to Annwyn. What would happen next? She would muster a fighting force, and while they would have the advantage of horses, the route would be treacherous with snow and ice. It might be another thirty-six to forty-eight hours before anyone arrived.

He sat on a log, at one end of the lean-to, his head in his hands. Two days in Lyonesse would be weeks on Earth. Morgan might have weeks to do as much damage as he could. After so much effort, they might not make it back across in time after all.

Thunder sounded in the distance and grew louder. It approached too quickly to be a thunderstorm.

It sounded like many galloping horses.

Cael stirred and murmured, “What’s that?”

Nikolas stood, looking out as the first of an army of five hundred appeared over a rise, with a fiery black stallion racing at their head. Annwyn had made the two-day journey within a few hours.

Robin plunged to a halt in front of Nikolas, followed by Annwyn astride a dappled gelding, along with Hershel, Rogier, Dihanna, and many others Nikolas recognized.

But he had eyes only for the cloaked figure lying prone along the stallion’s back. Running over to Robin, he lifted back the hood to stare at Sophie’s white face. As he touched her cold cheek, she whispered through bloodless lips, “I’m okay. Just super cold and tired. They tied me on so I wouldn’t fall off.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he swore. He felt along her arms to discover the rope tied around her wrists and worked to get the knots undone.

Her mouth trembled. “Don’t yell at me right now.”

“I’m not going to yell at you, my Sophie,” he whispered. “I’m going to yell at them.”

Annwyn approached. She clasped Nikolas’s arm in a tight hold and gave him a look that sparkled with unshed tears. Then she moved to untie Sophie’s other wrist.

“I tried to talk her into staying behind at Raven’s Craig, but she insisted,” Annwyn told him.

“I take it back,” Nikolas said to Sophie. “I am going to yell at you.”

As her hands came free, he lifted her off the stallion’s back and cradled her in his arms. Bowing his head over hers, he hugged her tight.

“Fine,” she gritted, shivering. “But I get to have a cup of coffee first.”

He looked up at the puck, who stared back, ferocious and unfriendly. Telepathically he said to Robin, Thank you for carrying her safely. And for bringing the others. We owe you—I owe you so much.