“I’m going to try one more time,” he said. “Stand back.”

She skipped back a step, watching him curiously. This time he didn’t reach for anything to throw. Instead, she felt a massive surge in his Power. Suddenly light appeared in the palm of one of his hands, and he threw it. Like a bolt of lightning, the Power snapped across the space to the window and impacted it with another crack that echoed across the clearing.

A chill ran down her spine as she watched. That bolt of lightning—that had been what he had thrown at her two weeks ago.

She was a good, competent magic user. She had her bag of tricks: an affinity working with silver and with runes, a certain ability of prescience that she had honed over the years, a decent repertoire of spells, and a nice little bit of time-space-dimension woo-woo from her Djinn heritage—not a lot, just a little. She was talented enough that, so far, she had made her skills work to her advantage.

But in terms of raw strength, she had nothing to compare to this. Nikolas’s Power was world-class, and he would be able to hold his own among the heaviest hitters in any of the demesnes. What else was he capable of doing?

He turned to her and caught her staring at him. For the first time, she saw real excitement in his eyes. “I threw as much Power as I could into that morningstar, and it still didn’t break.”

Was that what the spell was called? She glanced at the intact window, then back at him. Why was he so excited? She murmured, “That’s not really a surprise at this point….”

“This building might be dangerous,” he told her. “But unless you have Djinn magic, the inside has got to be one of the most secure places on Earth. Virtually a fortress.”

“Sure,” she said, watching him uncertainly. “Probably. That’s what it looks like, anyway.”

He advanced to grab her by the shoulders. His handsome features were ablaze. “And one of those pieces of the jigsaw puzzle must connect to home. That’s where the old crossover passageway here used to lead. Right?”

She took hold of his wrists, gripping him as he gripped her. “I-I don’t know. I guess it might be possible? But the operative word here is might.”

He said, “Djinn can’t dematerialize and travel from Earth to Other lands, and back again. They can only travel within a certain dimension. They have to use crossover passageways just like everyone else. We all knew that. None of us ever considered, in all of this time, that a Djinn might still be able to use the pieces of broken land magic to make the trip from here to Lyonesse.”

She sucked in a breath. There was so much hope in his face he looked like an entirely different man from the hard, closed-down stranger she had first laid eyes on. It was painful to look at him. In the intensity of his hope, she saw the true depth of the tragedy he had endured and the heartbreak.

Gently she said, “Oh, Nikolas, this is all just a theory. We still don’t know if I’m right. Please don’t let your hopes get too high.”

In response, he hauled her close, kissed her hard, and then looked at the house again. “Too late.”

* * *

Sophie looked worried. It was not an expression he was used to seeing on her face. Strangely, it made him want to pause long enough to pass his hand over the heavy, curling mass of her hair.

A better man than he would remind her again of the increasing danger she faced as she grew more and more entangled with the Dark Court.

But he was not a better man. He would do anything, use anyone, and use himself hardest of all, in order to break through to home, to find that safe fortress for his men, to turn the murderous tide that had all but washed the Daoine Sidhe away into memory.

And he knew what she would say if he did try to warn her. He would get another old-timey folk lecture. She was suicidally brave, he had to give her that.

Obeying an instinct he couldn’t put into words, he pressed his lips to her forehead. “Break into that house,” he told her. “Claim it. Own it. And I will rent it from you for a fortune. I’ll get you anything you want. Money. Jewels. A villa in Capri. I’ll build you a house that is actually comfortable and safe to live in.”

She lifted one shoulder and gave him a sly, mischievous smile. “I don’t really want a villa in Capri. I just like to say that to assholes.”

He bit back a returning smile. “And you do like to call me an asshole, don’t you?”

Her eyes widened. “I do. In fact, it’s become one of my favorite pastimes.” That caused him to laugh out loud—something he couldn’t remember doing for a very long time. Her eyes twinkled in response, and then she sobered to say, “I’m not the kind of person that likes to take advantage of other people’s misfortunes, and I have no interest in taking a fortune from you. If I’m able to break into the house, I’ll consider renting it to you for a fair price. I don’t even know what that means or what a fair price would be to rent a hulking, magical, dangerous, unlivable pile of a building. Let’s take it one step at a time, okay?”

She wasn’t just suicidally brave. She had a good heart. Nikolas didn’t believe that about many people anymore, but he was starting to believe that about her. Lightly he placed a flattened hand over the middle of her chest, covering where her heart lived and beat its strong, true, steady beat.

Her expression softened and grew puzzled, but she didn’t push his hand away. Instead, she patted it, then she turned to give the house a determined look. He turned to look at it too.