“How can I, when it’s you, Glenna? If I lost you—”

“Hoyt.” She gripped his arms, a kind of impatient comfort. “Any or all of us might die in this. I’m fighting to understand and accept that. But if you die, I won’t live with the responsibility of knowing it was for me. I won’t do it.”

She sat on the side of the bed. “I killed tonight. I know how it feels to end something. To use my power to do that, something I never thought I’d do, need to do.” She held out her hands to study them. “I did it to save another human being, and still it weighs on me. I know that if I’d done it with stake or sword I’d accept it more easily. But I used magic to destroy.”

She lifted her face to his, and the sorrow was deep in her eyes. “This gift was always so bright, and now there’s a darkness in it. I have to understand and accept that, too. And you have to let me.”

“I accept your power, Glenna, and what you can and will do with it. I think all of us would be better served by it if you worked solely on the magicks.”

“And left the bloody work to you? Off the front line, out of harm’s way, stirring my cauldron?”

“Twice this night I nearly lost you. So you’ll do as I say.”

It took a moment to find her voice. “Well, in a pig’s eye. Twice this night I faced death, and I survived.”

“We’ll discuss this further tomorrow.”

“Oh no, oh no, we won’t.” She flicked out a hand, slammed the door to the bathroom inches before he reached it.

He whirled back, a man obviously at the end of his tether. “Don’t slap your power out at me.”

“Don’t slap your manhood out at me. And that didn’t come out the way I meant it.” Because there was laughter tickling the back of her throat right along with the temper, she took a breath. “I won’t snap to, Hoyt, when you order it, any more than I expect you will for me. You were frightened for me, and oh boy, do I understand that, because I was frightened for me. And for you, for all of us. But we have to get past it.”

“How?” he demanded. “How is that done? This love is new for me, this need and this terror that goes with it. When we were called for this, I thought it would be the hardest thing I’d ever done. But I was wrong. Loving you is harder, loving you and knowing I could lose you.”

All of her life, she thought, she’d waited to be loved like this. What human didn’t? “I never knew I could feel so completely for anyone. This is new for me, too, hard and scary and new. And I wish I could say you won’t lose me. I wish I could. But I know the stronger I am, the better chance I have of staying alive. The stronger each one of us is, the better chance we have of surviving this. Of winning.”

She stood again. “I looked at King tonight, a man I’d come to like quite a lot. I looked at what they’d made of him. What they made of him wanted my blood, my death, would have rejoiced in it. Seeing that, knowing that, hurt beyond the believing of it. He was a friend. He became a friend so quickly.”

Her voice trembled, so that she had to turn away, move back to the window and the dark. “There was a part of me, even as I tried to save myself, that saw what he had been—the man who’d cooked with me, sat with me, laughed with me. I couldn’t use my powers against him, couldn’t pull it out of me to do that. If Cian hadn’t... ” She turned back now, straight and slim.

“I won’t be weak again. I won’t hesitate a second time. You have to trust me for that.”

“You called out for me to run. Would you say that was putting yourself in front of me in battle?”

She opened her mouth, closed it again. Cleared her throat. “Seemed like the thing to do at the time. All right, all right. Point made and taken. We’ll both work on it. And I’ve some ideas on weaponry that might be helpful. But before we put this, and ourselves to bed, I want to cover one more thing.”

“I don’t find myself at all surprised.”

“Fighting with your brother over me isn’t something I appreciate or consider flattering.”

“It wasn’t only about you.”

“I know that. But I was the catalyst. And I’m going to have a word with Moira about it, too. Of course, her idea of distracting Cian from us changed the entire scope of things.”

“It was madness for him to bring those things into the house. His own temper and arrogance could have cost us lives.”

“No.” She spoke quietly now, and with absolute certainty. “He was right to do it.”

Stunned, he gaped at her. “How can you say so? How can you defend him?”

“He made a very big and illuminating point, one we won’t be able to forget. We won’t always know when they’ll come, and we have to be ready to kill or be killed every minute, every day. We weren’t, not really. Even after King, we weren’t. If there’d been more of them, the odds more even, it might’ve been a very different story.”

“He stood by, did nothing.”

“Yes, he did. Another point. He’s the strongest of us, and the smartest in these circumstances. It’s up to us to work toward closing that gap. I have some ideas, at least for the two of us.”

She came to him, rising on her toes to brush her lips over his cheek. “Go ahead, wash up. I want to sleep on it. I want to sleep with you.”

She dreamed of the goddess, of walking through a world of gardens, where birds were bright as the flowers, and the flowers like jewels.

From a high black cliff, water the color of liquid sapphire tumbled down to strike a pool clear as glass where gold and ruby fish darted.

The air was warm and heavy with fragrance.

Beyond the gardens was a silver sickle of beach where the turquoise water lapped its edges gently as a lover. There were children building sparkling castles of sand, or splashing in the foamy surf. Their laughter carried on the air like the birdsong.

Rising from the beach were steps of shimmering white with diamonds of ruby red along their edges. High above them were houses, painted in dreamy pastels, skirted with yet more flowers, with trees that dripped blossoms.

She could hear music drifting down from the tall hill, the harps and flutes singing of joy.

“Where are we?”

“There are many worlds,” Morrigan told her as they walked. “This is just another. I thought you should see that you fight for more than yours, or his, or the world of your friends.”