Healing the vegetation wasn’t easy or fast. I often had to spend a lot of alone time with one tree or plant, and then frequent visits were required to keep aiding each step in the process. One day, I was sitting in an orchard near the Rowan castle, painstakingly encouraging each tree to grow its fruit. The day was sunny, and the grass—which had returned quickly—was green and lush beneath me. There was less birdsong than there used to be, which was a little weird. The animals had been hit as hard as the people, but many assured me that within a year, we could expect our furry and feathered countrymen to replenish their numbers.

I rested my hand on the bark of a cherry tree, my eyes closed. I felt the pulse of the tree’s life and tried to join it with both myself and the land so that we could lend the tree our strength. A thump in the grass beside me snapped me out of my trance, and I looked down to see a bright red apple in the grass beside me. I smiled and picked it up.

“This isn’t one of mine,” I said as a familiar shadow fell over me.

Dorian eased himself down beside me, sitting cross-legged. He carried an apple of his own and bit into it. He swallowed and smiled back at me. “Our second harvest. I would’ve brought you some from the first, but we needed them too badly.”

“You should’ve kept these too.” I bit into the apple. It was delicious. “Second, huh? I’m behind.”

He glanced up at the cherry tree. “You seem to be doing just fine. Besides, you’ve also had to do twice as much work as me, remember? You’re not overtiring yourself, are you?”

I leaned back in the grass and swallowed another bite of apple. “Nothing I can’t handle. After that crazy journey to the Yew Land, hanging out here with trees all day feels downright lazy.”

Dorian stretched out beside me so that our shoulders touched. “Do you have plans to go back to the human world? I know you must be burning to.”

“I am,” I admitted. “We’re pushing two months. Two months, Dorian! Isaac and Ivy have to be out of the NICU now. I need them to know who I am. And I need Roland to know I’m okay too. I’m nearing a point where the lands will be okay without me, but then ... well, I’m not sure of my next move. When I last saw Kiyo, he made it clear they weren’t giving up on preventing the prophecy.”

“I feel pretty confident that Maiwenn’s preoccupied with exactly the same kinds of tasks we are in restoring our lands,” he said.

“I don’t doubt it. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if Kiyo’s out there watching and waiting. If I go to the twins, there’s a good chance I’ll compromise their location.” I sighed. This had been something I’d had a lot of time to think about while tending my lands. “I’m in the same bind as before they were born.”

“Not entirely,” said Dorian. “Before, you were a moving target because you always had to be in multiple places. Now? Your children don’t have to move around. You keep them in one place, and you keep them safe. Go to them and bring them back with you. Put them in a stronghold somewhere.”

“But will they ever have peace?” I asked sadly. “Even if they grow up surrounded in bodyguards, their identities will be known here. There’ll always be people trying to kill them—or at least trying to kill Isaac.”

Dorian was adamant. “I have no doubt they’ll be powerful once they’re older. They’ll be able to look after themselves. And until then, I swear, I’ll give you half my forces to keep them safe in whatever location you choose.”

I turned to him, unable to hide a smile. “Half? Isn’t that kind of extreme?”

His eyes, completely serious, studied me for several moments. “Not for you.”

My smile faded, and I suddenly felt confused. My heart leapt in my chest. “Why would you do that for me?”

“What wouldn’t I do for you?”

His voice was husky, and he propped himself up so that he could lean over me. I closed my eyes and felt his lips touch mine. It was a sweet kiss, a kiss as warm and lazy as the sunny day around us. It filled my body with a life and light not unlike what I felt from my kingdoms. There was a rightness to the feel of his body against mine, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, entwining my fingers in his hair and drawing him closer. His kiss picked up in intensity, and I welcomed it, parting my lips to taste more of him.

With as much caution as I’d ever seen Dorian exert in amorous affairs, his hand slid up my shirt and lightly grazed my breast. I gasped and arched my body toward his, giving him more than enough encouragement to grow bolder. He pushed my shirt up altogether and then brought his mouth down to my nipple. I gasped again, my own hands moving toward his pants. After unplanned pregnancy, childbirth, and near-starvation, I hadn’t thought my body would ever feel like this. Now, it was as though none of those things had ever happened. My body was alive again. It wanted him.

The problem was, I wasn’t sure if I did.

“No ... wait ...” With great reluctance, I gently pushed him up. He complied immediately, still hovering over me but halting in his advances. A regretful look came over his face.

“Too soon,” he guessed.

“Eh, well, not exactly ... I mean I have no problem doing it,” I said. “I just don’t know where we stand with ... other stuff.”

He considered this. “I assume we stand in a much better place than before.”

I almost laughed. “Well, yes, but there are things we need to figure out.”

Dorian stared at me and brushed hair from my face. “Not me. I already know everything I need to know.”

I fell into that gaze and felt something start to open in my heart. I began to reach toward him, wanting to kiss him again when—

“Your Majesty!”

The perfect, golden moment shattered as I heard voices and running feet. Well, it shattered for me, at least. From the way I had to get out from under him, it was clear that Dorian could have continued kissing through a war zone. I sat up in the grass, dazzled by the sun and my pounding heart and the myriad feelings churning within me. I fixed my shirt and hoped I didn’t look too disheveled. It took my soldiers a moment to find me, since I no longer traveled with a bodyguard at all times. They looked relieved to see me.

“Your Majesty,” exclaimed the leader, giving me a quick bow. “You have a visitor. Roland Storm Slayer is—”

“Roland!”

He was walking out across the green toward us, in no haste to keep up with the guards who had heralded his arrival. I ran to him with my arms outstretched and heard Dorian say ruefully, “A man can never compete with a woman’s father.”

Roland lifted me up and spun me around as he returned the hug. His eyes shone, and I actually think he looked more relieved to see me now than he had in Alabama.

“Eugenie, you’re alive,” he said, once he’d set me down. He still kept his arms around me. “When so much time went by without any news, I thought ... well, I thought the worst.” He glanced around at the verdant landscape. “I take it you fixed the problem.”

“We did,” I said happily. “We’ve still got a lot of recovery to do, but things are on the mend. That’s why I haven’t been able to get back to you. Plus, Volusian’s gone—banished—so I couldn’t send a message.”

That earned me raised eyebrows. “I wondered why I hadn’t heard from him. Though I can’t say I’m disappointed he’s gone.”

Dorian reached us then and gave Roland a nod of greeting. “I agree with you on that,” Dorian said. “Though, as much as I hate acknowledging it, Volusian was the reason we were able to destroy the blight in the end.”

“Well, then,” said Roland. “I guess something positive came from that fiend. I knew something had happened here when I saw the boy, but I wasn’t exactly sure if it was good or bad.”

Roland’s happy expression had dimmed a little, which I couldn’t understand. I didn’t know what his comment had meant either. “The boy?”

He nodded. “The one I met before. The one who was raiding Tucson and Phoenix.”

I exchanged puzzled glances with Dorian. “You mean Pagiel?” I asked. “What about him?”

“He’s back,” said Roland. “And since I knew you took him with you on your quest, I figured either you’d succeeded and freed him up to come back or else failed and forced him to more of the same.”

For a few moments, I was totally confused. When I was finally able to parse what Roland was saying, I nearly reeled. I was certain I’d misunderstood.

“You don’t mean ... you don’t mean Pagiel’s back in Arizona?”

Roland nodded. “Back with more people. Back for more raids.”

Chapter 24

I immediately turned to Dorian.

“I know nothing,” he said, quickly guessing my question. “This is the first time I’ve heard anything about this.” He turned to Roland. “Forgive me for any doubts ... but I have to ask: are you certain you saw him?” It was amazing how quickly Dorian had recovered from my romantic mixed signals to dealing with the task at hand. I was reminded of my discussion with Kiyo: no matter the problems between Dorian and me, we always put them aside to work as a team.

“Positive,” said Roland. “I was on the scene at one of the raids. He’s hard to miss with that hair. The others have made the news, and each time, the footage showed these crazy haboobs that just didn’t look natural. That, and we don’t generally get four of them in two weeks. The boy controls wind and air, right?”

“Right,” I said with dismay.

Dorian arched an eyebrow. “Haboob? Isn’t that slang for—”

“It’s a kind of sandstorm,” I interrupted. “They occur all over the world, and Arizona gets them every once in a while. The Thorn Land theoretically could, but I’m too in sync with its weather to let one happen.”