Jen was there waiting. She’d shifted back to her human self. Already the unearthly glow around her had faded, her eyes returning to the calm sea shade he loved.
He lit as lightly as he could. The staff gently eased Cleo onto a waiting bed, and he stepped up beside her, bowed his head, and touched his horn to her brow. Shiftsilver was especially vicious when taken internally. But he found the source . . .
Cleo gave a great cough, gasped, and the tiny silver pellet scarcely bigger than a grain of rice landed on the ground.
As a human staff member picked it up with a tong and to
ok it away to be disposed of, Cleo’s color flooded back, and she burst into tears. “I’m so stupid! I thought Ariadne was my friend! It was nothing but a trap!” she wailed. “Medusa sent that horrible Keraunos to keep Kyrios Nikos busy, and those men made me get into a boat because I couldn’t shift, couldn’t do anything, and Medusa said that someone would show up for me, and she hoped it would be his mate, and there was nothing I could do!” Her chin wobbled.
Jen dropped down beside the bed. “It didn’t work,” she soothed. “In fact, thanks to Medusa and Ariadne, my phoenix and I are whole. I think Medusa was very, very sorry to see that.”
Cleo gave a small smile through her tears. “You were so powerful! Will you be like that all the time now?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone could live like that all the time.”
“Medusa was scared! But . . .” She hiccoughed. “I had such a fun day, until the picnic, and then I started feeling sick, and I didn’t know what it was. And Ariadne was so nice. Even at the end, she apologized. S-said she h-had to put that poisonous stuff in my food, or else they’d do something to her family . . .”
Nikos shifted to his human self and backed away as Jen spoke to Cleo in a low, affectionate voice until the sobbing halted, and Cleo lay back with a sigh.
“Now, promise me you’ll sleep,” Jen said.
“You’re lucky,” Tassos spoke up from behind. “You won’t be on rock duty when we fix the path.”
Cleo chuckled weakly.
A half-circle of hetairoi had gathered around Cleo’s bed. As they all wished her fast healing and made encouraging noises, she smiled mistily up at them, then let out a tired sigh, closing her eyes.
Nikos turned to his group and tipped his head toward the door. Outside, he addressed Mateo. “Are the would-be invaders on their way down the mountain?”
“Delos and his team are just handing them off to the harbor patrol right now.” He scowled. “But Keraunos is still at large.”
“Then we’ll continue to move in pairs, back to alert status. Everyone, get a meal, and rest in four hour batches. We’re all tired.”
He watched them troop off, then turned to Jen, who drifted up next to him. He felt her effort not to throw her arms around him right then and there, in front of the hetairoi—an effort intensified by his own desire. But duty first; the castle was a mess, the zigzag path—the only way for the non-flying to reach the castle—in rubble at a crucial juncture. Keraunos was still . . . somewhere.
So he mastered himself, and began issuing a stream of orders.
The rest of that morning they went everywhere together, as if being apart would hurt. His unicorn hummed within him, a deep note matched by the crystalline purity of the phoenix’s chiming hum. Layer by layer disorder became order: the former prisoners were duly handed off to Medusa.
The watch that had been awake longest was dismissed to their rest. Everyone else got a hot meal, while the staff was busy with their part of restoring order.
Those who’d rested most recently departed on patrol, both high and low, and in pairs.
At last, Nikos and Jen were alone. As one they shifted and flew to the aerie, unicorn and phoenix side by side, then shifted back. Nikos delighted in the way Jen gave a little hop as she shifted from bird to human.
They walked into his room as he said, “I don’t know if I should admit this, but the sight of your body in my clothes this past few—”
Her hand shot past his head. Slammed the door.
Then she was on him.
The kiss was sweet for about two seconds, then it was hungry, tongues clashing, searching. She bit his lower lip, and he gasped, heat nearly blinding him. They stumbled toward the bed, kissing, touching. Impatient fingers ripping at buttons, zippers. Clothes dropped in a path of fabric leading toward the bed, where they fell together.
His entire body lit up, every nerve a brilliant blue. He was so deeply attuned to her by now that he lost his barriers as her sensations were his, and his hers: he felt the sun’s molten gold running through her veins, and deep within her core the white-hot heat of yearning.
She roped her hand through his hair as he bent to devour one breast, then the other. She arched her back and he licked the hollow of her throat, rolling with her, skin to skin. He forced himself to slow—their first time was not going to be over in ten seconds, she deserved better than that—and so he took his time running his hands all over her, cherishing every curve as he mapped her body. He felt it as her skin sizzled and the sunlight hummed in her veins, narrowing to the pulse beating between her legs, until he pressed a long, soft kiss there—and then darted his tongue deep within her.
And her body ignited, igniting his.