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  “We don’t have much of a relationship.”

  “Liar.” There was nothing but love in his accusation. “I fought my father. He’s one of the enforcers in my birth pack. I defeated him, and I left the pack. I hate a whole lot of the violently hierarchical thinking that he upholds. We’re estranged. But as difficult as our relationship is, it exists. He gave me his grandfather’s knife to bring with me on the Migration.”

  “Whereas my dad gave me insults. He insulted you.”

  Rory ran his hand up and down my spine. “I didn’t take offense. Sean has a lot to learn and a lot of emotions to deal with. Forget his words. The truth is in his actions. He walked in here, through a portal, with Nils to reach you. For a man scared of monsters and magic that says what you mean to him.”

  “Maybe. Or he could be spying for the militia,” I muttered morosely.

  Rory patted my butt. “I think you and Sean could do with a little time apart.”

  “Having only just reunited.”

  He ignored me. “And it might be better if he learned what you’ve been doing from someone else. His reactions before he fully understands your circumstances could hurt you. We could wait and ask one of your family to fill him in.”

  “Human to human? No. But you’re right, I don’t want to have memories of him judging me and saying things like…”

  Laughter rumbled in Rory’s chest. “I’d love to have you as my sex slave. It’s my new goal. Learn to pleasure you until you’re begging.” He smiled at me. “Or you could make me your sex slave?” he asked hopefully.

  “You’d like that.”

  “I would.” He kissed me intensely.

  I nipped his ear. “Would Nils talk to Dad?”

  “Yes. Would you mind if Sorcha was with them?”

  I could feel him tense in response to my sudden tension. “It’s okay, Rory. I understand why you had to ask, and why I have to agree.”

  “Sorcha can question him later.”

  I shook my head. “I wouldn’t forgive myself if Dad or I brought trouble to Justice. If Nils and Sorcha wouldn’t mind…”

  “Nils is your friend, and the town meeting tasked Sorcha with leading the investigation into the militia. They’ll do this. And they’re pack. Pack has each other’s backs.”

  Instead of heading to the kitchen, Rory led me to Istvan’s office. We found him in there with his friend, Piros.

  Istvan’s neck feathers rippled in a sign of agitation. “Amy?”

  “Dad’s not too happy with me. Rory,” my husband gave me a push toward Istvan, “suggested that maybe Nils could explain how things have ended up as they are, with me here.” I tucked myself against the black griffin’s side and his wing came over me. “Sorcha can watch and ask Dad questions about the militia.” I glanced at Piros, then. I wanted the Fae councilor to know that I wasn’t asking for special treatment for Sean. I was putting everyone’s safety first.

  “Amy’s had enough to cope with, today,” Rory said. “Piros, while I speak with Nils and Sorcha, could you fly Amy across to Lajos’s herb farm? Amy can watch the house raising with Tineke.”

  Escaping the magistrate hall to watch the construction of my family’s new home sounded wonderful. I had an objection, though. “I can walk there.” It was on the other side of the Mississippi River, but there was a bridge.

  “The crowds,” Istvan said. “Your wedding guests have lingered to observe events—the militia’s implied threat and the town of Justice’s response. It’s easier if you avoid them.”

  And with so many interested eyes, and many of them critical, we couldn’t waste magic either. So Rory couldn’t portal or levitate us across the river, not when the bridge made a mundane method of crossing possible.

  “It would be my pleasure to carry you,” Piros said.

  “I’m afraid I have an appointment with Vera. I cannot accompany you,” Istvan said regretfully.

  “Piros and I will be fine.” I patted Istvan’s shoulder and smiled politely at the red dragon. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll join you as soon as I can,” Rory said.

  I nodded. As the head of the Magisterial Guard Unit for the North American Territory, as well as in his position as leader for the newest werewolf pack, Hope Fang, Rory had duties beyond babysitting his new wife. He was steadier, recovering his balance after the shock of the militia’s threat against me. I had to be the same.

  Piros and I walked up to the roof of the magistrate hall together. Or rather, I jogged and he ambled. If my eyesight had been as keen as Istvan’s I could have spied Lajos’s house construction from the roof. As it was, all I saw was a blur of green that meant his garden.

  For the short hop across the river, I decline Piros’s offer to don a harness. Thanks to Dorotta, a copper-colored dragon friend who’d couriered me places even as she guarded me, I was somewhat comfortable with dragon riding.

  Piros crouched like a statue as I climbed up to perch astride the base of his neck. I gripped one of his spikes. “I’m ready.”

  He leapt from the roof. A single flap of his vast wings brought us in a lazy glide across the river. He landed on the unpaved street in front of Lajos’s herb garden. Tineke’s cottage stood to our left, nearer the bridge. A huge pile of fallen trees, sand and other raw materials spilled both sides of the dividing lines between their lots.

  She and Lajos greeted us.

  “Come on forward. It’s safe,” Lajos added. “We’re still considering the site and adjusting the house design accordingly.”

  “Think twice, enchant once,” Piros said, which sounded like a Faerene adage. “May I see your design?”

  He and Tineke crossed paths, him heading to Lajos and Tineke joining me on the street.

  “Everything okay?” she asked worriedly. “Has your family changed their minds?”

  “No! They’re grateful to Lajos.” I looked beyond her to where Lajos frowned at us. At me. He’d passed his slate—the magical equivalent of an old human internet-connected tablet—to Piros. “I didn’t think! I’ve interrupted you. Rory suggested I pop in, and I snatched the excuse and…my dad’s here and he’s all messed up. In his thinking.”

  “Of course you’re welcome here.” The elf woman put an arm around my shoulders. “Do you want to talk about it or concentrate on the house?”

  Lajos abandoned Piros and joined us. “You are welcome, Amy. Whatever doubts your father’s reappearance has put in your mind and spirit, you are welcome.”

  I sniffed.

  Piros stopped pretending to be interested in house design. “What did your father say?”

  “That you’re all monsters and that I’m Rory’s sex slave. Rory—”

  Tineke’s explosive giggle interrupted me.

  “Lucky Rory,” Lajos murmured, his gaze on Tineke. He loved her and never hid his devotion.

  Tineke, for her own private reasons, whilst treating him as a close friend, obviously struggled to allow their relationship to develop romantically. Yet there was a wistfulness to her and a lack of decisive rejection that suggested she wished for increased closeness. A problem lurked in her past that put a barrier between them.

  Seeing them together, planning a family house, I realized that I was crashing a significant step forward in their relationship. Piros and I had interrupted an experience they’d been enjoying sharing together.

  “Piros, would you mind carrying me back to the hall?”

  “Don’t be daft,” Lajos said. “The house will be two stories, plus cellar and attics. Tineke thinks we should have a wraparound porch on both levels.”

  “It’s extra living space. Some of it can be closed in…”

  I smiled because Lajos had said “we should have” and Tineke had accepted it.

  Lajos smiled back. “Sometimes letting someone help you, helps them.”

  I finally relaxed. Not only was I welcome, but Lajos had decided that we’d discuss the house and not my father and related problems. Pre-Migration on Elysium, he’d been a psychiatrist
.

  Tineke and I wandered around. She paced out rooms and indicated angles. “If we raise the house a little, a porch swing here will have a view of the river.”

  There was to be a bedroom and bathroom on the ground floor for Stella.

  “Guest suite,” Lajos said gruffly when I protested that they needed to build the house to his needs, not my family’s.

  “Or it can be used as an office.” Tineke fiddled with the slate. “Bar this door to the rest of the house and you have a separate space in which to meet customers from the herb farm.”

  Piros excused himself and flew back to the hall.

  Tineke and Lajos easily juggled current and future demands the house would need to meet.

  “Where are you going to sleep?” I asked Lajos. “None of my family, and especially Stella and Niamh, will accept you living in the tent through winter while they’re snug in your house. I know it’s totally your decision and you probably don’t want to live with a human family but…you’d better be warned they will nag you about it.”

  “I’d planned to winter in my tent all along. It’s weatherproof.”

  I wrapped my braid around my hand and tugged on it, unconvinced that Stella or Niamh would let go the issue of fairness and Lajos’s comfort. They couldn’t live comfortably in his house while he occupied a tent.

  “We’ll sort it out,” Lajos said. “I’m going to start raising the house. Foundations are boring, so if you want to discuss with Tineke the farm buildings your family will need, now would be a good time.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t considered. We’re putting you to so much trouble.”

  Tineke slapped my shoulder. “You’re not! It’s nice to be building for the future. And I can see Rory walking up from the feed store, so he’ll tell me, if you won’t, what your family needs.” She grinned, pleased with her own sneakiness. She shouted. “Rory, what farm buildings does your family need?”

  I blinked away a burn of tears. “I love you,” I said to her. For calling my family Rory’s. For accepting us. For everything.

  She lost her mischievous smile, but her expression of understanding and hope meant even more.

  I greeted Rory with a kiss, refrained from asking him anything about Sean or happenings back at the hall, and occupied myself in planning Tineke’s farm buildings.

  Rory vetoed most of our ideas. Okay, all of our ideas, except for the barn. “It’s a big structure,” he said. “It’ll help if you put that up for them. It’s somewhere for the animals to go, immediately. But Digger and the rest are resourceful. They’ll build the sheds they need and fences for smaller fields and pens. I can help with raw materials and lumber.”

  “I’ve got that,” Tineke said. “One of the perks of being on the Reclamation Team.” She surveyed her land. “I’ll build the chicken coop. I saw one back on Elysium that was designed like a miniature castle.”

  Oh good golly.

  “I brought chestnut cakes.” Rory strode away, ignoring the issue of the chickens’ domicile. “Peggy packed the basket.” He retrieved it from the porch of Tineke’s cute cottage. “Mugs?” he asked her. “I’ve got coffee. Peggy added a flask.”

  I was so busy watching Rory walk and trailing after him that it took me half a minute to realize that Tineke hadn’t answered him.

  The stack of lumber and other materials between her and Lajos’s lots hid his work on the house’s foundations, but didn’t obscure her view of his tent site. She stared at it.

  I couldn’t see her face, but I wondered how similar we were. Both of us were obsessed with our men, but I was free to love Rory, and Tineke was tangled up in her feelings for Lajos. Her energy and enthusiasm for projects served as a mask. Sometimes it lifted and we saw the loneliness beneath.

  Rory knew more of Tineke’s history than I did, but he kept her secrets.

  I didn’t ask or comment on her sudden abstraction. Everyone worked through problems their own way. I sat down on the porch steps and studied the town of Justice, so filled with people and new beginnings.

  People.

  Dad saw them as monsters.

  “Did you say something about cake?” Tineke joined us, all happy energy again. How much was real and how much was faked and how much did it matter when she meant the goodwill beneath it?

  “Cake and coffee. Packed by Peggy.” Rory indicated the basket. “Mugs?”

  “I’ll grab four.”

  Rory held out his hand to me, pulling me up. He picked up the basket before tucking my hand in the crook of his elbow. We strolled out to the street. It was the safest route to approach Lajos mid-magic.

  “You are such a cute couple.” Four mugs dangled from Tineke’s fingers.

  I took two of them.

  Skirting the barrier of the lumber pile, we got our first look at Lajos’s progress.

  The foundations were in, the cellar lined with stone and its pipes obvious. Given that Istvan had put in place all the foundations for the town of Justice and raised the magistrate hall in a single day, I didn’t blink at Lajos’s achievements.

  Rory shared out the coffee and cake and we wandered around, examining the layout of the house now that the foundations were in, and how it sat on the lot with views of the herb garden and river, and across town. Whether raised by magic or sweat, the interest of onlookers in examining progress on a house construction seemed the same. I know I couldn’t resist.

  Tineke approved of the wide stone steps down to the cellar. She skipped down them. “Shelves, cupboards, storage chests. Lajos, you can stay in my cottage.”

  She might have thought she was sliding in the invitation unobtrusively, but when Lajos choked on a mouthful of chestnut cake, there went any chance of pretending that her offer wasn’t important.

  His face flushed emerald green as he coughed and spluttered. The tips of his pointed elven ears flushed an even deeper green.

  “I was going to offer to help prepare the lumber,” Rory said as Lajos’s coughing died away into a strained silence. “But we’ll be going now.”

  I snatched up the basket. Rory took it from me. We scampered down the street. Well, I scampered and he saved me from tripping as I kept turning my head around to try and see Tineke and Lajos, and being defeated by the pile of lumber stacked in-between.

  “Should I signal for Piros to collect you?” Rory asked.

  I looked forward, at the bridge we’d cross, and the people on it. Given the example of Tineke’s courage, I could handle a little curiosity. “I’m fine.” I hugged his arm. “Do you think Tineke and Lajos—”

  He spun me round, kissed me, and spun me back. “Nope. I don’t think they’re kissing yet.”

  “Lajos is usually so calm. Tineke definitely surprised him. Will he agree to stay at her cottage?”

  My husband of a day gave me a look of complete incredulity. It said “duh” without saying it.

  I grinned wryly. “I guess that’s a yes?”

  “My heart, Lajos might be an elf, and so, not as good as a werewolf in getting a paw in the door, but he’s not stupid enough to refuse this opportunity.”

  I wrinkled my nose, laughing. “A paw in the door? Really?”

  “Puppy eyes?” Rory gave me a pleading look to demonstrate another canine-themed saying.

  “Oh you.” I swatted at him. No need to tell him that I melted for those eyes—he knew it.

  He smiled smugly.

  We were so utterly content with one another. I hoped Tineke and Lajos could reach their happy ever after. I would fight to keep mine. I’d fight the world for Rory.

  Chapter 4

  Rory and I walked home and straight into a magistrate hall-meets-town hall meeting in Istvan’s office. Bataar and Sabinka, Nils and Sorcha, plus Istvan and Radka had gathered in his office.

  Sorcha acknowledged me with a small, reassuring smile. She launched quickly into a summary of her and Nils’s interrogation of Sean. My father had provided little information. “He’s the bait. Definitely not part of their decision-making circ
le. But his attitude toward us provides a useful sense of how the militia views the Faerene. They might hate us as monsters, but they think of us sufficiently as people—similar to them—to believe that they can manipulate us.”

  She glanced down at the notes on her slate. “He doesn’t trust them. That was evident when he coded a warning into his letter to Amy. It’s obvious, also, in his reluctance to discuss the militia’s activities. He’s not protecting them so much as shielding himself from questioning his belief in human superiority.”

  “You’re basing a significant assessment on a few hours’ talk,” Bataar said.

  “Sean wants to believe that humans have the high moral ground,” Nils said. “He balked when pushed to hypothesize what the militia might do in an attempted attack on Faerene.”

  “Which brings us back to Sean’s letter to Amy that General Dabiri passed on with the postscript ‘Be ready’.” Sorcha put her slate on the table. “The militia expect the letter to provoke a reaction. Inquiring after Sean’s condition and location makes a perfect insertion point.”

  Espionage. I recalled the town hall meeting’s decision regarding the militia’s actions triggering a hostile negotiations state of affairs.

  Bataar stamped a hoof. “I’m not going.”

  The deputy mayor agreed. “Sorcha should go.”

  “Alone?” I asked impulsively.

  Sabinka smiled, sly and satisfied. “So the humans will believe.”

  I winced. Calling them “the militia” was one thing. Dismissing them as “humans” had wider implications.

  “Sean is comfortably lodged in the guard quarters,” Sorcha said.

  I studied her for a couple of seconds before I comprehended her hint. I had to concentrate on the well-being of those humans I loved, first, and worry about politics and social structures later. “Thank you.”

  Sorcha refocused on the deputy mayor. The nymph was more volatile than Bataar and it didn’t hurt to show her exaggerated respect. “Sabinka, with everyone’s agreement I’ll organize a couple of rangers as back-up, and visit the militia camp in an hour. I’m curious about their communications arrangements. Whatever they’re kicking off with their ‘Be ready’ postscript, they have to be able to signal others about it.”