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He’s mine, she told the Song. You promised.
She waved her hand and people swarmed over each other to open a path from her to Numair. She went to him. Seeing him through the brambles, bruised and bloodied but alive, was a cold check to the heady feeling of so much power pulsing in her veins like blood. He’d taken no small amount of damage in the short time he’d been here—Renault County had given him its best—and growing this enclosure had clearly taken what little strength remained out of him. He was slumped over, his eyes closed and his breathing labored.
She crouched beside him. “Numair?” The Song answered her need, sluicing over him, closing cuts, erasing bruises, mending broken bones.
He bolted upright, eyes flying open. “Clare?” Panic laced his voice. Before she even realized what was happening he’d opened a hole in the enclosure, jerked her inside and reclosed it around them. Like he was trying to protect her. Her lips curved up.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “How are you here?”
“I’m here for you. As for the other…” She shrugged.
He started to talk and then stopped, cocking his head, as if finally realizing the world had gone silent around them, save for the gentle shuffling sound of so many bodies swaying together.
She touched her fingers to the brambles. “You can let this go, if you want. I have it under control.”
He peered through the vines at what lay around them and swallowed. “This is you?” He put an emphasis on the last word, and she knew what he was really asking.
“Yes. And no.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“No, you shouldn’t have come. You have no idea what this place is like.”
“But you do?” He asked it quietly, as if he already knew the answer.
Her stomach clenched, and she wanted to undo his being here. His seeing her here. But she knew she couldn’t. Knew, deep down, that it was always meant to come to this. Hadn’t she understood it, dancing with him in Deleen? Understood that no one could know her without knowing this, just as she’d understood that no one could possibly know this and accept it?
“Yes. Welcome to my home.”
He took a deep breath and the brambles folded down, giving an unobstructed view of the people surrounding them. Jaol stood less than two feet away, swaying lightly, and Numair’s face turned livid. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t much care for your home.”
At least he wasn’t yet looking at her like she was something sub-human. “Neither do I. Do you still have the gatestone?” They worked twice. Once to take a person to a place, and once to bring them back. He nodded. “Then go home. I have something to take care of here.”
“So do I.”
“No, you don’t. I’ll get your rock for you.”
His gaze narrowed. “How do you know about that?”
“I made the Arrendons tell me about their mysterious correspondent. It wasn’t so difficult to figure out it was you. Phoenix? Really?”
He winced. “I was sixteen when I picked it. And actually drunk that time. Did you…”
“Tell them? No. That’s your decision. I would never take it from you.”
His shoulders sagged in relief. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now go home.”
He shook his head. “Don’t ask me to leave you here. I won’t do it and we’ll fight. Recent experience has shown I don’t like fighting with you.”
She wanted to send him back anyway. Before he saw the worst this place had to offer. Before he saw the worst of her. But the Song did not trust her any more than she trusted it. And it wasn’t sending Numair anywhere until it got what she’d promised it.
“This isn’t going to be pretty,” she warned him. “You won’t like what you see.”
“I see things I don’t like every day.”
“And what if you don’t like me by the end?” What if you see what made me, what I was, and you don’t miss me anymore? What if Renault County—if Simian—made her lose the first good thing she’d ever found?
