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Fordham sighed heavily through his nose. “Fine. We’ll save it. I can jump us.”
“All the way to Kinkadia?” Kerrigan asked in disbelief.
“Keres was … training me,” he said as if the very idea was distasteful. “To draw on her power and expand my awareness so that I could jump farther distances.”
“That’s why you were disappearing all the time.”
“Partly.” He shrugged. “I still don’t think I could get us there in one jump. I wasn’t doing more than a couple of miles with Keres’s magic to bolster me.”
“And I’m not my mother.”
His storm-cloud eyes met hers. “It’s the opposite.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am more connected to you. Our magic is not a tragic circumstance that I’m fighting against. I feel … whole with you.” He drew her closer. “If we worked together, I think I could jump farther. Maybe not all the way to Kinkadia, but greater than what I could do alone.”
“You trust me that much?”
“I trust you with my life.”
“And did you mean it?” She looked down before glancing hesitantly up again. “When you asked for my mother’s blessing?”
He cracked an easy smile. “I have been trying to do things the right way from the start, and all along, you worked your way into my life until I could do nothing but have you. Yes, Kerrigan, I want you to be my wife. I want to share my entire world with you. If you’ll have me.”
“Oh, I’ll have you.”
Then, she rose on her tiptoes and pressed their lips firmly together. He wrapped his arms tightly around her. As their passion kindled, their magic mingled. Fordham’s shadows coiled around them both. He reached for her power, and instead of balking at the contact, she let him in. Let him draw on her.
One minute, they were standing in the Corsica Forest, and the next, his shadows deposited them on the banks of the mountains outside of Kinkadia. He gasped, releasing her and dropping to a knee.
“Ford!”
She reached for him, panicked at the thought that he’d gone too far. Much too far. Farther than even she had imagined possible.
“I’m all right,” he assured her. “It was a big jump.”
“Yes. I can’t believe you did it.”
He grinned. “I can’t believe it either. I was sort of bluffing.”
She laughed. “Of course you were. I’m rubbing off on you.”
He rose smoothly back to his feet. “I don’t know how often I could do it, but we made it. That’s what matters.”
“Can you call Netta from here? She could pick us up, and we could find a place to camp out until we decide our next move.”
Fordham was silent a moment, and then a smile spread across his hard features. “I can reach her. She’s with Tieran.”
“Oh my gods!” Kerrigan whispered, tears coming to her eyes. “Tieran is alive.”
A weight lifted from her shoulders at the news.
“Yes. She gave me a destination. It’s not far from where we are now. She said it’s not safe for her to be out in the open. The Society has been searching for her and Tieran.”
That made sense. It wasn’t safe for her to be out in the open either. Their strange togas would draw notice, and her red hair was a dead giveaway. It wasn’t a positive thing here in her world, as it had been in Domara. Nothing about her was special here.
“We can head in that direction, and then when I can jump again, we’ll use the shadows,” Fordham told her. “She’ll catch us up once we’re all together.”
It took a long stretch of empty road and two smaller jumps before Kerrigan and Fordham made it to Netta’s destination. It was a hidden outcropping of rocks, tucked into the mountainside. Far enough away from Kinkadia to not draw attention or accidentally have Red Masks stumble upon them, but close enough that they could find out what was happening in the city.
When they stepped up to the hidden entrance, Kerrigan wasn’t sure what to expect. Netta had been sparse with details.
But a figure with white hair dashed out of the soft glow of the interior. “You’re alive!”
Kerrigan had to blink twice before she realized it was Fordham’s sister. “Oh my gods, Wynter!”
Fordham stood stiff. “Sister?”
Wynter stopped just before she reached them. She seemed … different. More put together, even stabler than when they’d last seen her. She’d been in the arena when the Red Masks attacked, but she’d fled to the Wastes to try to save who she could.
And there, striding out in her wake, was Dozan Rook.
Kerrigan took one step toward him. Her heart pounding. “Dozan,” she whispered.
“What? Didn’t think a little demolition could keep me down, did you, princess?”
She actually laughed. In a few strides, she was in his arms again. She felt a tug down the bond from Fordham. Warmth and understanding. None of the jealousy that had plagued them all those times they met Dozan before. He wasn’t the King of the Wastes here. He was one of her oldest friends, and he had survived a massacre that should have been his undoing. But of course, he had gotten out. With Wynter’s help, apparently.
