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I poke him in the ribs. “Smarter than you no matter what age.”
He tugs me toward the bedroom. “Cheeky bitches get switches.”
I grin up at him but gently disentangle myself. “I’m saying goodnight and sleeping on the deck.”
Both men stare at me.
“Teddy, why?” Gabe asks.
“You two need to reconnect. Without me between you.”
Gabe runs a warm hand up my arm. “I don’t want you sleeping on deck, baby girl.”
“It’s not safe,” Darwin echoes.
“Guarded by the best faerie warriors in the world? C’mon, I’m not in any more danger out on deck than I am in here. I’m going to lie back and look at the stars while I fall asleep to the sounds of you two shagging like rabbits.”
That draws weak laughs out of both men.
Although it takes some convincing, I eventually lie on one of the big, padded loungers on the back deck, buried under duvets, with a stone Darwin’s enchanted to throw off gentle heat warming my feet. An armored fae stands at each end of the lounger. Will-o-the-wisps circle lazily over my head. Their light blocks the stars, but I don’t send them away. They add a little magic to the night, when my own magic’s lost.
So do the sounds coming from the cabin. They make me smile as I drift off to sleep.
Chapter6
Incompletion
“Hold the image of the key in your mind, Teddy,” Robert says.
I grasp the image he’s given me: an ornate gold key, the prongs wriggling like tentacles. I turn the key around and around in my mind, examining it from every angle. Tracing the scrollwork of the bow. Following the clean, long lines of the shaft.
When every angle and curve’s burned into my mind’s eye, I nod. “Got it.”
“Put it in the lock.”
It’s taken us two days to get to this point. Multiple failures and three nosebleeds. But as the key slips in and I will the tentacles to find the shapes of the tumblers before freezing into place, I feel the rightness of this Work. It isn’t quite Elemental magic, but it’s close. It’s a reconfiguring of my own mental defenses. I’ve never done anything like this before and I’m so grateful Doctor Prince and Robert are here to guide me.
“Turn the key, Teddy,” Doctor Prince says.
I grip the ornate handle tightly with my mind. Rub my fingers and thumb together as though it’s in my grasp.
My hold has slipped before.
This time, when I will the key to turn, it goes.
There’s a heavythunkfrom within the door. Four sets of chains crash to the floor of my mind.
“Take the key out and put it in the next lock,” Robert instructs.
I will the key’s prongs back to flexibility, letting them wiggle in my mind for long moments, giggling as they tickle, before I pull the key out and insert it in the next lock.
My mental landscape is a place without Time. When the last lock falls with a thunk and a rattle of chains, I’m surprised to see darkness beyond the windows of the houseboat when I open my eyes.
Gabe rises from the couch opposite me, where he must have been sitting all day, and offers me his hand to help me sit up.
“Done?” His sad smile’s back.
I nod.
