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Ithan considered. “You’re … you’re a really good person.” She chuckled. “I mean it,” he insisted. “The witches are worse off without you.”
She glanced over a shoulder again, and this time her eyes were full of sorrow. “Thank you.” She nodded to the door. “I need to focus for a while. Without your, ah … hovering.”
He saluted her. “Message received. I’ll be down the hall if you need me.”
* * *
“Queen of all this, huh?”
Bryce didn’t stop sorting through the trunks of supplies Fury had brought on the helicopter, even though her friend’s question came with a shit-eating grin.
“Did you get the goggles?” Bryce asked, pushing past a layer of winter hats. All the snow gear was there, just as she’d requested. On short notice, Fury had pieced together a remarkable array of jackets, pants, hats, gloves, underlayers—everything they’d need to survive the subzero temperatures of Nena.
Bryce intended to leave Avallen as soon as her parents had a rest from the helicopter journey—as soon as they were able to get Cooper settled with Baxian, and process all she’d told them upon their arrival.
Her parents sat in the grass on the other side of the field, talking quietly, Syrinx lounging in Randall’s lap. So Bryce gave them space, using the time to check the gear Fury had brought—not that she didn’t trust Fury to have thought of every detail.
But she should check, anyway. Just to make sure that they had all the gear they might need. So many things could go wrong, and she was taking her human parents with her, she was really going to do this—
A slender brown hand touched Bryce’s wrist. “B—you okay?”
Bryce looked up at last, finding Juniper standing beside her, a deep frown on her beautiful face. A few feet away, Fury stood with crossed arms, brows high.
Bryce sighed, turning from the three massive trunks that would be loaded onto the helicopter looming behind them.
Her friends were safe here. It should have eased something in her chest—a gift from Urd, Hunt had claimed—but seeing them here …
There was a fourth trunk, resting in the grass close to the helicopter. Fury had only been able to gather so much before the quick takeoff from Valbara, but still … there were a considerable number of weapons here.
Handguns. Rifles. Knives.
A joke, really, considering that they were going up against six intergalactic, nearly all-powerful beings. Most of the weapons would be for the others—to buy them any shot at surviving.
Everything else would come down to her.
Fury and Juniper were watching. Waiting. Like they could see all of that on her face. Just as Juniper, that bleak winter, had sensed from Bryce’s tone alone that despair had pushed her to the brink.
Juniper—whose last audiomail to Bryce had been so angry, after Bryce had done such an unforgivable thing by calling the director of the Crescent City Ballet. Only love and relief showed on her face now.
Juniper silently opened her arms, and Bryce rushed into them.
Her throat closed up, eyes stinging, at her friend’s warmth, her scent. Fury’s scent and arms wrapped around them a moment later, and Bryce shut her eyes, savoring it.
“I’m so sorry you both got dragged into this,” Bryce said hoarsely. “June, I’m sorry for all of it. I’m so fucking sorry.”
Juniper’s arms tightened around her. “We’ve got bigger problems to face—you and I are good.”
Bryce pulled back, glancing between her two friends. She’d updated them, and her parents—Cooper in tow—about as much as she could.
Fury frowned. “I should be coming with you guys. I’m of more use in the field.”
Bryce would have given anything to have someone as talented as Fury watching her back. But this wasn’t about Bryce’s own safety, her own comfort.
“You’re precisely where you should be,” Bryce insisted. “When people hear that Fury Axtar’s guarding Avallen, they’ll think twice before fucking with this place.”
Fury rolled her eyes. “Babysitting.”
Bryce shook her head. “It’s not. I need you guys here—helping any of the people who can make it. Helping Baxian.”
