8. Tabitha
Tabitha
We’re two days into the trek when the ground tries to eat me.
I should be used to this dimension trying to kill me by now, but there’s something specifically rude about walking along minding your own business, mid-sentence about whether Azaan or Valerian has the better arse, when the red soil erupts and a thing the size of a horsebox comes out of it, all teeth and no manners.
“Lava worm!” Azaan shouts, delighted, because he is a strange man. “Big one!”
“I can see it’s a big one,” I yell, scrambling back. “It’s got my shoe!”
It has, in fact, got my shoe. The stupid skyscraper heel that Valerian insists is regulation Queen wear, currently disappearing into a mouth full of rings of teeth like a garbage disposal that’s found God.
“Leave the shoe, kitty cat,” Luka growls, already shifting.
“That shoe cost me a life of dignity, I’m not leaving it...”
The worm lunges again and I stop caring about the shoe.
What happens next, we’re good at now. That’s the thing that’s different from those first terrified days when I’d have frozen and cried.
The bond hums between the five of us, a live thread of shared instinct, and we move like we’ve done it a hundred times, because we have.
Luka goes low, a streak of black fur and hellfire, raking the worm’s underside.
Azaan whips the air into blades that carve into its flank.
Gavriel plants himself in front of me with the shield and his ax, a wall I could shelter a village behind.
And Valerian looks at me over his shoulder, one brow up, and holds out his hand.
“Juice me, little kitty?”
“Buy me dinner first.”
“Later. Promise. Now give me your hand and set this thing on fire.”
I grab his hand. It always feels like grabbing a live socket, that jolt of my power pouring into his, my HellCat surging up my arm, into him, blooming out violet and gold.
The worm screams. Valerian throws a bolt the size of a car into its open mouth, and it comes apart in a very satisfying, very disgusting way, raining down worm all over my one remaining shoe.
“Gross,” I announce, into the sudden quiet.
The quiet doesn’t last, because in this dimension it never does. The ground where the first worm died shudders, and two more come boiling up out of it, smaller, faster, furious about their friend.
“Oh, come ON,” I yell. “Is there a nest? Please tell me we didn’t camp on a nest.”
“We camped on a nest,” Gavriel confirms, already swinging.
The second fight is uglier than the first, because there’s no room to breathe between them, and the two smaller worms are quick, darting, harder to hit.
One gets past Luka and comes straight at me.
I don’t juice anyone this time, I don’t have the hand for it, I just throw my own fire, gold and hot, straight down its throat, and it bursts.
The other one Azaan takes with a spear of ice through the skull.
And then, finally, mercifully, the ground goes still, and we’re standing in a churned-up field of dead worm under the crimson murk, filthy, panting, alive.
“Right,” I say, wiping worm off my face with the back of my wrist. “New rule. We check for nests before we camp. I’m putting it in the royal decrees. Rule one: no camping on nests. Rule two: buy the Queen better shoes.”
“Noted, my Queen,” Valerian says drily.
“You love it,” Azaan says, flicking worm off his sleeve.
“I tolerate it.” I look down at my hands, and there it is, the price. The palms are blistered raw, red and weeping, the way they always are after I channel that much through them. It stings like hell, appropriately.
“Hands,” Gavriel says, already turning, already knowing.
“I’ve got her,” Azaan says, and takes my wrists, gentle for a man who just fileted a worm.
His air magic is cool and soft, and he breathes it over the burns.
The raw skin knits and soothes under it, the sting fading to a warm ache.
He’s careful. He’s always careful with me, this one, the lover not the fighter, except he’s both.
“Better?” he murmurs.
“Better,” I say, and I mean to leave it there, I do.
But he’s crouched in close, and his blond hair is falling in his eyes.
There’s a smear of worm-gunk on his cheekbone that should be revolting and somehow isn’t, and I’m so tired of being frightened and grieving and hunted.
I’m so tired of Alex’s voice in my head.
And here is a man who has never once made me feel like a vessel, a countdown, a thing being carried.
Here is a man who looks at me like I’m the whole point.
“Azaan,” I say.
He goes still. He can feel it, the shift in me, he always can. His green eyes come up, and they’ve gone dark.
“Little one,” he says, careful, “are you sure? After the day you’ve had?”
“I’ve had a rubbish few weeks. I’ve had a rubbish few centuries, apparently, if you count the bits of me that aren’t strictly me.” I curl my healed fingers into his shirt. “I want to feel like mine again. Ours. I want him out of my head. Can you do that for me?”
Behind us, I hear Luka’s low growl, not a warning, an answer. I feel the bond flare, all four of them turning towards me at once like flowers to the sun.
“Oh, kitten,” Azaan breathes, and kisses me. “We can absolutely do that for you.”