Luka
We get her back to the Fortress and she isn’t her, and it’s the worst night of my long life. I’ve had some bad ones.
We have the book. Valerian keeps saying it, low, like a man counting coins he’s not sure are real.
We have the book. It sits on the table in the spell room, the Arcane Tome, the thing we’ve bled and died for across two treks and three hundred years, and none of us can bring ourselves to feel it as a win, because the woman we did it for is sitting in the corner wearing a stranger’s stillness, staring at the wall with cold amusement, snapping her fingers now and then just to watch us flinch.
Tabeitha. In my mate’s body. And every hour, I can feel through the bond, the old Queen digs in a little deeper, and my Tabby, my kitty cat, gets a little harder to feel underneath.
“We free her tonight,” I say, for the tenth time, pacing, panther too close to the surface. “Now. There has to be a rite, a spell, something in that bloody book...”
“There’s nothing in the book that separates two souls grown into one,” Valerian says.
He’s grey, hollowed out, still half a husk from hauling her back through death.
“I’ve looked. I looked before you finished the sentence.
It can’t be forced, Luka. If we try to tear Tabeitha out, we tear Tabby out with her. They’re the same root now.”
“So we do nothing?” I round on him, and my voice comes out a snarl. “We just sit here and watch that thing wear her until there’s no Tabby left? While a cold white army marches on the realm? That’s the plan of the great Valerian?”
“Don’t,” Azaan says quietly. “He’s as sick over this as you are. We all are. Tearing each other apart doesn’t get her back.”
He’s right, and I hate it, and I stop, chest heaving. Across the room, the thing wearing Tabby watches us fight with a small cold smile, and it’s her enjoyment of it, her pleasure at our despair, that finally breaks something open in me.
Because that’s not my mate. My mate would be climbing the walls to reassure us right now, cracking a terrible joke about the state of Valerian’s hair, telling us she’s fine when she isn’t. My mate cares. This thing feeds.
And I realise I’ve been trying to reach her the wrong way. Fighting Tabeitha. Yelling at Valerian. Looking for a spell. When the whole time there’s one road into Tabby that no ancient Queen and no grief-mad demon has ever been able to close, because it wasn’t built by magic. It was built by us.
The bond. The mate bond. Feline to feline. The thing that’s been between me and Tabby since the first morning she woke up to find a panther on her bed and, instead of screaming, called me beautiful.
I cross the room. Tabeitha watches me come, lazy, unbothered.
“Come to beg, panther?” she says. “It won’t...”
I don’t listen to her. I’m not talking to her.
I drop to my knees in front of my mate’s body, and I take her cold hands in mine.
I close my eyes, and I stop using words at all.
I reach down the bond, past the driver, past the stranger at the wheel, all the way down to the small hot core where I’ve always been able to find her, the place that’s cat and mate and mine.
Kitty cat, I send, the way I sent to her that first night, in her head, without words.
It’s me. It’s Luka. I know you’re in there.
I can feel you. You held the fire. That was you.
That was my brave, brilliant, mouthy mate holding the fire so the ancient cow couldn’t burn anyone with it. I felt it. I felt you.
For a long moment, nothing. Tabeitha’s cold amusement. The dark.
And then, faint, so faint, from the very bottom of her: Luka?
I nearly break. I don’t. I hold steady, hold the bond open like a door, like a hand reaching down into deep water.
There you are, I send, and I pour everything down it, every morning she woke in my arms, every terrible joke, every mile on foot in stupid shoes, every death I’ve watched her survive.
You always get up. Azaan told you that and he was right.
You’re not the box, kitty cat. You never were.
You’re the whole point. Now get up. One more time.
Take your body back. It’s yours. It’s always been yours.
And I’m right here holding the door. Come home.
And I feel her move.
Not up through the flood, not fighting Tabeitha for the wheel, not the way she’s tried before and lost. She comes up the bond.
My road. The one road the old Queen was never invited onto and can’t close, because it was never hers, it’s ours, cat to cat, mate to mate.
She comes up hand over hand out of the dark, following my voice, following the love pouring down the line, until I feel her reach the front not by force but by belonging, because it’s her body and I’m her mate and between us there’s no room left for a fragment of a dead woman to stand.
The cold hands in mine go warm.
They grip.
And a voice I’d know at the bottom of any abyss, cracked and exhausted and furious and hers, says, “Luka. Oh my God. Luka. It’s me. It’s me, I’m here, don’t let go, don’t you dare let go...”
“Never,” I say, and I open my eyes. It’s blue eyes looking back at me, wet and terrified and blazingly, gloriously her. “Welcome home, kitty cat.”
And my mate falls into my arms and sobs, and I hold her. Behind us I hear Azaan make a broken sound of relief and Valerian breathe her name like a prayer, and even Gavriel, my stoic brother, has to turn away.
“I felt her the whole time,” she chokes into my chest, shaking so hard I can barely hold her still.
“I was in the back seat, Luka, I was awake. I could see out of my own eyes and I couldn’t reach the front.
I had to watch her wear me, talk to you with my mouth, and I couldn’t stop her, I couldn’t.
So I held the fire, that’s all I could do.
I held the fire so she couldn’t use it, and I waited, and I didn’t know if any of you would ever get me back... ”
“We always get you back.” I hold her face in both hands, make her look at me, blue eyes on blue.
“Listen to me. You held the fire. You bought the time. You survived being buried in your own head, kitty cat, that’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do, and I’ve seen you set a Demon Lord on fire.
You didn’t drown. You never drown. Do you hear me? ”
“I nearly did.” Her voice drops to a whisper, and this is the part that guts me, the part I’ll carry.
“Luka, this time I nearly let go. Right at the start, when she flooded in, she made it sound like rest. Like I could just stop being frightened. And for one second I wanted to. I’m so tired of being frightened.
I nearly gave her the wheel because I was tired. ”
“But you didn’t.” I press my forehead to hers. “You held the fire instead. That’s not giving up. That’s the opposite. That’s you finding the one thing left to fight with and using it. Tired and terrified and buried alive, and you still found a way to fight. That’s my mate. That’s my Queen.”
She cries harder, and I just hold her, and let her, because she’s earned every tear and a thousand more.
I don’t have the words to tell her what it did to me, watching that thing wear her, feeling her trapped and unable to reach her.
I nearly lost my mind. I think a piece of me did.
I’ll get it back now she’s here. That’s how it works. She’s the piece.
We got her back.
Not with a spell. With the bond.
And somewhere down in the dark of her, I feel Tabeitha recoil, snarling, driven back but not gone, and I understand that this was a reprieve and not a victory. She’ll come again. She’s stronger every death. Tabby’s got six lives left now, and each one is a door the old Queen’s waiting behind.
We can’t keep doing this. Tabby’s said it. I’ve felt it. Next time the bond might not be enough.
Something has to end this. For good.
I just hold my mate and let her cry, and I don’t tell her that yet. Tonight, she’s home. Tonight, that’s enough.