A man carrying a tall walking staff topped with a glowing golden-encased orb emerged from the group, nodding gravely towards Nellie, as if in greeting. “Sera.” He pulled off his hood, revealing close-cropped shockingly silver hair and a face weathered by battle and obligation. “Let us help them, Sera.” The man dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “Please.”

  “Are you Erian?” Nellie asked, quietly.

  He nodded.

  Relief swept over Nellie like a tide going out to sea. No soldier with malicious intent would bow to a creature like this in such a submissive posture.These were Keane’s people.

  Sera lowered her head and knocked her beak lightly against Nellie.

  “It’s okay.” Tears burning her eyes at the creature’s surprising affection toward her, Nellie reached up and patted the side of the creature’s face. “I think we can trust them.”

  Sera squawked and let out what sounded like a huff of irritation, before stomping a few steps away and lowering herself in the middle of the clearing, much like a chicken sitting on her eggs. The other men closed in and bathed the entire glen with welcome light.

  The man raised his head and waited an extra beat before he rose and hurried toward them. “I am Erian, Keane’s second in command.” The words flew at her like bullets as he dropped to his knees in front of them. “You are Nellie or Amber?”

  “Nellie. He’s hurt.” She continued to grip Keane’s hand in hers. “He said it’s a zephyr thorn. He didn’t tell me at first.” She didn’t know why, but she didn’t like the idea of this commanding man blaming her for what had happened to his…whatever Keane was.

  “Of course he didn’t. Torches!” Erian yelled as he pulled open Keane’s shirt. “You did this?” He unknotted the tights and removed the shirt as the light around them increased. Only then did she notice how deathly pale Keane looked.

  “It was the only thing I could think to do.” Clearly it hadn’t been enough.

  “You did well.” Erian gave her an encouraging nod. “Fresh river water counteracts the infectious property of the thorns. I need you to go with my men.”

  “No.” Nellie tightened her grip on Keane. “No, I’m not leaving him.” She couldn’t explain it, didn’t want to try to, but she was connected to Keane. More connected than she been to anyone in her life other than her sisters.

  Erian’s silver eyes sharpened as he pressed down on Keane’s wound. Keane groaned, and a sheen of perspiration erupted on his face.

  “Glare at me all you want,” Nellie told Erian. “I’m not leaving. I can help. Tell me what to do.”

  “We need to get the thorn out.” He kicked out a leg and pulled a dagger from the sheath on his calf. He offered it to her, hilt first. “You can either use this or you can hold him down. Your choice.”

  Not wanting to cause Keane anymore pain, she nodded at the blade. “I’ll hold him.” She let go of Keane’s hand, slid him off her lap and repositioned herself on her knees beside him, pressing her palms flat on his shoulders. “Might want someone else to grab his legs. I can’t manage both.”

  “Taranto.” Erian called over his shoulder. One of his dark-clad men joined them, but he didn’t remove his hood as he locked his hands firmly around Keane’s ankles. He looked like a hovering shadow to Nellie’s spinning mind. “Not an inch can he move, understand?” Erian signaled for one of the torches to be brought closer and he plunged the blade into the flame.

  Nellie gasped, wondering how the fire didn’t burn his hand when it had been fully engulfed.

  “The thorns grow tentacles the longer it’s left in the body. If anything is left behind, he’ll be dead in hours. I need to get it all at once.”

  “And you were going to let me do it?” Nellie asked.

  “No, actually. I wasn’t.” Erian actually grinned. The expression seemed so odd on such a harsh and scarred face that Nellie felt herself tip even more firmly away from reality. “You ready?”

  Nellie leaned more heavily on Keane. “Just do it.”

  She focused on Keane’s face as she heard the blade slice through Keane’s skin. The odd ripping sound left her swallowing bile that rose in her throat. She squeezed her eyes shut. Keane jolted beneath her hold. Erian froze.

  “Keep. Him. Still.” Erian growled.

  “Other than sitting on him, what do you suggest?” But even as she muttered the question, she knew. “Oh, what the hell.” She leaned down and pressed her lips against Keane’s.

  She wasn’t sure who was more surprised, the men surrounding them; Keane, whose left hand came up to grasp her hip in a gesture she was becoming all too fond of; or herself. She couldn’t remember ever initiating anything remotely as intimate as kissing a man in public before. But she did kiss him. She pressed her lips lightly at first, then more persistently until she heard him groan deep in the back of his throat.

  “Well, that’s working,” Erian muttered behind her. “Almost there.”

  Keane stiffened, his hand gripped her hip tight as Nellie angled her head and dived in deeper, kissing him in the ways she imagined he’d kiss her should the opportunity ever come around again.

  She lost herself in the moment, in the feel of his lips against hers, in the lazy, exploring mating dance she encountered when she pressed his mouth open and drew his focus completely on her. Keane jerked again, not a full-body response this time, but forceful enough to nearly dislodge her. She held on, hands gripping his shoulders, and refused to give up.

  “Got it.”

  Erian’s voice echoed in her ears as if from a distance. Keane’s hand moved up her back, over her shoulder, stopping only when he brushed fingers against her face. Only then did Nellie lift her mouth. She found Keane blinking slow grey eyes at her with what she could only describe as a smile of male pride curving those luscious lips of his. “Nellie,” he whispered.

  “You were expecting someone else? Sera maybe?” She couldn’t help but tease him for her own misconception.

  “Sera doesn’t kiss like that.” He cupped the side of her face in his hand and as she blinked against relieved tears, she could have sworn his eyes shifted into a pristine, ocean blue.

  “Erian?”

  “Erian kisses like that?” Nellie laughed.

  Erian snorted. “He should be so lucky as to know.” He motioned for his men to move closer as he accepted the satchel handed to him. “I have enough Oleoa root to get you back to the Citadel, but you’re still going to need to see Gaius. He’ll want you resting for a few days.”

  “Hours maybe,” Keane groaned as he pushed up on his elbows and looked down at his seeping wound. “Not any time for more. Merciful heavens, you could have at least tried to carve a straight line. That’s going to leave a hideous scar.”

  “I like scars.” Nellie grinned. “They’re sexy.”

  “And it would have been a lot worse if she’d been doing the carving,” Erian told him as he drenched a clean rag with a fermented smelling salve and pressed it hard against Keane’s torso.

  Keane’s face lost all its regained color. “Oh, holy—”

  Nellie kissed him again.

  “Need to suggest Gaius add that technique to his healing journal.” Erian muttered. “You okay to walk?”

  “Sera can get me back,” Keane said as Erian and Nellie helped haul him to his feet.

  He pressed a hand hard into his side and took a deeper breath than she’d seen him take in hours. For the first time since she’d arrived in this world, the fear receded.

  “Feel better already.” His color was still terrible, and his eyes had once again turned that pure white, but he clung to her as if he’d never let her go. “Nellie, would you like to walk of fly?”

  “Are you kidding me?” She moved under his outstretched arm and wrapped an arm around his waist. What did she have to be afraid of now? “Fly, of course.”

  * * *

  “I can see you smiling, Bowen.” Keane fisted one hand in the bed sheet as their healer Gaius pressed prying fingers into the wound Erian had carved into him. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he rested his other hand on the orb beside the bed. At least Nellie’s touch had brought a sliver of pleasure beneath the pain. “Are you trying to hollow me out, old man?” Keane gritted his teeth.

  “Always were the worst patient,” Gaius chided as he withdrew bloodied fingers and retreated to the healing cart he’d wheeled into Keane’s quarters minutes after Keane had gotten out of the bath. The former monk was as stooped and bald and fat as he’d been when Keane and Rivalin and Bowen had met him as boys. “Should have had you knock him out so I could aid him in quiet.”

  “I’d have done it gladly.” From a chair across the room, Bowen of the Eastern Realm, mage and dis-graced sorcerer of the highest order, sat with an ankle over one knee, a critical finger poised beneath considering lips and an odd smirk on his face. It had been countless mooncyles since the two men had been in the same room, but as with the closest of brothers, it seemed nary a night had passed. “He does seem to have grown more reckless since we last met.”

  “He can still hear every word you’re saying. And stop grinning.” Keane closed his eyes and turned his head, more to focus on stopping himself from heaving into a bucket than to deal with the suspicion he saw on his friend’s face. “Don’t you have a wedding to plan?”

  “I’m leaving those details to my betrothed.”

  Keane wondered if Bowen noticed how his voice gentled whenever he spoke of Clara MacQueen. He’d never seen his friend besotted with a woman before. And there had been plenty of women. For both of them. Just never one that left them, for want of a better word, distracted. Or thinking of anything remotely connected to a future.

  Once upon a time Keane might have considered the visible emotions on his friend’s face a weakness to be exploited, but he couldn’t think that way now, could he? Not when Keane was having similar feelings about Clara’s sister.

  Nellie. Keane squeezed his eyes hard. What was he going to do about Nellie? Even as he asked himself the question, he knew what he wanted; something that wasn’t possible. He wanted a different life, one he could share with her and not spend his time warring and plotting and scheming. He wanted her.

  “We need you recovered in time to lead the summit.”

  Keane grunted at Bowen’s reminder. “I’ll be well enough.” Even if he wasn’t, nothing would stop him from going. He’d given his word to the resistance. They had to believe he could be trusted otherwise there would be no defeating Dracha. “Is that not correct, Gaius?”

  “As I am not one to argue with my patients, of course, my lord.”

  Bowen chuckled.

  Keane growled. How he hated being anyone’s Lord, but his people had insisted. Just because he’d saved most of them from sure execution during one of Dracha’s men’s raids soon after his arrival didn’t give him special status. Of course, that he’d done so without a sliver of sight had probably fed into the myth of the three warriors. Guilt bore down on him like an avalanche. If only his intentions had been so pure. He’d wanted to die. Had looked for any way to end this existence now that his sight had been taken from him. Only he hadn’t been granted his desire. Instead he’d learned killing was even easier when you weren’t staring into the eyes of your adversary.

  “You could have died out there,” Bowen told him as Gaius washed his hands and prepared a new Oleo root treatment. “And it was unnecessary. You should have allowed Erian to go with us.”

  “I needed him here.” In case Keane didn’t return. He might be sightless, but he still craved that exhilarated rush that came with risking his life, an exhilaration intensified by the promise of fulfilling an oath. “And you needed someone to protect Clara in case something happened to you. Which something did, I might add. Ow!” Keane kicked out his leg when something hot struck this thigh.

  “Boys, please. No magic in the Citadel,” Gaius sighed. “Bowen, if you need to practice with your regenerating magic, might I suggest the training facility on the ground level?”

  “You’re using me for target practice?” Keane turned to look at his friend who was waving smoking fingers slowing in the air, turning the tendrils into spirals of white.

  “If you’d told me you have a death wish perhaps I would have argued against the rescue mission more fervently. Or taken it over myself.”

  “You falling into the lake wouldn’t have gotten us anywhere different. And who says I have a death wish?” He hissed out a breath as Gaius pressed a thicker salve onto his wound. “Other than subjecting myself to this torture, that is.”

  “Maybe I should have Erian bring Nellie in here,” Bowen said. “I’m told she has a special technique for calming you.”

  Ah, there it was. The reason for the smile on Bowen’s normally dour face. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen a hint of sadness or depression since the two warriors had reunited. Another effect of Clara MacQueen. “How do you know about Nellie’s technique? Erian wouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Erian didn’t have to. She kissed you in front of half your division.” Bowen sat forward in his chair. “What magic does she possess?”

  “Magic?” Keane choked as Gaius pressed and prodded once more. He didn’t want to talk about Nellie’s magic. How could he when he’d have to admit it appeared only of benefit to him? That sounded so…dishonorable. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “If she’s even half as powerful as Clara—”

  “I don’t know what she is.” Keane cut him off and gave a sigh of relief as Gaius wrapped a bandage around the wound. He could feel the skin beginning to knit already as his magic was nearly at its strongest within the walls of the Citadel. “She doesn’t know. Not that it matters. She will remain here, where it’s safe. With Clara.”

  “That will take some convincing.” Bowen actually winced. “I haven’t told Clara yet that I’m going with you. She’s not one to let me out of her sight.”

  “No need to worry about that.” Keane sat up and dropped his legs over the side of the bed, drawing the orb with him to ease the shadows. “Because you’re not coming.”

  “Despite what others may think, you are not my Lord and master, little brother. If you recall I have two cycles on you.” Bowen’s voice was as tight as a bow as he lounged back in his chair. “I will be going with you to meet with the resistance to plan Dracha’s defeat.”

  “There’s no need for you to go.” Keane used the explanation he’d been rehearsing in his head for the past hour. “It is a meeting to sign the treaty and to begin final assault plans. There’s no role for you to play.” A lie. There was always a role for a soldier and mage as talented and devoted as Bowen. But Bowen had someone relying on him now. Someone who loved him. That was enough for Keane to stand in his way.

  “And what if you meet resistance on the road to the summit?”

  “We’ll deal with Dracha’s soldiers if we need to.” Keane struggled against the exhaustion creeping around the edges of his mind. “My men are stronger.”

  “Maybe once. Not now.” Bowen pinned him with a look that stirred dread into Keane’s weariness. “Rivalin’s alive. He’s one of them.”

  “I believe that’s my cue to leave. I’ve done all I can,” Gaius said and patted Keane’s bare shoulder and added a squeeze of assurance, as if to remind Keane that he and Bowen had been friends long before they were warriors. “Please try not to move around too much for a few hours at least. Give the wound time to heal.”

  “Thank you, Gaius.” Even if Keane’s mind hadn’t cleared of the ghostly voices and cries, he still would have been sent reeling by Bowen’s declaration. He waited, sitting stone still as he listened to Gaius wheel his medicine cart out of the room. The door clicked shut behind him. Keane was on his feet an instant later, advancing on Bowen, heart thudding in his chest. “What do you mean Rivalin’s alive? We saw him die, Bowen. We saw Dracha drive that spear through his heart.”

  “I don’t know how. I only know Clara and I saw him. He leads the advance guard. He’s one of Dracha’s.”

  “No.” Keane shook his head and bypassed Bowen and headed to the basin to splash his face with water. The desire for sleep evaporated like smoke in the air. “No. This world might be capable of many things, many horrible things, but Rivalin can’t be alive and defending him.” He gripped the edge of the counter and bent double, his heart tearing in two. “He would never betray the Goddess in that way. He wouldn’t betray his oath.” He would never betray us!

  “He might not be aware he is betraying anyone,” Bowen’s voice belied the fact he’d been giving this great thought. “The man I saw days ago may very well be only a shell. I saw no hint of the man we knew, the dedicated warrior who would have given his life for either one of us. But even if it is just a shell, we cannot allow him to survive. I will not go into a new life with Clara knowing Rivalin, in some form, is suffering immortal damnation. As important as it is to defeat Dracha and prevent him from returning to our world, we must take Rivalin out.”

  Keane took long, measured breaths. He thought he’d accounted for every contingency, every possible thing that could go wrong. Never once had it occurred to him that in order to defeat Dracha once and for all he’d have to go through one of the best men he’d ever known.

  One of the best warriors who ever lived.

  How could he kill his best friend?

  “If Rivalin is fighting for and protecting Dracha, we’re going to need every advantage we can get.” Keane’s chest tightened as he realized what he must do. He needed every possible weapon at his disposal. But what he needed most was his sight. “We need a new plan. The one I came up with is based on Rivalin’s attack at Dorcaster Castle. If even a bit of the man we knew still exists, we have to do something he never would have thought of. And we need to come up with it soon. Before we meet with the resistance.” To change the meeting now would only raise suspicion and erode any confidence the uneasy men and women already felt in working secretly with Keane and his Outsiders.