“No,” I admitted, easing up on the glare a little. “You still shouldn’t be laughing at me.”

  “I know.” He leaned over and kissed my forehead. “Expect a lot of inappropriate laughter over the next few days, I’d say. This is going to be an adjustment for both of us, and your demand for a little red wagon was so simply, essentially Alice that the size of it all briefly loomed up and overtook me. You’ll forgive me, I hope, for being giddy and distracted?”

  “As long as you’re not giddy and distracted when you’re supposed to be going to war.” I finally sat up all the way, pulling my legs in so I could sit cross-legged on the bed. “What did you decide? And how does that work, anyway? Are you the only one in charge, or are you an Autarch with a democratically elected council of advisers?”

  “I am the absolute authority on anything I decree myself the absolute authority on. My magic keeps this place safe and sustained; our greatest concern when the new arrivals stopped was how long I’d be able to do so without their regular deliveries of fresh pneuma to be harvested and redistributed among the effects.”

  “They do more than translate, I’m guessing.”

  He grimaced. “Quite. Without the spells I’ve been building into this place, agriculture is more difficult, as is water collection. Things we would never have had to worry about on Earth are major concerns here. And then there are the boundary alerts, the lines which keep our enemies from sneaking up on us, and the weather shields that prevent the worst of the local storms from slamming into us. In a few more years, we’ll probably need more atmospheric shielding as well, or the oxygen will dissolve as the atmosphere itself continues to degrade.”

  I must have looked shocked. He shrugged, expression turning wry. “You knew this was a dead world. It’s been rotting since long before I arrived here, and the speed of decay has only increased since the connection to the crossroads was broken. Soon enough, the few systems still working will collapse. You said I wouldn’t be willing to leave here without freeing the people in my care. To be honest, I’m not sure I’ll be willing to go without finding a way to get all the people in this world out of here.”

  I blinked slowly. Annie killing the crossroads might have opened the path that allowed me to get here in the first place, but it had also shut off the one channel this place had to any kind of fresh pneuma, any ability to recover itself from the damage that had been done to it. I should have realized it would be dying faster now. I leaned forward and put my own hand on Thomas’ knee. He glanced at me.

  “I won’t let you hurt yourself to save people who’ve been trying to kill you,” I said. “But I understand that it would hurt you to leave them behind if there’s any way to get them out. Of course, we’ll try to find a solution that frees them all. I have friends working on the issue of how we leave this place.”

  Thomas frowned. “Alice . . . this is a killing jar.”

  “I know. Jars can be broken.” I shrugged. “I found a map that had this world marked on it, drawn by a dude who was apparently a pretty damn famous dimensional cartographer. Some friends of mine in Ithaca are familiar enough with his work to decode his notes, and they’re working on it now. They’ve been working on it since I left them with the map.”

  Thomas kept on frowning. “That’s nice, but working on a thing isn’t the same as actually accomplishing a thing.”

  “True enough, but the thing about this guy is that he’d been here.” I said it with as much conviction as I possibly could. “He visited this dimension. Left notes about it and everything. And that means he knew how to get out of the jar. So if he wrote down the way he did it . . .”

  “They may be able to recreate his work!” Thomas grabbed me by the shoulders and yanked me toward him, kissing me fiercely before letting go and jumping to his feet. “Alice Price, you’re a bloody genius!”

  “Not something people call me very often,” I said, surprised. I wasn’t used to being kissed at all anymore, and he’d never been that much of one for displays like that. I could have conquered worlds with the power of that kiss. It lingered on my lips. I turned to face him, slightly dazed. “As soon as I knew this might be where you were, I knew I couldn’t go in after you unless I could get out. What if I’d been wrong?”

  “What if you were only right once?”

  “I found the map and the book together,” I said. “Healy family luck.”

  “You’ve always put too much faith in a phenomenon we can neither replicate nor explain,” he said, frowning briefly. “So you may have people coming to get you, and presumably they’ll have prepared to possibly take us both, if they have faith in this luck of yours.”

  “They’re Ithacan,” I said. “Helen likes to say I’m blessed by Tyche. She thinks my luck is a literal gift from a goddess.”

  “Maybe she’s right,” he said. “It would be as believable an explanation as any other we’ve been able to devise. But all right. I’ll put my faith in your friends, and that means we’re not skimming the pneuma off of you until we absolutely have to.”

  I blinked. “Why not?”

  “Among other things, if your particular brand of ridiculous fortune really is a gift from a goddess—which seems less absurd now than it would have before I got abducted by the spirit of a dead world that apparently never existed, thanks to the granddaughter I’ve never met—then it may or may not behave like ordinary luck, and even ordinary luck can be harvested by unethical sorcerers. We have to assume that it can be pulled away, however temporarily.”

  I frowned, nodding slowly. “And what would that do?”

  “Harvesting someone’s luck leaves them a blank slate, with only what they’ve managed to acquire from the universe around them. They’ll gather more luck, attracting good or bad based on what’s already there. An unethical sorcerer can sour someone’s luck for the rest of their life. And luck tends to cling to the dimensional membrane.”

  “Remove one, remove both,” I said carefully. “You think that’s what’s been going on with me?”

  “I think it’s very possible, and even if I had the equipment to do so, I wouldn’t be skinning you alive to verify the theory,” said Thomas. “But yes, I believe Naga has been harvesting your luck, intentionally or as a side effect of getting what he really wanted, for as long as this has been going on.”

  “I . . . see,” I said.

  Thomas nodded. “I’m glad. Now, if your ridiculous coincidences have continued since you started the rejuvenation process, and never turned sour on you, your luck is something you generate internally. I’ve always suspected that to be the case, given the way it seems to behave, but normal luck doesn’t work that way. It accretes, like layers of calcium carbonate around a speck of sand forming a pearl. No one’s luck consistently maintains the same form after it has been stripped away.”

  “My luck always gets a little funky for a while after a treatment, but it goes back to normal pretty quickly,” I said, thinking of the way I stubbed my toes and stumbled more frequently in the wake of a treatment. I’d always chalked it up to being uneasy in my body while I adjusted to the changes, and not to having my luck literally peeled away. “So why does that stop you from peeling the pneuma off of me?”

  “It’s very likely to pull your luck off with it, and I would prefer for us not to go into battle immediately after taking away one of your natural defenses,” he said. “Not to mention that unlike your luck, the pneuma we remove from you will not regenerate, and if the solution your friends have found for getting us out of here assume any measure of natural magic in this place, we’ll need it.”

  “So we’re saving me until necessary?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Cool. Now I don’t just have grenades, I get to be a grenade.” I smiled at him brightly. “I’ve always liked to be the biggest danger in a room.”

  “Even so.” He rose, leaving me cross-legged on the bed as he began pacing around the room. “The Haspers are already on the march and should be here well before nightfall. I’d give them perhaps six hours before they reach our outer barrier.”

  “Tell me about them,” I said.

  “About seven feet tall, on average, with black-and-orange skin and vicious claws,” he said, and raised his arms like he was trying to mimic the outline of a bear. “Their skin is pebbled and hardened, and it serves them almost as armor.”

  I nodded slowly. “They’re from a dimension called Helos. They’re mostly scavengers, although they’re not above attacking travelers. Earth-adjacent, you can get there from North America, and from there you can get to about a dozen dimensions that I know of, most of them capable of supporting human life.”

  Thomas blinked. “You recognize my description of the neighbors.”

  “Yeah, they’re assholes. I’m not surprised that enough of them would have been making crossroads bargains to have a breeding population in the terrarium.” Thomas had called this place that earlier, and it was an accurate description: this was a sealed, self-sustaining terrarium that was dying now that its owners weren’t maintaining it the way they used to. My inner conservationist suddenly wished Annie hadn’t killed the crossroads, so I could kick them in the metaphorical face a couple of times to make them understand that this wasn’t how you treated your pets.

  “I am a little surprised that there are so few humans,” I continued. “Given how many of us seem to have made crossroads bargains, I would have expected a higher population density. How many of the neighbors are human, or descended from cryptids I’d know from home?”

  “There are at least a couple within all three factions,” he said. “The Murrays, to the north, are human-dominant. They have a large enough range to have a stable breeding population, and I think they resent my presence more than any of the others, since I share a world of origin with some of them and should thus presumably share their ideas about ethical behavior. They send assassins periodically, usually young women who’ve been raised to think of me as some sort of soul-swallowing demon from the depths of hell.” He sounded deeply affronted by this, so deeply affronted that I had to laugh.

  “I was raised essentially the same way, and we did okay,” I said. “Any of those women here at the moment?”

  “No, they don’t tend to last long on the occasions when we’re able to take them alive. Usually, they suicide as soon as their missions fail. The rest are convinced they’ll be killed and eaten, not necessarily in that order, and we can keep them alive for a few weeks if we keep them away from weapons, but they won’t eat our devil fruits or drink our devil water, and eventually we have to drop them at the border of Murray territory to save their lives.”

  I cocked my head to the side. “Do the Murrays let those women come back into the fold?”

  “Yes . . . but if you’re thinking what I can see you thinking, it’s not happening.”

  “So how, exactly, were you planning to tell them all that it’s time to leave this dimension, then?” I asked. “You said you wanted to try to get all the people in this world out, so we need to find a way to convince your neighbors that they can trust us, or we’ll have to leave them behind when the extraction team gets here.” I could handle him demanding we find a way to create a much larger rock to smash through this shitty dimensional window and get us all to safety. I couldn’t deal with hanging back to abduct the unwilling.

  “I’ll send someone to tell them,” he said. “They still fear me enough not to eat my messengers. But first, we need to fight off the people who are coming to attack us and figure out how exactly we’re going to leave this place.”

  “I can help with the first part.” I paused. “You are planning to let me fight, right?”

  “As if I’d try to stop you.” He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never been able to do that, even when it was the best choice for everyone involved, and you’ve had fifty years to get even more stubborn. Even if I were foolish enough to attempt it, I doubt this is when I’d start succeeding.”

  “Really? Huh. I guess I’m not the only one being surprisingly reasonable today.”

  “Alice.” He sat down next to me, leaning over to cup my cheek with one hand and look into my eyes. “If I had my way, I’d never let you out of my sight again. But yes, I remember who I married.” He dropped his hand as he stood again. “Besides, we need every skilled fighter we can get.”

  “Why would you have to let me out of your sight?” I asked. “Aren’t you going to be leading the charge like a proper warlord?”

  “One benefit of magic having dwindled so dramatically in the last years—I’m not expected to go to the front line. It would diminish my mystique if I died like an ordinary man.”

  He managed to make that sound both disdainful and annoyed, when arrogant would have been so much easier, and I laughed, startled. He blinked at me.

  “What? Is the thought of me dying so amusing?”

  “No, ’cause you’re not going to die. I forbid it,” I said. “Just . . . you’re still you. A little battered around the edges, I guess, and with some scars I’m going to need to learn, but still you. You have no idea how relieved I am.”

  “I think I may have some idea,” he said, voice going dry. “And you . . . you haven’t turned into someone I don’t recognize either. I’m not sure how peaceful we’ll be together after this, but it’s not like we ever had a chance to figure ourselves out before, not without the crossroads hanging over us like an ax about to fall. We’re going to learn it now . . .”

  He leaned down again, this time with clear intent to kiss me. I met him halfway. When he pulled back, I smiled.

  He blinked at me. “What?”

  “Just missed your face,” I said. “That’s all.”

  This time I kissed him, and it went on for even longer before I regretfully drew myself away.

  “Seriously, don’t worry about me,” I said. “I didn’t make it this far or find you again just to lose you now. We’re going to get out of here together.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” said Thomas, and smiled. “Sally is explaining our plan to the guard now. We’ll be shoring up our defenses at the appropriate points, calling all noncombatants to take shelter in the palace, and setting guards on the fields and the wells. Archers will be posted on the wall in case the O’Vera are foolish enough to attempt a frontal assault.”

  “Protecting what they’ll see as your resources,” I said. “What are the O’Vera, anyway?”

  “Descendants of our nearest neighbors. They fly, and come in a dozen shades of jeweled green, and eat all flesh without consideration or compunction. I’ve seen them fall upon their own during battle. They seem to be always hungry.”

  “Okay, met them, too.” Apparently, the way they handled things next door wasn’t entirely due to the dead world damaging their pneuma. That was an unpleasant thing to realize. I’d been sort of hoping that if we could restore their world, they’d go back to being whatever they’d been before, and Cornale could stay on the list for safe transit. “They’re assholes when they’re at home, although I don’t know if I can blame them. They run the world I used to get here.”

  “Meaning they have a rotting universe latched onto their own, poisoning it by inches.”

  “Yes. Not much to eat there if you take each other off the menu, and they don’t seem too inclined to do that.”

  “Right.” Thomas shook his head, eyes hard. “I don’t want to know why you had to know that. I feel that the story of your life while we’ve been apart is going to drive me to drink.”

  “It drives me to drink on a fairly regular basis, and I was there,” I said cheerfully, and rose. “So you’re shoring up the defenses and setting guards. Anything else?”

  “Sally will be taking a detachment of our men to meet the Haspers on the field. They’re quick to act when they perceive weakness, but they will generally retreat with equal speed when met with proportionate force. She’s repelled them before. Will you be able to work with her if I send you along?”

  “That’s more up to her than it is to me,” I said. “But seeing as we both have a vested interest in keeping you alive, yes.”

  “Very well.” He crossed to the door before turning back to face me. “I’ll talk to her. But for the moment, will you come with me, please? There’s something else I want you to see.”

  “You know I’ve been happy to go anywhere with you since I was sixteen,” I said, and stood, stretching before I walked over to join him. Unhygienic as it might be, I hadn’t bothered to remove my shoes before lying down on the bed, and since he hadn’t said anything about it, I was assuming he didn’t care about a little mud on the blankets. Which made sense, given that we’d both been bleeding when we made it to bed in the first place.

  “Yes, and you know I’ve always been careful not to take advantage of that.” He leaned over and kissed the crown of my head before opening the bedroom door and leading me out into the hall.

  The throne room was empty when we reached it. Thomas took my hand, pulling me with him as he made for the far wall. I went willingly enough. Honestly, it was nice to be following someone I trusted for a change. That had been a rare enough occurrence over the past fifty years.

  He pressed his hand against a seemingly unremarkable piece of masonry and murmured a phrase under his breath, too low for me to understand what he was saying. The air around him briefly flashed with the sharp pre-storm smell of ozone, and when he pulled his hand away, there was a door there. It hadn’t appeared. It had always been there. I simply hadn’t been able to see it before.

  I gave him a sidelong look. “A little less shy about showing off the sorcery these days, are we?”

  “When you’re living as a wizard king, it seems a bit silly to pretend that you aren’t one,” he said, with a small, almost abashed bob of his head. “I’m sure it’s been excellent for helping me get past some of my issues with the thought that others might see what I can do. I’m not as sure how I’ll handle a return to Earth and the need to be more circumspect.”