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I almost choked, causing Alphonse to pat me on the back in what he probably thought was a gentle manner.“What?”

She nodded.“I suppose it’s hard to keep them in thrall when he’s about to marry one, although it’s going to be a mess for ages.Who will help me in the stables now?”

“Many will choose not to leave,” Bodil predicted, as Alphonse settled on Pritkin’s other side.“Although we will have to pay them, I suppose.My budget may never recover.”

Everybody started talking about who would stay, who would go, and how the covens would need to step up and help the returned integrate into human society.“As if most of them would know!”Odina said sarcastically.But I just sat there, with the disorientation I’d been feeling since I returned increasing rapidly, along with the knot of worry in my stomach.

“Something wrong?”Pritkin asked, but I just shook my head.

“Not to mention that you also missed the broadcast,” Alphonse added, watching me.

I blanked my face and tried to act less like a ball of nerves.“Broadcast?I didn’t think the fey had TV.”

“They do now,” he said, glancing at Bodil.

“What’s going on?”I asked, wondering if I wanted to know.

“Oh, nothing.It’s just, after she got a chance to rest, Lady Bodil here decided that repeatedly explaining everything that had happened to us wouldn’t be fun.So she did it all at once.”

“All at once?”

“She sent her memories of everything from the time we left Faerie until our return directly into the minds of everyone at court,” he said deadpan.“It caused a bit of an uproar.”

“Uproar?”Zara cackled.“I suppose that’s one way of putting it.You do know how to make an impression!”she said to Bodil, who gracefully inclined her head.

“And theybelievedyou?”I asked.

“Feltin did not,” she said, speaking of Nimue’s old lover, who was currently in charge of the government—and in bed with the dark.“He was quite insistent on that fact.But I am not the only person at court with my gift, and others verified that I spoke the truth.”

“Yes, but—”

“And then there was this,” she added, parting the draperies over her simple lavender tunic and slacks ensemble.And revealing—

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, staring at the place where a beautiful, slender arm should have been.Instead, a healed-up stump resided there, almost back at the shoulder level.“I tried to heal you…”

“You did, or I would have bled out in that terrible lobby,” she said mildly.“But your abilities seemed to stop short of regrowing limbs.”

“I don’t think that’s something Mircea can—” I began, before belatedly realizing something.“Mircea!Where—he was here!I saw him on the hillside—”

“He was here,” Pritkin assured me.“He left last night to go back to Earth.He said reporting to the consul couldn’t wait.”

I flashed back to that look of almost horror I’d seen on his face amid all the laughing, oblivious people, and didn’t think reporting was his only motivation to get away.

“But he wants your help with something when you have time,” Pritkin added.

It didn’t take me but a second.

“He wants to go with Dory into Jotunheim,” because, of course, he did.I could still see his expression when telling us what had happened there.The gods had taken a great deal from Mircea, and the man I knew would never rest until he had taken it back.

“Yes.”Pritkin looked at me oddly.“And you’re going to let him.”

I nodded.

“Even though it requires taking him back in time?”

“He could take himself,” I pointed out.It would be an easy jump, as Dory must have just left, and Mircea still had our bond.Although I somehow didn’t think he would use it.

The man I’d met in that terrible future had seen how fragile our existence was, how delicate the balance, how easily it could all be overturned.I didn’t think this was a game to him anymore, or about power or pride or vengeance or whatever had once motivated him.It was about survival.