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“There isn’t going to be a ‘next wife,’ Jaya.”

“What?!” I whirled around. “What do you mean?”

A wife was what he’d always wanted.

How had I fucked this up so royally?

“You will find someone incredible, Oaken. They aren’t all like me!”

His face was calm. Composed. But his eyes were alight with something intense and unnameable.

“But that is precisely the problem.” He smiled, but it was weak, wan, like it fucking hurt to do it. “They aren’t you.”

My emotions spilled into one another. A heady cocktail of grief, guilt, confusion, and…

Hope.

“What are you saying?” The words rushed from me “Oaken, what are you-”

I was cut off by an especially loud smack of ice against the window. I stifled a yelp and jumped when I realized it wasn’t a hailstone at all, but Lala. She rammed her body against the window again, making the glass rattle.

I sped to the window and yanked it open. Instantly, she was crawling inside.

“What are you doing at the window?” I asked as she moved down the wall to the floor.

“I am not at the window. I am in the kitchen!”

Sassiness isn’t part of your programming, my ass…

“And I had to come that way!” she went on. “I can open the door on theLavariya. But I cannot, apparently, open one as ancient in design as Oaken’s!”

I scooped her up off the floor.

“What’s going on?” I asked. Now that the window was open, I could hear how quiet things had gotten outside. That was something. At least the storm seemed to have passed.

“TheLavariya’sweather sensors are picking up tornado activity,” Lala blurted. “A funnel cloud is forming less than ten kilometres from here.”

At once, Oaken was moving. His hands descended heavily onto my shoulders. “Get into the cellar,” he ordered me, already steering me towards the door that led down the stairs.

“But my ship!” I gasped, fighting his grasp.

He swore under his breath, then let me go.

“Get in it now,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “If you go now, you can beat the weather. You and Lala and the ship will all be safe.”

“And you!” I cried. “You’re coming with me! We’ll fly clear of the storm, and then come back when it’s safe.”

“I can’t! I have to stay and let the bracku and shuldu loose.”

“Let them loose?”

“Their instincts will help guide them,” he quickly explained. “They can get low somewhere and wait it out. But I have to open the gates for them first. And then I have to go get Nali.”

He left me no time to reply, no time to argue. Swiftly, he wrapped his arms around me, pressing my face into his chest. His breathing was harsh against my hair.

His arms were so fucking tender.

He was holding me like it would be the last time.