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“Don’t ever almost die again,” she mumbled into his throat.

“I will not,” he said softly. “I promise.” He nuzzled into her hair, sighing. This was it. This was the complete scent, the right scent. It ran through his body like a bubbling brook, soothing his nerves. “I am sorry,” he whispered when she remained silent.

“You rescued me,” she murmured, kissing his collarbone. “ I’m sorry.”

“ You rescued me ,” he replied, his chest rumbling with laughter.

She let out a sob of a laugh and kissed his sternum. “God, I missed that sound.” She tilted up to brush her lips across his. “Mom rescued both of us. Can you believe it?”

Tears were sparkling like jewels on her cheeks; Rai kissed them away. There was the salt not of the sea. “She is your mother. Of course she is brave and strong, just as you.”

“She is,” Poppy agreed. “And she likes you.”

“She has excellent taste.”

Poppy gave him a sardonic look. “She likes a lot of things that are stupid. She grew up in the eighties.”

Rai laughed. “Ah, I have missed you,” he murmured, kissing her nose.

“Ofelia is also occasionally sarcastic, but I much prefer it coming from your sweet mouth. I always know what she means, but I do not ever know if you are serious. It is like wondering where lightning will strike next.” He kissed that sweet mouth before she could retort .

She kissed him back hungrily, but pulled back with a hiss a moment later. “Sorry. Bonked my cast.”

Rai peered over the rim of the tub at Poppy’s ankle. “Will it heal?”

She shrugged, nudging humidifiers aside and shifting positions so her legs were stretched out alongside the tub.

“So they say. I should get the cast off in a few more weeks. It doesn’t hurt too much now, except when I bang it into things.

Which of course I do multiple times a day.

” She slanted him an amused glance. “Mom took me to the university hospital emergency room once we had you all entubbed—yes, I made up that word—and Ofelia was set up to watch over you. I didn’t have to stay long, but I did have at least three groups of medical students pop in while I was there.

Apparently heat stroke and broken ankles are a rare and exciting comorbidity.

Mom got to talk to them about our jury-rigged emergency first aid approach.

She was so excited she almost gave them all a lecture on how to treat element-starved fae.

” She bit her lip. “She was amazing. Having something huge go wrong actually made it easier for her to take action—like once the worst had happened, she didn’t have to worry about it happening anymore, so she was able to concentrate on doing what she needed to do. ”

“I owe her my deepest thanks,” Rai said.

Poppy glanced down at her fingers twisting the hem of her T-shirt. “You were right, you know.”

He grinned, pride swelling his chest. “I was! I remembered what you had told me of your father, and I found you.”

“No, not about that. Though…thank you. Nobody likes to be a damsel in distress, but rescuing yourself is fucking hard .” She sighed. “I mean about Mom. Telling Mom about…stuff.”

Rai cradled Poppy’s head in his hand, leaning out of the tub to place a kiss in the midst of her tousled fluff of hair. “I did not tell her your secrets.”

“I know.” Poppy turned toward him, tucking her forehead against his bicep.

“But we’ve had a lot of time to talk, while you were sitting here like a big ol’ things-are-wacky-yo elephant in the room.

And there were other things that… Well, in order to tell her about them, I had to tell her all of it.

And she was upset. Grateful that I wanted to help her so much, grateful that I had helped her so much, but…

I was treating her like a child, when she was my mother.

Grieving and in crisis, yes, but still my mother.

And by keeping her out of the loop, I was holding her back instead of letting her be part of her own rescue. ”

“I am sorry for that,” Rai said, fingers massaging her scalp. “I should have understood the pain behind your decisions. But your mother made a fine ally. She is the only one in this world who could love you more than I, and so the only one in this world who could have helped me to save you.”

Poppy turned her head to kiss his arm. “Mom had so many questions afterwards. Ofelia answered most of them. There was a lot of eye-rolling involved. More than even I do. You are either a groundbreaking genius or the luckiest fae ever to exist.”

Rai cuddled her as close as the tub would allow. “I have been training,” he said. “It has been said that ‘the harder you work, the luckier you get.’”

Poppy tossed her hair and gave him one of those sidelong ironic looks that made his stomach clench with desire.

“That’s basically what Ofelia said. Though she didn’t have an inspirational quote to go with it, just some hilarious insults.

” Poppy shifted up to kiss his jaw. “For the record, my mom and Ofelia are friends now. Be afraid.”

“I fear nothing,” Rai said. “I have faced death. It was a great adventure, indeed. The grandest storm I have ever ridden.”

Poppy stared at him for a moment, then laughed. “Well, clearly I am also orange-cat stupid, because that may be the hottest thing I have ever heard you say. And that is an extremely high bar.”

“But I am sorry,” Rai went on. “I am sorry that you endured an eternity of grief for my unworthy self.”

“Whoa there,” Poppy said sharply. “You don’t get to insult the man I love.”

Rai closed his eyes for a moment, basking in the words. “What did you say? I am not certain I heard it.”

“Liar.” Poppy hitched up to kiss him on the lips, sweet and slow. “I love you.” She wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight.

“And I love you,” Raii whispered into her ear. “I will love you until the stars and the moon and the sun die, and all that exists is the deep, deep water.”

She sighed, stroking his hair. “I was so worried,” she whispered, tears in her voice.

“And you wept upon me,” Rai whispered back. “I tasted them, the sea of your tears. They bore me to safety.”

“That’s weird,” Poppy said on a giggle. “And also super romantic.”

“And I am both.” Rai kissed her temple, let her ease back to sit on the tile. The situation was not as convenient as he would like for cuddling Poppy. They did not fit in the tub easily together, as they had discovered many weeks ago, and he did not wish to jostle her injured ankle.

“Anyhow, it’s actually been kinda busy,” Poppy said. There was an odd note of satisfaction in her voice. “I’ve had a lot of work to do.”

Rai wrinkled his nose, but managed to keep his voice neutral. “Have you been editing many transcripts?”

“Actually,” Poppy said with deliberate casualness, “I’ve been editing novels.”

He frowned down at her, mind trying to connect the puzzle pieces. “You have not reconciled with that”—he tried to think of a more respectful term, decided he did not care—“ fucking pollution ?”

“The opposite.” Poppy’s voice bubbled like a secret hot spring.

“So, um, did I tell you that I kind of…did most of the writing for my ex’s novels?

He wrote the first drafts, but I did a lot of work making them what they ended up being.

Like, way more than I did for other editing clients.

It was almost like he wrote the outline and I wrote the words. ”

“You did not say”—Rai kissed her cheek—“but I knew from the look of him that he was a foul creature who deserved nothing fair. He is not worthy of his tepid, shriveled beard. Nor his falsely straight teeth.”

Poppy pulled back. “You Googled him?”

Rai shrugged. “He had hurt you. I wished to know my mortal enemy’s face, that I might smite him with lightning and hail and tornadoes.”

“Oh.” Poppy blinked, dazed for a moment, then grinned in return.

“Okay, now that’s the hottest thing you’ve ever said.

Go for it. Especially if I get to watch.

” She cleared her throat. “Anyhow. I found out he’d plagiarized my Instagram for his newest book, and instead of just letting him do it, I fought back.

And… Well, he might think tornadoes were a kindness, after what happened. ”

“It would be a very grand tornado,” Rai noted. “I would leave not even a shred of his existence.”

“Be still, my beating heart,” Poppy said and lunged up to kiss him, with more passion than Rai could have dreamed of.

He was considering dragging her over the edge of the tub, bringing her sweet honey to his mouth, when she giggled against his lips.

“Anyhow, it went viral. Spread like the bubonic fucking plague.”

“This is good?” Rai's hands had ended up on Poppy’s thighs at some point. He sent a measuring look at her cast, decided not to drag her into the tub after all. Perhaps he could join her on the tile floor? It would not matter if they broke the humidifiers. He had more.

But Poppy set her hands on the rim of the tub on either side of him, pushed up to gaze downward.

Her eyes were sparkling. “Turns out, Brendan hadn’t been making a lot of friends in the bookish community.

Not only did the reviewer whose post we were arguing in do everything he could to amplify his engagement, so did a lot of authors under the Beaumont Book Group umbrella, and a domino effect of writers and editors cascading out from that.

Funny, there were a lot of Brendan stories to tell, once it was cool to tell Brendan stories.

” She nipped a playful kiss from Rai’s lips.

“And?”

“And”—Poppy paused dramatically—“that brought him to the attention of a YouTuber whose specialty is painstakingly researched deep dives into plagiarism in the creative community. He did a two-hour exposé that demonstrated how Brendan had plagiarized not only me but a dozen other creators in his third novel. It was…” She looked at the ceiling for a long moment before directing a wicked gaze straight into Rai’s eyes. “Fucking amazing.”