Page 35

One Year Later

Bastian

I thought it was exhausting helping to run a rebellion. That was nothing compared to what it’s taken to keep Threshold from ending up in an all-out war after the Wild Hunt rode. I am…so damned tired. More tired than I knew I could be. Every day is filled with bickering nobles and more and more representatives showing up from the various islands in the realm. We will be setting up a new Council tomorrow, a truly representative one. Each inhabited island is sending two people who have been voted on by their people. The fact that it took a year to get to this point just speaks to how effectively the last Council—and the many before that—have misused power and policy for their own gain.

No longer.

I’ve seen Nox only a handful of times in the last twelve months, short intervals where we spent as much time as we could manage wrapped up in each other. It’s not enough, never enough, but with so much at stake, we can’t prioritize our relationship over the good of the realm. We speak regularly with the new desk they installed in the Audacity . They’re personally escorting the representatives from Three Sisters, so they should have arrived in Lyari hours ago.

I meant to go meet them on the docks. Truly, I did. But the sun started to set before I could, and this is not something I skip for anything. Even Nox.

As the sun sinks to the horizon behind me, I climb up onto the roof of the old Council building. It’s the tallest spot in Lyari. I don’t know if the height actually helps, but it can’t hurt.

I kick off my boots and step into the permanent amplification circle Evelyn created for me on her and Bowen’s most recent stop in Threshold. I have to draw out the pattern each time I use it, but she burned the template into the boards so it’s easy enough. I kneel in the center and carefully draw a few drops of blood. I hadn’t thought I was any good at ritual magic, but apparently all I needed was the motivation to become good.

As soon as the power stabilizes, I take a deep breath and exhale just as slowly. It hurts to do this. Not the power expenditure, but the hope that I should have killed long months ago. Instead, here I am, a year later, trying to call her home.

Another deep breath and I’m ready. I send my magic out, farther and farther and farther, to the very edges of my ability. The amplification circle drains my magic twice as fast as normal, so I can only hold it for about fifteen minutes.

I close my eyes. “Siobhan. Siobhan, come home. Your hunt is finished. You’ve saved us all. Come home to us.” Again and again and again, the words carrying a lilt of melody that helps the magic cling to them.

At the end of fifteen minutes, I reluctantly release the magic. Beneath me, the chalk amplification circle has blurred to the point of being unrecognizable, its use fulfilled. I sit back on my heels and let loose a shaky breath.

“That’s beautiful.”

I look up to find Nox standing before me. They’re dressed in black, which somehow suits them even more than crimson, their duster flowing dramatically in the light wind, their clothing beneath fitted to their body. I use my forearm to wipe the sweat from my brow. “I’m glad you made it in time.”

“Me, too.” They carefully step into the circle, avoiding the sigils and offering me their hand. “Tomorrow, the next step starts.”

“Yes.” I let them pull me to my feet and then hug them close. “Fuck, I missed you.”

Nox holds me just as tightly. “I missed you, too.”

Tomorrow, the newly formed Council votes on how to proceed with returning the refugees to their home realms—and settling the ones who have no interest in returning in communities with room to spare. People will get a choice; I’m determined to ensure it’s so. We’re starting the new Threshold on the right foot, on the promise of being better.

Even though I know I shouldn’t, I can’t help but ask. “Have you seen her?”

“I don’t think so,” Nox says slowly. “We caught the edge of the Hunt a month ago. I don’t know if they were coming or going, but we heard them and saw the mist. No hounds or riders, though.”

We had thought the Wild Hunt would disappear the same way it’s been gone for time unknowing. Instead, wherever they ride, they seem to use Threshold the same way normal people do—as access to other realms. There are regular sightings, but they don’t bother any of the people left after the purge of the C?n Annwn.

If they had disappeared, maybe I would have been able to give up hope that Siobhan would return to us someday. As it is, I can’t help doing everything in my power to summon her home.

Nox loops their arm through mine and turns us toward the door to the stairs. “You know, you’re getting quite the reputation. The young eligible nobles wax poetic about the Lyarian Banshee, calling his lost love home. It’s considered quite the coup if they can seduce you out of your sadness.”

I wince. There have been plenty of attempts in the last year. “You know I’m not interested in any of them.”

“I know.” They press a kiss to my cheek. We share a bed when they’re in town, and we’ve spent no little amount of time losing ourselves in pleasure, but there’s no escaping the grief of Siobhan’s absence. I keep thinking it will fade, will lose some of its jagged teeth, but it endures. Instead, it’s as if it’s compounded when Nox and I are together, two-thirds of a whole that might never be whole again.

“What if she never returns?” I hate to give voice to the fear I can’t escape, but if I can trust anyone to hold space for it, it’s Nox.

We walk in silence through the building and out onto the street. “I’d like to join you tomorrow night. Give a little warm wind to carry your call farther.”

I glance at them. “Do you think it will help?”

“It can’t hurt.”

It’s not until we’re back in my bed, sweat cooling on my skin and Nox sleeping beside me, that I realize they never really answered my question.

Siobhan

Blood in my mouth. Flesh between my teeth. The ground falling away beneath my paws. Always the next surge, the next prey, the next call from the Hunter to change direction. There is nothing else.

Except…

Siobhan.

I miss a step and nearly fumble into my siblings around me. One of them snaps at me, but it’s half-hearted at best. We’re picking up speed again, intent on our next destination.

Siobhan.

I shake my head roughly, trying to clear it. I know that voice, though it’s strange in the cadence. I’ve heard its owner say that name a thousand times, a million, until it’s as familiar as my own heartbeat. I’ve heard him speak…my name?

Siobhan, come home.

I slow, letting my siblings rush on without me. A warm wind comes from the south, ruffling my fur. I close my eyes, my body straining toward something I have no name for. The wind brings more than those soft, singing words, more than the name I didn’t realize I’d forgotten. It brings scents as well, each so vivid that it feels like a blow to my body. Cedar and spice. Salt and blood.

Yearning rises within me, a longing for something just out of reach. I inhale deeply, and then again. I…know these scents, these… people .

Your hunt is finished.

No. Impossible. The Hunt is everlasting. A singular purpose with no end. There is no shortage of prey across all the realms in existence. There never will be. The Hunter blows their horn in the distance, directing us to the next portal.

You’ve saved us all.

Saved…I slow further. What have I saved? Even as I think the question, the answer echoes deep within my mind. Threshold. The realm we now ride through on our way to the next. I don’t understand and yet my paws plant and my body freezes. Every bit of me is crying out to surge forward and follow the Hunt, but I can’t stop my ears from straining backward, trying to find more words sung in that lovely voice.

Come home to us.

Us.

Bastian.

Nox.

Thinking the names is like a spell breaking over me. Me, Siobhan . Not little sister but a person who is also a hound. A person with two lovers waiting for me. How long has it been? I don’t know. I can’t know.

But it doesn’t have to be longer.

I turn away from the Hunt, from my people, and start running south.

Nox

Three days after arriving in Lyari, I’m sitting in on yet another endless meeting for the new Council in a large room that I’m nearly certain used to be a ballroom for events. I maintain no position—and want none—but Bastian found me a spot near the wall to observe history in the making. All observing has done is prove that the closest I want to get to true authority is captaining the Audacity .

There are already factions and alliances and petty politics, but there’s no escaping those things. We have , however, ensured that all the people of Threshold are represented in making the policies that will affect them. No one island or people holds the power over any others. And these policies are only for the realm politics—the laws of each individual island will be reverted to their respective peoples.

I catch Tia’s eye as she and an unfamiliar Yothian pass by. There will be no further sanctioned attempts to turn Yoth into a vacation destination for Lyarians. Good.

I don’t think anyone quite reckoned on this process taking days, especially when today clearly won’t be the end of it. As the hours stretch on, I start craving the sea air against my skin with a desire that has me fighting not to fidget. Right when I’m nearly at my breaking point, Bastian calls a recess until tomorrow.

He’s good at this.

No matter what doubts he held, he manages the occasionally heated conversations with ease. He holds no voting position; instead, he’s taken up as the moderator for the discussions and votes. Not everyone was happy with that choice, but no one had a better solution so it stuck. Thankfully.

By the time the last person files from the room, the light has changed as night approaches. Without a word, Bastian and I make our way to the roof, and I watch as he painstakingly traces out the amplification circle. We step into it and repeat the same ritual we have the last three evenings.

Calling Siobhan home.

In my dark moments, I suspect we might be calling Siobhan home for the rest of our lives, might go to the grave with her name and longing on our lips. I’ll never voice that suspicion, though. It feels unspeakably cruel to do so.

As the last bit of the circle dissolves and Bastian allows his glamour to fade, he slumps against me. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this. It hurts too much.”

“I know,” I say softly.

“What if—” He straightens abruptly. “Nox, do you see that?”

It takes a beat to understand what he means. And even then, I don’t know what I’m looking at. Something small and quick racing through the gap in the harbor and heading for the docks, moving faster than I’ve seen any ship. “What is that?”

“Come on!” He takes my hand and then we’re running, down the stairs and out the building and through the streets. My breath saws in my lungs, but I don’t tell him to slow down, don’t pop the bubble of hope that’s risen in both of us. Surely it’s not her. It can’t possibly…

But it is.

We reach the docks at the same time the hound does. I was sure I hadn’t forgotten her size, but I’m still staggered by it as Siobhan—because it must be Siobhan—stumbles off the surface of the water and onto the dock. Between one step and the next, she shifts, a shimmering veil lowering and rising, revealing a naked woman.

Bastian gets to her first, pulling her into his arms. I’m there a moment later, needing to touch her, to ensure that she’s truly here. She’s thinner than she was a year ago, but not dangerously so. She’s here .

Siobhan blinks down at us as if waking up from a dream. “Bastian? Nox?” Her voice is rough and gravelly, nearly identical to how it had been when she spoke in hound form after the creature did…whatever they did to her.

“You’re here.” Bastian kisses her and then she’s kissing me and, gods , I missed her so much I think I might die from it. “You’re safe.”

“Safe,” she repeats slowly. “It feels like a dream. How long?”

“A year,” I whisper.

“So long.” Siobhan frowns and shakes her head as if trying to clear it. “You called me home.”

“Bastian did.” Tears streak his face, or maybe it’s me who’s crying. I don’t know. I truly thought she was gone forever and now she’s here in our arms and I don’t know how to process it. I don’t think any of us do. “Let’s go home.”

“Home.” Siobhan smiles, some of the strangeness fading from her expression. In that moment, she looks less like an uncanny creature accidentally wandering into civilization and more like the woman we both fell in love with. She looks at Lyari and then back at us. “Tell me everything.”

Bastian pulls off his tunic and tucks her into it. She’s taller than him, so it barely covers her nudity, but it’s better than walking through the streets without. This city has seen some shit, but Siobhan is a force of nature, even looking slightly bewildered at the rapid change of events.

We fill her in on the new Council, on the effort to save those stranded by the Wild Hunt, on all the changes we’ve fought for, as we make our slow way to the harbor house Bastian keeps. He intentionally picked a place where he’s accessible to people, rather than being tucked behind the gated communities the nobles occupy—or what’s left of the nobles. Their purge wasn’t as thorough as that of the C?n Annwn, but it was enough to ensure they haven’t done more than grumble about the new government.

She showers and dresses in clean clothes, and while we feed her, exchanging wild looks because neither of us can believe this is happening, we tell her about the programs we’re getting set into motion—courtesy of the wealth the old Council had spent generations hoarding.

“It really worked.” She reaches out and takes each of our hands, pulling us down into the chairs on either side of her. “You’ve both worked so hard.” A single tear slips free. “Things are working. And you still called me home.”

“Siobhan.” I wait for her to look at me to squeeze her hand. “Of course we did—well, Bastian has done most of the work, but the point remains. We love you.” Even after a year, it feels so strange to say aloud. “We were never going to stop trying to bring you home.”

Another tear slips free. She looks at me and then Bastian. “I love you both, too. So much. I don’t think anyone else’s voice could have reached me, could have given me pause.”

“You know I love you. I never stopped. I never will stop. None of this would have been possible without you,” Bastian says softly. “The revolution, yes, but all that came before. You put a decade’s worth of work into making Threshold a better place. We’ve just been continuing the work you started.”

“And doing a damn good job of it.” She smiles slowly. “I know it’s selfish, but I’m grateful I don’t have to be the face of the new future. It sounds like you have it well in hand.”

“There’s nothing stopping you from—”

“ I’m stopping me.” But she’s smiling as she says it. “There’s still so much work to be done, and I’m happy to be there, working hard alongside you—both of you.”

Fuck, now I’m going to cry. “I want that. More than anything.”

“Me, too.”

I’m not sure who moves first, but we end up on our feet, our arms wrapped around one another. Siobhan hiccups. “I’m so glad to be home. To be with you both.”

Now, with Siobhan back, it truly will be a home.