“And will enlist another, a mortal.” Celene stared into the sea, its black glass, and saw the shadows of what might be. “Whose hunger is a mate to hers. He has and will kill for prizes less vaunted than the Stars of Fortune. He is poison in the wine, a blade in an offered hand, snapping teeth behind a smile. And in Nerezza’s hands, a weapon, keen and swift.”
“We must help them. They have proven themselves, we agree,” Luna reasoned. “We must be allowed to help.”
“You know we cannot,” Celene reminded her. “Every choice made must be made without our interference. We have done all we can, for now.”
“Aegle is not their queen.”
“Without Aegle, without this place, without the moon and we who honor it, they have no world. Their fate, our fate, all fate, is in their hands.”
“They are of us.” In comfort Arianrhod tightened her grip on Luna’s hand. “They are not gods, yet more than mortals, each one with their own gift. They will fight.”
“And as important as battle, they will think, and they will feel.” Celene let out a sigh. “And they will love. Mind, heart, spirit, as much as sword and fang and even magicks. They are well armed.”
“So we trust.” Flanked by her sisters, Luna lifted her face to the moon. “Let our trust be their shield. As we are guardians of the worlds, they are guardians of the stars. They are hope.”
“And valor,” Arianrhod added.
“And they are canny. There.” Smiling, Celene lifted a hand, gesturing to the swirl of color streaking over the sky. “They pass by us, through our world, hurtling toward the next. To another land, to the second star.”
“And all the gods of light go with them,” Luna murmured, and sent her own.
CHAPTER ONE
For an instant, like a single beat of wings, Annika scented the sea, heard the voices lifted in song. Here then gone, a blur within the blur of color and speed, but it swelled in her heart like love.
Then came a sigh, and the echoes of sighs, another kind of music. Bittersweet. And this washed through her like tears.
So with joy and sorrow mated in her heart, she fell. Tumbling, spiraling, spinning in a breathless rush that added a reckless thrill and a quick panic.
A thousand wings beat now, a thousand and a thousand more, with whipping wind, a wall of sound. And color flicked away into the dark as she landed abruptly enough to lose her breath.
For a moment she feared they’d landed in some deep, dark cave where spiders would crawl, and worse, much worse, where Nerezza waited to strike.
Then her vision cleared. She made out shadows, what she knew as moonlight, and felt the firm body beneath hers, the arms wrapped tight around her. She knew that shape, that scent, wanted to snuggle right in, Nerezza or not.
It was a wonder, a star-struck sea of wonder, to feel his heart beat, so fast and strong, against hers.
Then he shifted a little, and one hand slid up, then down her hair. The other skimmed wonderfully over her bottom.
She snuggled right in.
“Um.” Both hands came to her shoulders now, but his voice spoke close enough to her heart that his breath tickled it. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Everybody okay?”
She remembered her friends—not that she’d forgotten them, not ever. But she’d never lain so intimately on a man before—on Sawyer—and she liked it very, very much.
She heard grunts, short groans, some cursing. Doyle’s voice, close by and annoyed, clearly said, “Fuck me,” which she knew wasn’t an invitation to mate, but an oath.
She didn’t worry about Doyle. After all, he was an immortal.
“Sound off.” That was Bran, somewhere a few feet away. “Did everybody make it? I’ve got Sasha. Riley?”
“What a ride!”
“One you finished with your knee in my balls,” Doyle added.
Annika heard a thump, which she interpreted as Doyle shoving Riley and her knee aside—as balls, she’d learned, weren’t just the round toy that bounced, but a man’s sensitive area.
“I’m here,” she called out, and experimented by wiggling a little on Sawyer’s sensitive area. “Did we fall out of the sky?”