Chapter 5 Chapter Five

Aldric

Earth feels wrong under my skin the second I step through the maintained hinge, and Maren still feels right somewhere in the middle of my chest. The magic here is thin enough that my Frostcraft pulls inward instead of sitting ready at my fingertips, and the shadow beside the concrete service building is shallow enough that I wouldn't trust a full Shadowstep through it unless somebody was actively trying to kill me. Huntsense works better. Scent is scent. Weight still moves through dirt. People still disturb air when they pass. I can work with that. More importantly, the pull toward Maren is still there, which answers the only question I cared about before crossing.

I grin before I can stop myself. Alaric notices. "Don't." I look at him.

"I didn't say anything."

"Your face did."

"My face is pleased to discover I wasn't imagining her." His jaw tightens, and I almost tell him that his face is doing far more talking than mine, but a woman thirty feet away starts walking toward us with murder in her expression and saves him from me.

Pryssalyn looks human at first. Copper-red hair pulled into a high ponytail, jeans, green jacket, boots, rounded ears. She waits until she is close enough to confirm nobody else is on the service road before dropping enough of the glamour for the tips of her ears and the edge of one blue-green wing to flash into view. Then she points at both of us. "What the hell were you thinking?"

Alaric gives her the controlled expression he uses when somebody opens a conversation by accusing him of something. "Good afternoon to you too." Pryssalyn's eyes narrow.

"Do not do that formal prince shit with me. I spent years keeping that woman alive without anybody realizing what she might be, she wakes up after one very real dream involving the two of you, and less than a day later a man walks into her locked apartment and carves an old High-Hinge symbol under her window. So I am well past good afternoon."

I step closer before Alaric can answer for both of us. "Then be angry at the man who entered her home. We didn't go looking for Maren. She reached us." That stops her, and some of the anger finally gives way to the fear underneath it.

"She initiated?" Alaric nods.

"Completely. Neither of us opened the contact." Pryssalyn looks between us several times.

"And she held both of you?"

"Yes," he answers. "Long enough to create stable shared dreamspace."

"Fuck," Pryssalyn mutters, turning away long enough to pace three steps before coming back.

I glance at Alaric. "I like her." He sighs.

"Do not encourage her." Pryssalyn points at me again.

"You think this is funny?"

"No. I think if I don't find one thing in this conversation that doesn't make me want to hunt somebody through a wall, I'll start breaking things, and your world appears to have fewer structures designed to survive me." She stares at me for a second, then unexpectedly snorts.

"Fantastic. You are exactly the one I thought you would be."

"You know me?" I ask.

"I know of both of you. There is a difference, and after this morning Maren is extremely familiar with that distinction." Something about hearing Maren's name in ordinary daylight makes the pull inside me tighten again.

Pryssalyn notices my reaction and her expression sharpens. "She thinks it was a dream. A really vivid one. She did not wake up hunting for magic, and she did not decide the universe handed her two men. She got dressed and went to class. Keep that in mind before either of you starts talking to her like she owes meaning to something she has not even been told is real."

"She doesn't owe me anything," I say, and I mean it enough that the words come out harder than I intend. "I believe the pull matters. That belief belongs to me. Whether she wants me belongs to her." Pryssalyn studies my face longer than I like, then nods once.

"Good. Because fate language makes people stupid when they use it to skip consent." I shrug.

"Fate can put someone in front of me. It can't make her stay."

Alaric goes quiet beside me.

I know exactly why. He hates hearing me say it because it cuts too close to the argument we had before crossing. My brother isn't afraid he doesn't want Maren. He is afraid he wants her for a reason that didn't begin with him, and that makes every feeling suspect in his head. For once I don't tease him. I understand the objection even if I don't share it. I simply don't need every feeling to have an independent certificate of origin before I admit it exists.

Pryssalyn catches the silence and looks directly at Alaric. "And you?" He takes a second before answering.

"I am not denying the attraction." I make a small sound, and he cuts me a look before continuing.

"I am questioning what portion of the connection is ours by choice and what portion may be an imposed magical structure. If I ever take a mate, that decision should belong to me as much as hers." Pryssalyn nods slowly.

"That is fair. What is not fair is making Maren feel rejected because you are angry at fate. She did not arrange this either."

He goes still.

Good. Somebody else saying it saves me the trouble.

Pryssalyn pulls out her phone and turns the screen toward us, showing photographs from Maren's apartment. A silver necklace on a pillow. A carved High-Hinge symbol beneath a window. A faint heel impression in carpet and a black wool fiber the human investigators recovered. Then she shows us the description of the man seen in the hallway. Tall. Fit. Late forties or early fifties by human appearance. Dark hair graying at the temples. Pale gray eyes. Calm enough to look like he belonged there.

My Huntsense is useless through a photograph, and I hate that more than I expected. "You said the symbol was placed where you would find it." Pryssalyn nods.

"Yes." Alaric studies the image.

"Then this is not only intimidation directed at Maren. It is pressure directed at you. Whoever entered knows a seeker is with her."

"That is what I think too," Pryssalyn says. "I also think whoever did it wanted me frightened enough to change how I am protecting her."

"Move her," I say automatically, because a compromised residence is a compromised residence.

Pryssalyn's expression hardens immediately. "See? That is exactly what I am talking about. You are here less than ten minutes and you have already decided where she should sleep." Irritation comes up fast, but I force myself to separate the tactical answer from the personal one.

"I said move her because someone entered her home. I didn't say drag her somewhere without telling her why."

"She gets to decide whether she leaves," Pryssalyn says. "Unless an attack is happening in that exact moment, nobody physically relocates her first and explains later." I nod because that is reasonable.

"Fine. If danger is immediate, I get her out of the danger first. After that, she decides." Pryssalyn looks at Alaric.

"Is he always this literal?" My brother answers,

"When the subject matters, yes. It is one of his more useful qualities."

"And one of my more charming ones," I add. Neither of them agrees.

We settle the rest of the rules standing beside an ugly concrete building while traffic moves somewhere beyond the trees. Maren gets answers as quickly as facts exist. Suspicion gets labeled suspicion. Nobody enters her apartment because magic makes locks inconvenient. Nobody uses dream access unless Maren opens it, except immediate life-threatening circumstances where there is no other way to reach her. Nobody calls her Princess in public until she knows why the word exists and decides whether she can tolerate it. Alaric starts adding caveats until Pryssalyn tells him he is proving every complaint I have ever made about him.

"When do we see her?" I ask once the rules are done.

Pryssalyn says, "Tomorrow,"

I answer, "No," before she finishes the word. Her eyes narrow.

"That was not a request."

"Someone entered her apartment today."

"The police are there. The locks are changed. She is staying with me tonight, and she has spent the last twelve hours learning that her roommate knows two men from her sex dream and another world may exist. You appearing at her door tonight will not make her safer. It will make her think every person in her life has been coordinating behind her back."

I hate every part of that answer, which doesn't make it wrong. Alaric says, "Tomorrow morning. Public setting." Pryssalyn nods.

"You are already enrolled under the Frost covers. The football staff expects you before dawn. I set the campus part of the cover up years ago as one of several contingencies because apparently I hate myself."

"Football," I repeat.

She gives me a tired look. "A human sport built around large men running into one another while crowds scream. Try not to fall in love with Earth before lunch." I grin.

"Too late."

Alaric mutters something under his breath that I ignore. Pryssalyn starts toward a dark SUV, then stops when I ask the question that has been sitting behind everything else. "Do you think Maren is the missing Spring child?" Her whole face changes.

"I think she could be. I have spent years being afraid to prove it because if I am right, finding her does not only mean telling a woman she has another family and another world. It means reopening the question of why somebody wanted her gone badly enough to hide her on Earth in the first place."

That quiets even me.

I look toward the city even though I have no idea which direction Maren is in. The pull doesn't give me a location. It isn't a compass or a voice in my head. It is simply the awareness that someone exists who did not exist in my life yesterday and already matters more than she reasonably should.

Alaric needs time to decide whether that frightens him enough to fight it.

I already know my answer. I want to meet her awake. Then I want her to decide what she wants to do with me.