“Jack . . .”

“Then we drive back to town and I use the imprint of the old gate at the Fort to drop into the UnderRealm. I mean we know I’m not in there, right? I’m in the park. And my uncles collectively got their asses kicked home, so it could be years before they even notice I’m with the Courts. And since we know they haven’t shown up to screw things up here, they won’t show up to screw things up here.” He danced the second spill back into the canister and up into a second whirlwind; a dark roast tornado about a foot high. “I’ll be back the day I left, trained. Able to control myself. Maybe able to stop the asteroid. You won’t even have noticed that I was gone. And I’ll be twenty-one. I know,” he held up a hand before she could speak, “it’s still nine years, but . . .”

“Jack! It’s still thirteen years, I’ll be thirty-four.”

The whirlwind collapsed. “What?”

Sagging against the counter, Charlie rubbed both hands over her face. “If I take you four years into the past, I have to live those years. Avoiding myself. Waiting for the day we left.”

“Why? Just go back through the Wood.”

“Go forward?”

“Sure, why not? You’re in the past, right? You know the future happened. Go back to where we came in when we went back.”

She’d never thought about going forward, but from the past, she was going into the present, not the future and the present was obviously reachable because they were standing in it. “That might work.”

“Thanks for sounding so surprised.” He took the kettle from her hand and poured the hot water into the press. “I’m going to blame it on the lack of caffeine. You go back to where we came in, only at a different place so you don’t end up with yourself, and I’ll come back through a gate the next day.”

Leaning forward, inhaling the coffee-scented steam, Charlie went over the idea and couldn’t find a flaw. “Okay, smart guy, we can probably bullshit this past the aunties—safety, heritage, why no, I didn’t notice anything different about Jack—but what about the Court’s price?”

“Four years without you.”

She straightened. “What?”

Jack slid the coffee canister to the back of the counter, eyes locked on his hands. “Four years exiled from the one who completes me. Four years longing. Four years alone. And no happily ever after once we’re back together because you’ll still be nine years older than me. They’ll eat that kind of thing up with a spoon. A Dragon Prince caught in the one rule the Gales won’t break.”

“You’ll pay them to teach you to be a sorcerer with emotional pain?” It was hard to hear her own voice over the roaring in her ears.

He shrugged. “That’s the thing about the Courts; basically, they’re dicks.”

“No.”

“They really are.”

“No, you aren’t giving them . . . that.”