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.”

“You don’t get to make that decision.” He turned to look at her then and, if not for the slide of scales up and down his arms, he’d have looked unaffected by what they were discussing. “That’s the price to keep the world from ending.”

“Jack . . .”

“We can’t let the world end for everyone who isn’t family without doing everything we can to stop it. Right?”

Charlie palmed the top of the press and forced it down. It hadn’t been four minutes. She didn’t care. At this point, she was willing to Walk back eight minutes, beat herself out of the bedroom, and make the coffee sooner. That Jack would offer so much of himself for those outside the family, well, the outside the family was part of the freedom of being Wild, but his total lack of awareness of how astounding it was, of how astounding he was, that was all Jack. The Gale motto was family first. Actually, it was Omnes Sumus nos Postulo, “We are all We Need”; Auntie Ruby had embroidered it on a pillow, but family first was close enough.

“Charlie?”

She took a deep breath and met his eyes, letting everything she felt show in hers. “I have to think about it.”

“You’ve got nine days.”