“Are you out of your mind? You need to change!” Relief, disbelief, and sputtering outrage turned her voice into a wail. But she locked her lips to his and kissed him as if that one touch must last until the end of time.

His body unraveled and wove itself into a new shape, shrinking and twisting. He mumbled into her mouth. “Bring me home.”

His lips disappeared from hers and shrank into a chimeric form she had not seen before. It was the size of a large dog, but had the general shape of a lizard, if a lizard had no face, feet, or claws. Its color and texture were that of a reef star. It occurred to her that both reptile and reef star were masters of regeneration.

Rebecca, back in her regular form, landed across from Isabelle, looking shaken. “What happened to him? Will he live?”

“I think so,” Isabelle said, her analysis driven more by need than logic. She opened her arm in invitation and Rebecca stuck to her side like a limpet. “You saved him.”

As rattled as she was, Rebecca looked at the strange hybrid lump that was her father and said, “He saved me first.”

Hounds bayed on the scent behind Jean-Claude. Hounds, because of course the cursed nobles brought their dogs with them halfway across the deep sky. What self-respecting snob wouldn’t be ready for a foxhunt at a moment’s notice on any Breaker-be-damned deserted skyland? Of course, le Comte de Travers was the same man who’d kept a porcine Seelenjäger on hand just in case he got peckish for pork chops.

Jean-Claude climbed off the coastal plain into the rocky hills, heading for his rendezvous point with Aria. If he could reach her before the hunt caught up with him, she could fly them someplace safe to work out how to deal with Hasdrubal.

On the tumbled slopes of these hills grew a forest like none Jean-Claude had ever seen. The trees were short and thick with dome-shaped canopies that were too tall to see over and too short to walk under. Between there was an undergrowth of plants with thick woody stems that branched out into long slender leaves like the thatch of a broom, if brooms came in blue, purple, and red. They were also spiny and sticky and exuded a milky resin that gave him a rash. It was probably a good thing no one was going to put him in charge of naming things, or everything in the canopy panoply would be named “scratchweed,” “itchy bastard,” and “burn-on-sight bush.”