I walked several paces away before I turned around, still walking, but backward, and called his attention, which had shifted to the rent in the veil, back to me.

“Just so that you know,” I said loudly, “I accept your invitation to claim you against all who might wish your stiff cock.”

His body gave a mild jolt before he tipped his head back and roared with laughter.

And there…

For in all his care of me, I had not forgotten he had lost too.

Thus, a smile playing at my lips that I had managed to return the gift of a short respite that my man had given me, I turned again and headed with dread, but less of it than I could have felt, to where we would build the pyres.

Princess Serena

Northeast Border

THE ENCHANTMENTS

After the task was complete, as she strode from the pyres, she saw Chu where he had been sitting for some time, cross-legged in the grass, his back against a tree, his sword across his lap.

His eyes on her.

In fact, his eyes had been on her the entire time she helped her sisters erect the pyres.

She ignored him through this (as she had been ignoring him since their conversation the evening after the Battle of Heights, though it was hard to do so, especially when he fought at her side the day before—fortunately, that battle had been short).

Serena also ignored him as she strode toward the tent where she was sleeping, as her treehome was in the heart of The Enchantments, some forty miles away, and she was sticking by her queen, and her queen was not moving from the rift.

This was disappointing, she wished to show her treehome to Gal and Brix.

But as her queen was here, this was where Serena would be.

She did not, however, ignore Heloise, her lieutenant who, along with Genia, her other lieutenant, and Darma, her mentor, had ridden to the border upon hearing it had been breached.

And now, they stood huddled, some twenty feet away.

Serena did not ignore Heloise for Heloise broke off from the others and approached.

She stopped and waited for her friend to arrive.

It was with a heavy heart, but not surprise, when Heloise did not delay launching right in.

“You build Jasmine’s pyre?” she asked snidely.

In her thirty-two years on that earth, Serena had learned very recently she did not know very much.

But in that moment, she knew that did not matter.

For she knew she needed to act solely on what was important in the now.

Her mother was dead.

Her only remaining blood, her sister, faced grave challenges on multiple fronts.

And her sister had not only forgiven profound affronts, even with the history Serena had created between them, without delay and without hesitation, she had settled her trust on Serena’s shoulders.