That he wasn’t gone.

Yet I knew that wasn’t the case at all. I would never see him again.

“Wait, Rylee,” Lark said as I moved to turn away, unable to look at the spot where he’d been a second longer.

The ground where he’d been shuddered and green shoots shot upward at a rate that my eyes couldn’t follow. One minute the ground was barren and dead, and then it was covered in plants and grass, tree saplings springing up and growing into towering cedars.

Around one of the cedars, a climbing bush wrapped around the trunk, blossoms bursting open and filling the air with their sweet scent. Blue petals flipped open, their softness beckoning. Lark lowered her hands. “With the time constraints, it is all I can do. But I will come back and finish it. After this is all done . . . it is the least I can do.”

I stepped forward and plucked a blossom off the growing vine. It was the exact shade of blue that his scales had sported. “This is plenty. He’d have loved to knock it all down.”

Alex laughed softly and Liam joined in. I glanced at them. “He was kinda destructive.”

Pamela sniffed. “He was a dragon.”

I nodded and walked toward Eve, pushing my grief away. There was nothing else I could do but bury it as Lark had buried Blaz. We had to move on without him, no matter how much it hurt.

“How many of us can you carry, Eve?”

The Harpy fluffed her wings, her eyes still wet with tears. “A thousand pounds. But I need to carry at least two in my claws. That is where I have the most strength.”

Marco bobbed his head. “We can carry you all. It isn’t a problem.”

Lark snapped her fingers at Peta. “Cat, downsize your furry bottom.”

Peta let out a coughing growl and shifted from her leopard form into that of an ordinary gray and white housecat. Though I couldn’t hear her speak to Lark, I could guess at the conversation based on Lark’s expressions.

And based on the stiff-legged stalk of the cat to her mistress.

Eve would carry Pamela and Alex in her talons, and Liam and I would ride astride. Marco would carry Cactus and the blackout curtains in his talons and carry Berget and Lark and Peta on his back.

As we rose into the air above the battle site. I watched as the bodies of the ogres slid under the earth, like a wave washing over them. I thought it was Lark doing it, but she shook her head and pointed to Pamela.

“Pamela.” Just her name, and with it a question.

“They were fighting for their lives too, Rylee. No different than us.”

I closed my eyes and breathed in the fresh air. She was right. “Stop being so wise when you are so much younger than me.”

Liam or Faris, whoever, wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly. A rock of strength, that’s what he was. What they both were. And it seemed they knew when to talk, and when not to.

This was one of the latter times.

Blaz’s death would haunt me; I knew it already, felt it deeply in my bones like a break that would never truly heal.

But like every other death I’d faced, I couldn’t let it slow me down, or take me from the path I was on. The world depended on me to kick Orion’s ass into oblivion.

I stared into the night sky and wondered how many more we would lose along the way.

And if I would crack under the grief.

CHAPTER 16

LIAM / FARIS

THE TREMBLING IN her body eased as she relaxed against him. Inside his head, he looked at Faris. The vampire shrugged. “She needs her peace right now. I’ve a feeling it’s only getting worse from here.”

Liam grunted softly. He already knew. Yet, he also knew Rylee better than anyone else and this wasn’t her breaking point. Losing Blaz was a blow; there was no doubt. Already he could feel the loss of the big lizard’s humor and strength, of his unfailing loyalty to Rylee and her strange pack.

But they would survive, and Rylee would rise above it to continue fighting.

An hour passed and the tops of the redwoods at the northern edge of the forest came into view, peeking through the low-lying clouds.

Marco drew closer to them and Lark gave them a wave. “Expect few to be happy to see me. We’ll go to my sister first.”

She pointed the way and Marco took the lead. Below them, Alex let out a yip and started howling like a mad man, his exuberance for life overcoming whatever grief he held; at least for the moment. There was the sound of a smack and a soft, “Be quiet, you fool,” from Pamela, and he couldn’t help chuckling.

Rylee snickered softly.

“They’re going to be quite the pair later, aren’t they?” he whispered into her ear so Alex wouldn’t hear them. But apparently Eve did. Her head whipped around and her beak dropped open.

Rylee put a finger to her lips. Eve grinned and bobbed her head once, understanding clearly.

“Yes, I do think so. He’ll help her not be so hard, and she’ll keep him from being too wild. Perhaps a little like another couple we know?”

She looked him in the eye and gave him a slow wink. Fatigue lined the three colors, along with a heavy dose of grief, but also something he knew she would need more than anything else.

Belief. There was still hope in her that they could make this happen. That she would come out on top.

Which meant she had something up her sleeve she hadn’t told him about. His eyes narrowed sharply. “What are you planning, Rylee?”

Her eyes widened with an effort at looking innocent. Indeed, there was something she was keeping to herself. “Nothing.”