The Shadow was waiting just beside the Rift. It would lead down to the crystal Nexus, the blockade keeping the Holian gods from draining the world dry. It was a bright midday, glorious in its heat. Hawk had once again slept in fits and starts, though she had an excuse for her own exhaustion. The military plane they’d taken back hadn’t been very comfortable.

  “You need rest,” the Shadow said.

  “I’m fine,” she lied.

  “Even I can tell you are not.”

  Ah, there was a fresh cut of grief there. Alex would have understood that he was closer to Hawk than any other person on the planet. That it wasn’t “even I” as if he were some dim and distant star. It had been especially him. “I’m fine. I can sleep in the Rift, or in Holia.” And she started towards the gaping hole, widened by backhoe and shovel, that meant the end of her world and the start of another. After a moment, the Shadow followed. He caught up to her with ease, and moved like one of those great cats of his. They passed by the thin line of refugees as they went, their number limited by how many they could get around the time dilation.

  Climbing down was easy. She could feel time unraveling around her, speeding up like a hummingbird’s wingbeat. When her feet hit the tamed surfaces of the Nexus’s inner geode beauty, it was almost like an alien homecoming.

  It was also filled with even more people. There was a dreadful, dim haze in the air, old smoke particulate settling dust-like across surfaces. Soldiers wore face masks, guarding themselves against disaster. Oxygen masks were passed down the rows of refugees, each one taking a few gulps under the direction of a masked medic before passing it on to the next, and the next, and the next.

  “God,” Hawk said.

  “We must hurry,” Shadow said, and drew her down towards the hole they had drilled in all this glory. The pylon was almost impassable, save for one thin passage for the Earthside soldiers to traverse. Here he paused for a moment, then sighed. “Then this is where we start from. Have you guessed that I can become the Shadowbeasts if I choose?”

  She nodded, which brought a smile to his face. It transformed him, that one brief flash of joy. And suddenly she wanted to do it again, and not because the Shadow was a remnant of Alex. She wanted this being to feel joy in his own right, because he was surely owed it.

  “There are other ways for me to travel, but none that permit a passenger. I promise, this time, I will be gentle. Our first meeting I was not.”

  “You didn’t hurt me,” She said. “I just got a few scrapes.”

  “And terror. I heard your screams. I caused them.” He sighed. “The simplest way to do this will be for you to grasp my shoulders before I change. You will need to hold on tightly.” He paused, and his lips quirked once more, with a small lascivious flare. “I will also need to be naked. Chain mail does not allow for shapeshifting.”

  She hid her own smile and stepped back.

  “You do not protest this? Most would find my touch detestable.”

  She longed for it. “It’s fine.” Keep the shields up. Maybe it was sunk-cost fallacy, that she’d spent so much time and energy keeping herself back from this man. Maybe it was more. There was an indelicate twinge of guilt that she couldn’t place, but all of it was buried under deep longing, oceans deep that she did not trust.

  He began removing his clothing. The shredded remnants of what had been truly glorious robes, once. He honored these with gentle handling and folding. How ancient they must be, she thought, to still dissolve after such care. Then the mail came off, flaking rust and smelling of metal and salt. This, too, was folded and set to the side. Without this elaborate guard, he wore nothing more than a padded shirt and a pair of leather breeches. These, too, he removed. And was it just Hawk, or did he make a bit of a show of it? Turning in the dimness of Holia, showing her the length of his legs, the muscles cording across his chest. This was Alex’s body, which she knew better than her own heartbeat, but it also was not. Leaner, hungrier, sharper. Untamed.

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  He still had a cute butt, though.

  He wrapped the chain mail and his under-clothes in the ragged robes, tying it off with a practiced hand. “Now,” he said. “It will be easiest if you hold to my back. It will prevent you from having to climb atop a monster—you’ll already be there.”

  “Don’t do that,” She said, before she could stop herself.

  “Do what? Shift? It is the only way we will be there before too much time has passed.”

  “I mean, don’t call yourself a monster.”

  He laughed, mirthlessly, and gestured with one inhuman hand. “Whatever you wish to call it, save for human, because I am not that. If ever I was, that died long ago.” A pause, and he turned, naked, towards her. “I cannot be the man that you remember.”

  “I’m not asking you to be him.”

  Now his smile turned predatory, and ancient. Older than the temple around them, it certainly was. “Are you not? You are drawn to me as if I were a lodestone. You ventured this place, this hell I call home, to seek out what I used to be. And then, when you found the detestable reality—”

  “Detestable?” she said.

  He ignored her. “—you could not depart fast enough. I felt your revulsion. It cuts clean. You are well practiced with that blade.”

  She nodded. “I was afraid.”

  “Of me.”

  “Of what you could be made to do if you were still Alex. If you did still love me.”

  “To harm you? You think I would do harm in passion? That I would ravish you?”

  She wanted him to ravish her down to her toenails, until she had to beg to come up for air. “Alright. You want me to spell it out for you? I’m terrified that Kaiser can put a gun to my head and demand your Orb. I’m terrified that you’d love me so much I’d become your greatest liability. I was relieved to realize you’d forgotten everything. Hurt, yes, but it meant that Kaiser couldn’t keep hold of you. You’d be free, as long as you didn’t care for me, or Em, or anyone else in Kaiser’s power.”

  “And so you brought Mattias into this bed of fear, and he became Kaiser’s tool instead.”

  “Yes. I’ll own that. Mattias is my fault. Henry is too.” And she stopped. Those words cut to the very quick, hurting her deeper and cleaner than they had a right to. They were the truth. She had to close her eyes against the sudden hurt of it, and began to sway beneath its strength.

  She was caught, held, comforted. Alien hands with skin soft as silk embraced her, held her to a chest that was all too human. “No,” he whispered, as gentle as the wind. He spoke into her hair. She felt the velvet of his lips move against her scalp. “You did not give Kaiser the knife, or the syringe. You did not bid him pursue me. Nor did you deliver either to him knowingly. You’d thought the danger past, perhaps rightly.” And he reached beneath her chin, tilting her head up to his. Their lips were parted by only a few breaths, now. “Never take responsibility for the deeds of others, neither good nor ill. These ill-bred feathers your Kaiser provided do not suit you at all.”

  “But I could have done more!” she said.

  “As could I.” And he let her go. Oh, she ached with need as he withdrew. And not for sex. She wanted to stay in that embrace forever, let him whisper true platitudes to her hair. She settled for grabbing hold of his shoulders, on his say-so. She’d never felt this disturbed by restraint before. Perhaps it was because, with Alex, she knew the time for restraint would end. She’d vent ten thousand small frustrations in the glories of unbridled sex. And now that was gone. The reassurance that he was hers when the doors were closed and lights dimmed had evaporated with Bittermoss School.

  So at his word, she reached for him, leaned against his back, put her arms around his neck as directed, and tried not to wish she was naked, too, if only to feel the unbearable tension of her nipples and belly against his skin. She was trembling with need, so hard it was nearly pornographic. The only comfort was the tremble in his limbs as he braced himself for change.

  “Does it hurt?” She whispered, so close to his ear her every breath was caught.

  “No,” he whispered back. “But it is not pleasant to watch, and less pleasant to cling to. You may become thoroughly disgusted with me once more.”

  In response, she tightened her grip on his shoulders. I’m not letting go, she thought. Even if this is the last time he and I are together. Especially if this is the last time. I’m going to cling to every minute, and if it’s unpleasant at least it’s happening.

  “I’m good,” she said.