Page 51 of Into Ember

I do not ask what that makes anyone else in this kitchen. I am not ready for that math.

“Well, maybe you weren’t looking hard enough.”

He chuckles.

“My father, and my grandfather before him, both lived to be almost fifteen hundred. They never saw one either.”

That stops me. Cold.

The math runs whether I want it to or not. Twenty-five hundred years. Twenty-five centuries of looking, of nobody, and then—

Me.

Me, who cried over a houseplant an hour ago. To be fair he’s not really a houseplant anymore.

“That’s a long time,” I say.

“Too long.”

I’m still standing there processing when Rayner comes up beside me.

“I knew you were special,” he says, quiet, just for me, and bends down and kisses my cheek, and my face goes warm in a completely different way than before.

And Gerald takes the opportunity to launch off his shoulder and land on mine — and shrinks on the way, mid-air, until he’s exactly the right size for the landing, little claws settling in like he’s done it a hundred times.

Okay. He can change size. Adding it to the list of things about my not houseplant.

“What the hell is that thing?” Vick says.

“Oh!” I grin. “It’s Gerald! He’s like a pangolin — that’s what he looks like to me, anyway. And he’s adorable.”

“He’s a familiar,” Gunnar says.

Every man in the room stops moving.

“A what?”

Nobody answers me. They’re all staring at my shoulder like Gerald just got promoted.

“No shit,” Brock says.

Vick stares longest. “Well. I’ll be.”

I don’t have it in me to ask right now.

They finish packing around the stunned silence, and we move outside into the morning light.

“We’ll use my switch,” Vick says.

“A switch?”

Erik scoffs. “It’s cheating. It opens a mini crossing — takes you anywhere you want inside the realm.” He shakes his head. “Like I said, it’s cheating.”

“Wait.” I hold up a hand. “You mean we never had to walk? I did three hours of forest. In flip-flops. There were blisters, Muffin. Blisters.”

“Oh no,” Leif says. “The Ásp Móra don’t use the switch. Never have.”

I walk over to him.