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I laughed. “Hardly.” We were both smeared in blue and I could only imagine how my elaborate hairstyle looked now. Plus I had to pee, quite desperately. So much for romance. Yet, I hated to end the moment. “Did you stay with me all night?”
“Yes.” He kissed my forehead again. “It’s restful. And I didn’t want to be away from you just yet.”
“That’s…lovely.” I didn’t want to be away from him either. It might take time, getting used to the ways we’d commingled.
“But you want to clean up,” he observed. “Go ready your bath and I’ll join you. No doubt Mistress Nancy has your special human food waiting.”
“You make it sound like Purina People Chow or something.” But, relieved, I gave him a quick kiss and dashed naked for the bathing room and my new best friend, the magic chamber pot. I did look like the creature from the black lagoon, with my hair in astonishing disarray, but somehow still mostly still piled on my head—glittering with the pollen. Marie Antoinette yesterday, Marge Simpson today.
And they said marriage didn’t change anything.
I also looked amazingly—even radiantly—happy. Rogue’s regard remained wrapped around my heart, a warm blanket of love I carried with me. Where I’d felt alone before, marooned on an alien planet, I now had a deep and permanent connection.
For better or worse, I would always have that.
An unlooked-for gift.
I managed to wrestle my hair down and brush it out by the time Rogue joined me, setting a breakfast tray on the vanity. He stood behind me, surveying my reflection in the mirror, splaying a hand over the hard round of my belly. I almost superstitiously expected him not to appear—though I knew him to be as physically present as anyone.
“Growing bigger every day,” I remarked.
“Yes.” He pressed a kiss to my left temple, saying nothing more. Really, we’d already said it all.
“Turn around,” I told him and he obliged me. I unbraided his hair, setting aside the ribbons and miniature lilies that remained magically uncrushed. He smiled at my determination to do tasks like this physically, but waited patiently while I finger-combed the silky length of it, the kinks from the braid making it glint in the light.
When I finished, he pointed me at the tray. “Eat. I don’t want Mistress Nancy upbraiding me again. She was most put out that you only ate the sandwich yesterday.” He went to soak in the bathtub to wait for me.
“You talked to her? Did she say how Starling is?”
Rogue ostentatiously pressed his lips together and pointed at the tray.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I muttered, though I didn’t need much prompting to devour what looked like a full Scottish breakfast, complete with fish, sausages, browned potatoes and onions, English muffins with lemon curd, oatmeal and three glasses of juice and two of milk. Surveying the empty platter, I groaned at how much I’d eaten.
“I shall become as big as one of the dragons, only shorter.”
“That shall be entertaining,” Rogue replied, holding my hand to steady me as I stepped in the tub. “Starling is recovering. You’ll no doubt want to visit her before we go.”
“Definitely. Any sign of Blackbird and Fergus? Or Nasty Tinker Bell?”
He frowned, ever so slightly, pulled me to lie back against him and began soaping me. “None of any of them. Perhaps Starling mistook the message and Blackbird and Fergus are still on the Endless Sea—out of range.”
“No—I saw them, riding this way.” At his mute surprise, I showed him the image in my mind. “When I used the scepter, before you had your tantrum.”
“Hmm.” He diplomatically did not say anything to that. “AndLady Incandescence,” he emphasized her title, “is likely hiding.”
“From us?”
“From you,” he corrected.
“Am I after her for something?”
“That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?”
Hmm. “I looked out the windows and I don’t see a besieging army.”
“They seem to be hanging back. She’s playing some game with us.”
“That goes without saying.”
