Reno still lay where he’d landed, curled around the body of his son . . . no, his sons. He’d had someone bring Shēngwù’s body and lay it beside Dìqiú, or maybe he’d floated it there himself. Kongqi and Ah Wen were with him. As they passed, Lily heard the quiet drift of Ah Wen’s voice, but couldn’t catch the words.
When they reached the tower, Toby was still asleep. So was Diego. Not that much time had passed, really, even if it seemed like hours, but surely they’d wake soon. Next to Diego, Cynna sat cross-legged, her gaze fixed on the golden filigree spread across one thigh. She looked grim and exhausted. Next to her was a very large tiger . . . who had finished grooming herself and was now grooming Gan. Gan seemed to like it. Having experienced the sandpaper of a tiger’s tongue, Lily was impressed by the toughness of Gan’s skin.
They needed Grandmother to change back to her human self and learn how to send the signal the gnomes could pick up with their whatchamacallit. Presumably, she wasn’t able to do that yet. Lily couldn’t seem to get herself to worry about it. She was riding some sort of exhausted high.
Her head seemed to be floating a good foot above her shoulders, and walking took more effort than it should have, but that was okay. She’d survived. They’d all survived. The gate was fixed. It all felt a bit unreal, but if so much good stuff could happen, what else might be possible? Yes, they were about to embark on what the military called a forlorn hope. Four of them against a dragon spawn plus a roomful of demons and an insane demon prince . . . and that assumed that the Great Bitch’s avatar remained too preoccupied to deal with them personally. If they won that battle, they still had to escape through the twisty tunnels beneath the blasted caldera. And if they made it aboveground, they had to hope Daniel was still alive and guarding their motorcycles, or they’d be facing an impossibly long walk.
Yet she found herself willing to believe, in this moment birthed of trauma and temporary triumph, that Grandmother would learn what she needed to from Reno. That Benedict and Cullen would still be alive when they arrived . . . and they were fairly sure of that much. She and Cynna had seen Jude carrying Cullen away from the fire, and Rule was sure Benedict had been unconscious, not dead. Benedict had been lying motionless so close to the cackling demon prince . . . but Xitil liked her food lively, didn’t she? Meals that screamed while she ate them. Surely an unconscious Benedict wouldn’t appeal to her that much.
Rule’s plan was solid. Maybe the odds were against them, but the plan was solid, so maybe somehow everything would work the way they needed it to. It could happen. Why not spend this small bubble of time believing the best would happen instead of the worst? This struck her as a completely novel idea, one never before entertained in the history of the world. This world. All the worlds. Why not? she thought, giddy.
Rule squeezed her hand. “I need a word with Cynna.”
She nodded. “I’ll talk to Gan. Diego’s still here.” Which was shorthand for a longer thought she was too tired to lay out in words, but he either caught her meaning or was too tired himself to ask what she meant.
He went to kneel beside Cynna, laying one hand on her shoulder. “You figured out how to activate it yet?”
She continued to fuss with the scrap of gold filigree . . . the magic cage that had kept her bound for so long. “No, but Alice said she’d give me the key. Looks like I’ll need it. The gate’s fixed. Did she tell you that?”
Rule nodded.
Her voice was low, intense as she went on, “I only held Ryder for a minute. It wasn’t enough. And I shouldn’t say that because that was the one thing I absolutely had to have happen—getting her to safety. Only now that I have that, all I can think about is everything else I might lose.”
“He’s alive,” Rule told her. “I mean to see he stays that way.”
Cynna’s smile was the barest twitch of lips. “Yeah. Me, too.”
Lily sat on the ground next to Gan. “Hey, there. You saved my life.”
“I know,” Gan said, grumpy.
“Thank you.”
Gan frowned at her. “Maybe now you’ll come to visit me. I’ve come to visit you twice, and you’ve never come to visit me.”
Lily opened her mouth to point out that going to hell, then on to Dragonhome, wasn’t exactly a visit. That she’d been through a few different sorts of hell before that, making it hard to take off for a social call in another realm. And closed it again, because that wasn’t the point. She took Gan’s hand and squeezed it. “You’re right. You’re a really good friend, and it’s my turn to visit you. I will, too, just as soon as we’re sure the world isn’t ending or anything.”
Gan perked up. “You’ll like Edge. The gnomes are kind of stuffy, but there’s lots to do. We’ve even got chocolate now.”
Lily smiled. “Speaking of chocolate, you should probably get back to Edge. Reno says he can teach Grandmother how to send a signal to the gnomes.”
Gan’s lower lip stuck out in what was definitely a pout. “The dragon doesn’t know everything.”
“He said you couldn’t walk. Is he wrong about that?”
“I could probably walk a little bit. And the gnomes will probably be at the node, waiting for the signal.”
“Which node?” she said gently. “All of them?” They had no idea which node they’d need a gate built on so they could get home from Dis. Obviously not the twin nodes, which were in the audience chamber. And not the one they’d used initially, because—according to Reno—it would be unstable. Putting together bits and pieces of what she’d been told, Lily thought that temporary gates destabilized nodes because they weren’t anchored. Permanent gates were anchored, so they didn’t.
Not that she had any idea what “anchored” meant. She squeezed Gan’s hand again. “I want you to go let a healer help you grow that new heart.”
“Yes, but . . . but it’s hard to go away and miss what happens next. I want to know what happens. And you might need me.”
Lily nodded. “That’s true. But we’ll have Grandmother with us.”
The pout was back. Gan looked at the tiger. “I want you to come visit me, too.”
The tiger purred.
Gan looked back at Lily. “Is that a yes or a no?”
“It means she likes the idea. Gan, will you be able to take Diego with you when you cross? I can wake him up, I think.”
“I guess so, but . . . hey! What’s Old Woman doing?”
The tiger had blurred. Or the air around her had. It was like looking through a window sheeted with rain, or through really dirty glasses, or as if fog had rolled in, but with a bizarrely distinct outline that shifted, moment by moment, until Grandmother sat on the ground in her usual form. She was a lot more naked than usual, however.
“I will wake the boy,” she announced, “then I will learn the trick with the signal. Lily, bring my clothes.” She looked down at Gan, eyebrows lifted. “Old Woman?”
“I don’t know what to call you. I know what your call-name is, but it doesn’t feel right somehow.”
Li Lei Yu smiled. It was her good smile, the one without edges. “You will call me Grandmother, of course.”