He swiveled her around to face the opposite direction. “And we’ll build a house for me over there. We’ll be as far apart as we can possibly be from each other, all right?”

“Oh for God’s sake,” she exclaimed. “That wasn’t the point. I didn’t mean for us to be as far apart as we can possibly be from each other, I just think it would be healthy to keep our own spaces so we don’t kill each other while we work on developing our relat—”

He slipped a hand over her mouth, cutting off the flow of words, and said in her ear, “You need more orgasms, don’t you?”

She froze. Then nodded.

“I thought so,” he whispered. He bit lightly at her neck. “I might need a few more myself.”

But where do we go? she asked.

He lifted his head. Urgency roughened his voice. “They’ll have a tent set up for me.”

He was correct. They did have a tent set up for him. As befitting a commander, it was a spacious and comfortable two-room affair, with a bed in one area and a sitting room with table and chairs for meetings in the other.

Tearing off their clothes, they fell into the bed, and together they made again that pure, shining creation.

A love bigger than anything else.

That was their respite. Their refuge.

In the following weeks, Nikolas’s duties took long, demanding hours. He coordinated an intensive search for Morgan and the Hounds that had escaped the battle, which ultimately turned frustrating.

“Morgan was wounded twice with silver-tipped arrows,” Nikolas said one night, burning off his frustration by pacing in the sitting area of his tent. “I saw it. He won’t be able to heal those wounds magically. He’s at his weakest right now, yet we can’t find him.”

“Are you saying Morgan is a lycanthrope?” Sophie set aside the book she was reading.

“He’s not just the Captain of Isabeau’s Hounds,” Nikolas told her. “He is a Hound himself. That’s how he’s survived all these centuries. If he had remained a human, he would have died a very long time ago. He must have reached Avalon to disappear so completely.”

She uncurled from her position on the settee and approached to rub his back. “Don’t get discouraged,” she said. “We’ve still made so many strides.”

We, she’d said.

That small, simple word warmed him.

Turning, he pulled her into his arms and soaked in the comfort she offered. Not that long ago, he had lived a barren existence where there had been no comfort to be found. “Yes, we have made huge strides.”

As the summer turned heavy, ripe and golden, the sale of the manor house went through, and Sophie became a wealthy woman. They celebrated by having a picnic on the floor of her new, four-room cottage. When the needs of the Dark Court became less urgent, she talked about searching for what happened to her family, but it was never with any sense of personal urgency. She knew her parents must be dead. She just wanted, someday, to discover their story.

Sophie and three Dark Court scholars began to inspect the contents of the library. It would take a while to get through everything. Many of the documents had been half eaten by mice, and none of it was organized. There were estate records, correspondence, bills of sale, and a hodgepodge of illustrated books that looked to be in the best shape, as they had been stored in trunks and apparently never handled or read.

The army engineers got scaffolding erected throughout the manor house to support the areas that had been weakened. Knowing they needed to complete many of the new buildings by winter, the barracks, communal halls, and small, individual houses were built quickly.

Those who had an affinity for land magic worked on healing the scars Morgan had created. They trucked in mature trees to replace copses and hired workers from town to handle electrical wiring, gas pipelines, and other modern Earth techniques that were foreign to the Dark Court engineers.

Nikolas had been concerned about how the townspeople in Westmarch would react to having such a strong Dark Court force on their doorstep, but they were such an economic boon to the area, everyone he talked to professed themselves delighted, especially when he coordinated with the local constabulary to increase security in the area.

Annwyn began to search for physicians who might be able to help with the malady that held Oberon in its icy grip. After talking with Sophie, Annwyn researched Kathryn Shaw’s background and made an initial approach to hire her for a consultation on Oberon’s condition.

Kathryn turned Annwyn down. While, Kathryn replied, she was sympathetic to the Dark Court’s plight, as the official doctor for the sentinels who governed the Wyr demesne in New York, she had her own duty to attend to, and the time slippage between Lyonesse and Earth was too extreme.

Nikolas moved into his house and got a new car since his Porsche had disappeared. Sophie moved into hers. In theory, separate dwellings were a good idea, but the reality was, either he slept at her place, or she slept at his.

Unless they fought. Then five acres didn’t seem like nearly enough space to put between them.

We, she had said.

Nikolas couldn’t let it go.

One morning in her cottage, Sophie announced, “My visa is going to expire in a few weeks. According to Paul, I’m going to have to leave the UK and come back in. It shouldn’t be that big of a deal. I’ll show proof that I have an income and apply for residency.”

“You don’t have to go through all that.” Nikolas gathered his clothing off the floor where they had dropped it the night before. “Apply for Dark Court citizenship. Annwyn will grant it in two seconds.”