Back in the homestead, Karlani wore a loose shirt and trousers pulled tight at the waist. Something dug from Ard’s wardrobe. The fire in the range flickered behind a small window in the iron door, and chunks of bacon simmered in a heavy pan.

The lid of the other pot tapped along with the rhythm of the water boiling beneath. A higher pitched tink tink may well have been smaller bubbles popping, but Llew could only imagine it as the metal pieces of the critter floating in the heat currents and bouncing off the pot walls.

A kerosene lamp sat in the center of the table, casting everyone in a white-yellow glow.

‘Bacon? Eggs?’ Rowan asked, indicating a basket of eggs on the bench by the stove top.

‘You bet.’ Llew smiled while holding the door open for Jonas.

Jonas swung himself through on his crutches and eased himself onto the nearest bench. Llew sat beside him, and her shoulder bumped his and she gave him a smile, which he returned. It felt good to be sitting beside him. Relief, first and foremost, but also like a quick breath before diving under again. His strength would wane, and she would need to keep propping him up, until they could find a permanent solution.

‘Did you figure it out? Know how it all works?’ Karlani glared at Llew over her plate, her tone abrupt, her eyes haunted. ‘Do you know how to fix me if I have what he has? You know you need me. I’m whole.’

Llew didn’t have to see Jonas’s face to guess his reaction to Karlani’s words. He had yet to make his own peace with his new body.

Llew held Karlani’s gaze in return, letting the Syakaran woman know how she felt about her tone. Karlani stared back, not cowed. Not by Llew.

‘You saw how it was done.’

Karlani shuddered. ‘But he’s not cured, is he?’ While she continued to sound indignant, her eyes took on a haunted cast. ‘You’ll have to do that again. And again, and again.’ She stared at the half-eaten food on her plate.

‘We can only hope whatever was in the bauble of that device isn’t what we think it is. And if it is, then we have to hope it hasn’t . . . gone inside you.’

Rowan placed a plate of food in front of Llew.

‘Infected,’ Elka said absently, as she stretched a hot, poultice-coated bandage around Karlani’s hand, and Llew’s heart just about stopped. Everyone else froze, staring at Elka, too. Elka didn’t seem to notice. ‘We have to hope it hasn’t got infected,’ she murmured, reaching the end of the bandage. She looked up at Karlani, then at each of the others, evidently confused by the silence around her.

‘Blazes, sis,’ Rowan said. ‘Careful how you deliver some of these terms. We thought that was a pronouncement, not a correction.’ He glanced at the others, seeking their concurrence.

Llew nodded hers.

‘Oh. S— s—’ Flustered, Elka became hung up on a flurry of stuttered s’s before finally getting her ‘sorry’ out.

‘We’re all a bit on edge. Not your fault.’ Llew filled her mouth with crunchy bacon and fluffy eggs. A treat after the day she’d had. ‘Thanks, team.’

‘Not sure if it’ll help much with your edginess, but we should look at these pieces.’ Rowan had finished eating and requested Alvaro’s help to aid him in straining the boiling water outside. When they returned indoors, Rowan poured the still hot metal segments onto the table.

Llew’s instinct was to draw away, but she had to learn, just like the rest of them, so she leaned forward to study the parts under the dull light.

‘We burned the glass with the straw. It was too fragmented, anyway.’ Rowan gently prodded the pieces apart with the end of a wooden spoon, allowing them to cool faster and be analyzed better. ‘From what I could tell, it must have been a perfect sphere, and possibly flawless. I don’t know any glass-blower quite so capable.’

‘Braph uses magic. All he needs is a good imagination,’ said Jonas.

A couple of the legs were still whole, jointed, and connected to what remained of the body. Llew didn’t like thinking in such terms. They blurred the line between the mechanical nature of the devices and the sense that they lived. With the way they’d crawled over her skin, autonomous by all appearances yet clearly controlled by Braph, they’d certainly seemed alive at the time.

Karlani maintained a backwards lean, her arms folded.

Rowan picked up a leg and flicked it with a finger to make it swing on the joint. ‘So smooth. I’d have no idea how to create something so small.’

The light glinted off something dark and round, and Llew’s revulsion was overpowered by her need to look closer. Almost of its own accord, her hand reached out and picked up the tiny crystal. It was almost black.

Her mother’s blood had created red crystals. Llew’s own blood had generated deep red, and later purple crystals, when she’d fallen pregnant.

‘His son must be letting him bleed him,’ she said. ‘This must be from Immortal blood.’

‘He’s more powerful than ever,’ Jonas murmured.

‘For what purpose, though?’ Anya asked. ‘We know he’s smart, and evil, and willing to do whatever it takes to prove that. What’s left for him now? You said he has no interest in fighting you now. Does that mean we no longer have to worry about him?’

‘I, for one, would be happy if he never crossed my path or my mind again,’ Llew said.

‘So, we’re just going to forget about him? Not ponder what this device means?’ Rowan asked.

‘Oh. I’m pondering,’ Llew said. ‘It can’t be good for Quaver. And since we need to get to Quaver to fix Jonas . . . We can’t pretend like Braph isn’t holding the other end of our nooses. He always has, always will, until the day he dies . . .’

Rowan rotated the metal limb in his fingers so it flopped about the joint. He seemed troubled by Llew’s words.

It may have been her fear talking, but Llew was reluctant to retract her words for Rowan’s sake, or anyone else’s. More and more she was struggling to see a positive future for her in which Braph still lived. Or, maybe it was just that she was so tired. She yawned.

‘I’m afraid I’ll have nothing more useful to say until I’ve had a sleep.’

‘Good idea.’ Anya said as she gathered dishes. ‘Alvaro and I have beds in the bunker already. You and Jonas should take the main bedroom.’

Karlani rolled her eyes, while Alvaro watched her with longing.

‘There’s a bedroom upstairs.’ Anya looked to Elka. She was asking without asking: could Elka handle the stairs?

‘The bed’s good.’ Llew placed a hand on Elka’s arm, as much in thanks for her help with the syringes as to confirm her preference for Elka to have that bed.

‘There are more beds in the bunker,’ Alvaro said, his gaze quite steady on Karlani.

‘But I think it would be prudent if Karlani slept up here.’ Anya studied the floor for spaces to set up bedding. ‘We don’t know when we’ll have to defend ourselves.’

‘And me, I imagine,’ Rowan offered. ‘I can sleep on the floor by Elka’s bed.’

‘We might as well all sleep up here, then.’ Alvaro’s tone had grown moody.

‘Well, that’s not a bad idea,’ Anya said. ‘There’s not much bedding, but we will make do.’ With a determined set to her features, Anya nodded at Llew and gave the master bedroom a significant look. ‘You’ve had a big day. Please, retire with Jonas. The rest of us will make arrangements for our beds. Go, go.’ She flicked the backs of her hands at them.

‘She’s had a big day . . .?’

‘Look, Karlani,’ Anya turned on the Syakaran. ‘I appreciate you’ve traveled from wherever and it’s natural to be frightened of what might happen now.’

Karlani scoffed at the word ‘frightened’.

‘But,’ Anya continued, ‘there’s nothing we can do about it tonight. And, if you want Llew or any of us to be able to help if it does go wrong, you’re going to appreciate it if we’re well rested. So, yes, I think Llew needs to retire for the night while the rest of us sort our own sleeping arrangements. You can pester her tomorrow, but don’t think I won’t stand in your way should you be unreasonable.’

In little over an instant Karlani was up from the table and standing nose to nose with Anya. It’d been a few weeks since Llew had seen a Syakaran move, she’d almost forgotten what it could look like.

‘Am I being unreasonable?’ Karlani asked.

‘No.’ Anya didn’t flinch, as Alvaro moved to stand beside Karlani, and Rowan placed himself beside Anya. ‘I think your reaction is perfectly sound under the circumstances, and as such I trust you to do your part in the functioning of this group, because sick or not I believe you understand how much more we can do together.’

Karlani flexed her jaw. Anya remained impassive, though she flicked Llew a look and nodded to the bedroom again.

Grateful for the dismissal, Llew waved goodnight to the group and offered an arm to assist Jonas to stand and enter the bedroom.

Despite the inadequacies of the heavy dividing curtain, as soon as the room darkened around them, she puffed out a deep sigh, sloughing off the weight of the day’s worries. Jonas shuffled to the bed and sat facing her. Despite the terrible day behind her, Llew felt lightened, finally being able to leave it behind. Merrid and Ard were still gone and would forever be, and she still had to face keeping Jonas alive. But in that moment, she was free as Anya directed the others in bringing bedding up from the bunker.

Llew unbuttoned her shirt and kicked off her shoes. A smile lifted Jonas’s lips and Llew beamed her own grin at him. There he was, holding himself up, happy. Just that morning she’d feared she might lose him. There was a chance she would wake to him weakened again, but his strength was another thing she would hold in that moment.

Naked, she moved to stand between his thighs and began working on his shirt buttons. He could undress himself, but there was some luxury in her being able to help him by choice, not by urgent need. As she slipped the shirt from his shoulders, his nose and mouth pressed into her belly. He breathed her in and kissed her lightly. It tickled, and Llew had to resist her compulsion to draw away. She managed to keep her laughter to a mere curling of her lips. They could hear every move their companions made on the other side of the curtain and she had no doubt any noises she and Jonas made would also travel, only dulled while the others bustled.

Jonas kissed her belly lightly and Llew closed her eyes, tamping down on her ticklish flinch and savoring the intent in the touch. Jonas turned his head, pressed his ear to her and brought his arms up around her waist, his hold firm and comforting. And hard won.

She ran her fingers through his hair, down the back of his neck and over his shoulders. Muscles she’d come to know so well lacked the almost constant buzz they generated when Jonas had possessed his full Syakaran power, but they still radiated a heat and strength she would gladly lose herself in.

She bent to bring her lips alongside his ear.

‘I think we should find out what Merrid and Ard did for a bath,’ she whispered and swallowed down the lump that formed at the thought of the farmers. Now wasn’t the time.

Jonas shook once with a single laugh juddering through his body before he pulled back to look at her, their noses side by side, their lips almost touching.

‘I don’t mind if you don’t.’

Llew didn’t mind.

‘Tomorrow, then,’ she said.

‘Tomorrow,’ Jonas repeated and lay back, drawing Llew onto her knees over him.