Honored Vow

cycled and was
    pumped up a pipe, and then it rained liquid down on you from the shower
    head. The water had been brought from the home of Orso Bataar, from the
    hot spring that ran under the cave, on the order of his yareah. It was
    carried out to us in huge insulated tubs by several members of the tribe of
    Khertet.
    “What exactly did happen?” I asked Crane as I stood under the
    water.
    “Wash the blood out of your hair, Jin.”
    “Talk, then.”
    “Fine, wash.”
    I did as he asked while he explained.
    Two cats had come to kill Crane because, as the priest had
    explained, Ammon El Masry wanted my best friend dead. With Crane
    gone, he felt my control would slip, and with me gone, Logan would not
    be far behind. It was smart, it was a good plan, but he had counted on
    Crane being broken, which he wasn’t, and me being much less in control
    of myself than I was. His information on both counts was faulty.
    “Did I really tear them apart?”

    196

    Mary Calmes

    “Yes,” Crane assured me. “It was fast, faster than anything I’ve ever
    seen, it was like they were yanked into thin air and blown up. There were
    only scattered pieces left.”
    I started retching.
    “Stop,” he ordered me. “You saved me, even though two guys, Jin—
    c’mon, I’ve faced five before and been okay, just me.”
    “You’re still hurt,” I barely got out, my voice garbled, my eyes
    watering like they did after a bout of heaving.
    “I’m pretty strong, Jin,” he assured me. “You have to stop letting
    your heart stop every time you think something might happen to me.”
    I nodded.
    “Less talking, more rinsing,” Yuri said as he poured another huge
    tub of scalding hot water into the basin in a continuous stream, letting
    Crane concentrate on pumping only. By the time it reached me, it was
    only warm, the air cooling it that fast, the heater making sure I didn’t
    freeze as well as the rocks at my feet.
    “How long was I in my nekhene form?”
    “A long fuckin’ time,” Yuri grumbled, sounding angry and hurt at
    the same time.
    “You shift so fast for Logan,” Crane told me. “But not for the rest of
    us.”
    I heard his voice tremble. “You guys were worried I wasn’t shifting
    back.”
    They didn’t need to answer me for me to know it was true.
    “Did anyone else see me in my nekhene form?”
    “Everyone,” Yuri told me. “All those rubberneckers you saw. And
    you scared the crap out of all of them, the entire tribe of Khertet, their
    semel, all the other yareahs and their retinues, and Danny,” he finished
    with a heavy sigh.
    I looked at him through the plastic as warm water sluiced over me.
    “But not you guys, right? You weren’t scared, were you, Yuri?”
    “No, my reah.” He smiled at me. “You never scare me or any of
    those that truly know you and your heart.”
    “And no one from my tribe was—”

    Honored Vow

    197

    “No,” Crane assured me, passing shampoo and shower gel in
    through the folds of the shower to me. “Now hurry up before we all
    freeze.”
    I showered as fast as I could, but there was still ice in my hair when I
    stepped inside the ger twenty minutes later.
    Everyone was there, sitting, sipping hot tea, bundled up. After I
    changed behind the partition, I joined them, taking a seat beside Mikhail in
    the circle.
    “God, it must be late.” Danny yawned, sharing a heavy quilt with
    Andrian, leaning against him.
    “It is,” Yuri agreed, also having changed, ready to take a seat.
    Domin looked up, and I saw my sheseru’s cobalt eyes hit those of
    my maahes. He lifted the quilt, inviting, and Yuri sat down beside him,
    letting Domin put the cover around him before he scooted close, pressing
    into the smaller man’s side.
    The muscles in Yuri’s jaw flexed, quivered, and I wondered about
    that for a second before Crane dropped down beside me and wrapped me
    in a heavy quilt, getting comfortable, shoulder to shoulder with me.
    “Yuri.”
    My sheseru looked over at Danny.
    “Are you ready for the challenge today?”
    He nodded, his eyes drooping. “I am, I just—I need to sleep, and
    even though I’m exhausted, I don’t think I can.”
    “You can,” Domin told him. “And we all should.”
    “Agreed,” Mikhail said, and as he was the sylvan in our midst, we all
    deferred to him.
    I asked Yuri to take the partition down because I didn’t want to be
    separated from the others even by a slip of silken gauze. He smiled at me
    as he removed it.
    A half an