“Torrance,” I said again. I gestured back the way I’d come through the ship. “I’ll take you to her. I know where she is. Torrance. Torrance.”

I tried to keep my voice calm and steady. I knew enough about humans, having imprisoned my own, that they could be flighty in their fear. I couldn’t afford to lose one of them in the ship, or to have one hurt herself.

“Do you think he has Torrance?” another woman asked. She had brown skin and black hair that fell in tightly-wound, kinky curls to her shoulders. “Are we supposed to go with him?”

“Fuck this!” said another woman. “He’s just like the one who took Suvi!”

“The one who took Suvi?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking the question, even though I knew they wouldn’t understand. Suvi was likely another human female, and someone had taken her.

I had a feeling I knew exactly who it was.

Cursed skies, Skalla, you better not have harmed her.

I would have to deal with that later. Right now, I needed to convince these women to come with me. That, or essentially abduct them myself and hope my wife forgave me.

“Torrance,” I said again, once again gesturing out of the ship.

“He’s not like the one who took Suvi,” someone in the middle said. “That guy was crazy. He didn’t try to talk to us. Just snatched her and disappeared. He’s trying to talk to us, trying to lead us somewhere.”

“Trying to lead us right into a trap?” the first woman with the stripey hair asked.

“Do we have another choice?” asked the woman with black curls. “It seems pretty obvious he just killed all the soldiers and crew. We can’t fight him.”

I held my hands up in what I had meant to be a placating gesture, but it made several of the women scream, so I quickly lowered them.

I stepped backwards slowly, showing that I was not trying to get closer. Not trying to force them to go with me. It was a bit of a deception – if they did not come easily, I would take them anyway, for their own good – but it seemed to be working. Some of the women started to, ever so slightly, relax.

“I think we should at least go outside,” said the curly-haired woman. “See if Torrance is out there. How would he know her name if she wasn’t with him?”

I grimaced, hoping the fact that Torrance wasn’t directly outside waiting for them wouldn’t cause too much turmoil.

“We all go, or none of us do,” said the stripey-haired one.

“You have no choice,” I muttered. “I cannot leave you here.”

Though none of them understood, it was decided by a quick, whispered vote that they would all venture outside. Once they’re out there, and they see Torrance isn’t there, I must be prepared for them to try to run.

I led the group back out of the machine. When we passed the bodies of the soldiers, many of the women gasped and started crying anew. One of them stopped to vomit before shakily carrying on.

We stepped out of the machine and onto cold grey rock. As anticipated, questions of, “Where’s Torrance?” began to circulate.

None of them were running, though.

At least, not until they saw Sceadulyr.

He stepped out of a shadowy, hidden place by the machine, creating an uproar among the humans.

“Don’t let them run,” I grunted, lifting my hands and using my power to raise the grey stone into high walls that trapped the humans. One of them got away, the one with the brown skin, sprinting past me, her kinky black curls flying. She didn’t get far – I heard her gasp and shout when Sceadulyr grabbed her.

I hadn’t lost any of the other ones. They were all secured, now, in the centre of a ring of high stone walls that I knew they would not be able to scale.

“I can take her back to Sionnach first, then,” I said, turning back to Sceadulyr and the one woman who’d gotten past me.

But Sceadulyr did not look at me. Did not look as though he’d even heard me. He’d caught the woman by the arm, his pale fingers clasped around her bare wrist as she struggled to get away.

One by one, like candles being lit, the stars on his map returned, spreading outward from the place he touched her.

“I am afraid you will not be taking this woman to Sionnach, Wylfrael,” he said. A wicked grin unfolded on his face as his gaze finally flicked to mine. “It seems I no longer require your assistance. Consider the bargain fulfilled and your debt paid.”

Before I could say anything else, he’d scooped up the woman into his arms and launched into the air, his wings spreading like night as he created a sky door and went through it.

Well, that had complicated things. On the one hand, I was immensely relieved to be free of Sceadulyr’s deal. On the other hand, I didn’t think my wife was going to be happy about what had just happened.

But that woman was clearly Sceadulyr’s mate. She’d brought back his star map, and I had no right to intervene now.

Yet another thing I will have to deal with later, I grumbled, returning to the group of women I’d ensconced in the ring of stone.

They screamed and cried and fought, just like Torrance once had, but I accomplished my goal. One by one, I brought them through the sky door and back to Sionnach.

THERE WAS MUCH CELEBRATION upon our return. The human women in the group and Torrance all cried human tears of joy when they were reunited on the summer-warmed land of Sionnach. I hung back with Aiko, Shoshen, and Ashken as the women hugged and cried and laughed.

“We thought you were a goner! We had no idea you were still alive!” the stripey-haired one, whom I now knew was named Min-Ji, said, hugging Torrance so tightly I almost wanted to growl in warning to make her loosen her grip. But Torrance seemed happy, so I held back.

“No, I wasn’t. I mean, I almost was, but...” Torrance’s lovely gaze slid to me. “My husband saved me.”

A beat of silence.

“Excuse me, all this space travel must have completely fucked my hearing,” Min-Ji said. “Did you just say, husband?”

Through the rest of the afternoon, Torrance told her friends all about what had happened, or a version of it, at least. I noticed she left out some of my less noble moments. She didn’t tell them I’d imprisoned her, or that I’d gone on to kill her. Instead, the story she told was one that I wished we could have had. A story of two mates finding each other, learning to trust each other, and falling in love.

Perhaps that was the story we’d gotten in the end. We’d just taken a longer, thornier path to get there.

After Torrance had told her story, I suggested to my wife that we all go inside. Some of the women were looking frightfully pale, something I knew by now was not good. Who knew when they’d last eaten?

Torrance agreed, and together we led the others into the kitchen. The women found places to sit and stand while Aiko flitted about, looking pleased beyond measure to have so many people to feed. She passed mugs of sweetened milk and slices of bread out like it was the most exciting thing she’d ever done.

“I’m so glad you’re alright,” Min-Ji said, leaning against the counter beside my wife as I wrapped my arm around Torrance’s shoulders. “Now we just need to figure out what to do about Suvi and Marta.”

Torrance frowned.

“When I saw they weren’t here, I’d assumed the worst and that... that they hadn’t made it, the way I wouldn’t have made it without Wylfrael. What happened?”

I hadn’t had a chance yet to tell her of what had happened with Sceadulyr – the tearful reunion had taken precedence over all else.

“I believe Suvi is the human Skalla took,” I cut in. “Sceadulyr found his mate among this group – Marta, I assume – and took her back to the Shadowlands.”

“And you didn’t stop him?” Torrance asked, her eyes widening.

“She brought back his star map. She is his mate. I had no right to intervene.”