He straightened. Standing in an archway, she gestured to him to join her. When he moved toward her, she had her other hand on the arch, her grip white. As he reached her, he could look right and see whatever it was that had ratcheted up her tension a hundredfold. But first, he leaned down, pressed his mouth to hers, a gentle kiss. Put his hand against her face, his fingertips in her hair.

He’d learned to pay attention to those moments when everything was about to change, to be sure he did what he wanted to do on the deciding side of that line. Because once he stepped over, most times that chance was lost. He wanted to kiss her, give her all the passion and meaning in his heart in that gesture.

She made a noise in her throat, reached up and gripped his shoulder with her free hand like a person floundering on a cliff edge. He brought her against him with an arm around her waist, a low hum rumbling in his throat, and deepened the kiss. The torch quivered in her hand, the heat coming close to his skin, such that he closed his grip over her wrist without looking, steadied it. Her every curve was against him, the rapid beat of her heart, her thigh pressed against his leg. His woman. For better or worse. No matter what lay behind this door. He conveyed that and more, and hoped it was strong enough to weather them through this.

Giving her one last look, he turned to face what was in that cave.

It was small, probably no larger than her one-bedroom apartment. Like the latter part of their descent, the folds and lines of the walls were created by water and heat, not chisel and blast. Her torch showed him nothing but an empty space, but he sensed far more. He took a second look, gaze coursing over the walls, his senses reaching out. Nothing…. No. Picking up on something at a spot where there was nothing visible, he nodded toward it. The signature was similar to what was upstairs. However, he wasn’t entirely sure he would have found it unless he’d felt it from the unwinding she’d done on the door lock.

Something shifted in her countenance. He’d passed some kind of test, but her expression suggested she preferred failure. Still, she drew him into the small cave, moving to the back wall where he’d indicated. When she made an unexpected right, he realized it was an optical illusion. There was another chamber, through an even narrower fissure that required a tight squeeze for a man his size, though Ruby shimmied through it with practiced ease. She doused the torch, left it on the ground next to the opening. He was in total darkness as he navigated the snakelike passage.

When he made it through, he realized why she’d done it. Where they were going, a dim light was already provided. Because of that dimness, and the angle of entry, this chamber didn’t throw its light out into the next one. The serpentine approach doubled back and was blocked by another rock outcropping, adding to that optical illusion.

He registered the cleverness of it, but it wasn’t the most remarkable thing about the chamber. Coming to a halt just inside its entrance, he fixated on the thing that was.

Vaguely, he noted Ruby had moved to the center of the room, putting herself between him and the source of the dim light. That constriction in his chest increased to the point he couldn’t speak.

It was the vision he’d seen during the Great Rite, only even more vivid. A sphere, no more than two feet across, possessing the most densely compressed and complex magic he’d ever detected. He’d thought what she’d done to protect and reinforce this chamber was incredible. This was beyond it, a miracle. A wondrous, terrible miracle.

The sphere floated with apparent aimlessness across the room, like a child’s balloon. When he’d pulled himself into the room with a grunt and deep inhale to get the breadth of his chest through, Derek sensed a mild shimmer of energy. It was a gate of sorts, to keep the sphere here. A child gate.

Soft green, blue, lavender and pink colors swirled in the light of that sphere. What emanated from it was peace, a child’s laughter…. quiet.

Looking around the cave, he saw the sphere wasn’t the only thing here. He found the things he would have expected in Ruby’s room above. Crystals and favorite pieces of jewelry were tucked into natural hollows in the rock. Unlit candles were clustered here and there with a variety of compatible scents. Vases of dried flowers and herbs added color. These weren’t random choices, but items placed in key positions. Items with great sentimental value that could be infused with power and intent, a continuous feed for that sphere. Seeing a faded stuffed dog with a wrinkled face, he recognized the second toy he’d ever given her, for her seventh birthday.

Studying the layout, he detected the five points, the bisecting lines. The pentagram was anchored with a blend of complex magics, but what each had in common was a rare, one-of-a-kind ingredient. This was where Ruby had woven the power she’d gained from trading pieces of her soul.

She’d brought together Dark and Light, and created a mother’s womb.

He drew closer to the sphere, his throat aching. The colors swirled, melded, separated, like an animated Impressionist painting. However, the pale pink, the color of innocent, new flesh, stayed the same, though it bobbed around in the sphere, a tiny astronaut holding her toes to do slow somersaults in what appeared, to her, as limitless space.

He was looking at the soul of their daughter. She still held the last shape she’d had in the womb, such that he could see the fragile skull, the fingers and impossibly small toes. If he’d had any doubt, the spirit shimmered, telling him it was of course not the physical body. However, to help the magic, maintain the focus, Ruby had likely visualized her as she’d been when she’d died. Which meant….

“You saw her,” he realized.

“I held her.”

Derek’s eyes closed as Ruby’s voice, punctuated by a tremor, whispered through the chamber. “As I said, when I was lying in the street, and summoned all that power, I sent the fetus here, held her in a stasis, so the soul wouldn’t leave. When the hospital released me, I came here, worked the magic, finished it.

“I buried her in a pretty place. That place we went to, in the mountains, you and me. I thought she’d like having her remains there. And one day…. I thought I might tell you, so you could visit her. I knew you’d want to, and that you’d like knowing she was there.”

Derek drew in a breath as the fetus rolled. “Her eyes are open.”

“Yes. It’s kind of misleading, seeing her this way, when what we’re really seeing is a soul.”

He nodded, not sure what to say to that. Putting out his hand, he touched the sphere, knowing the magic would allow that. He felt it. Felt her. The soul that was a combination of both his and Ruby’s DNA, of their hearts, minds and spirits.

Her face lifted, those eyes blinking. With his own expanded senses, he knew their daughter detected him. As if, through his touch, he became part of the dream she was in, a pleasant, unquestioned addition, but there was no awareness of this place, of where he actually was.

“What world did you give her?”

“All the best of everything.” Ruby had drawn to his side, but there were six inches between them, six inches charged with almost as much energy as had gone into making that sphere. “She’s in a place where she feels loved, accepted. She laughs and smiles and plays. There are meadows and sunlight, ponies and dress-up. When she wants to sleep, she lies down on soft grass and sleeps while the moon rises above her with a million stars in the sky. It’s Paradise. It’s Heaven, for a baby. For a little girl.”

He nodded. That fetus was so close to his hand, bumping the side of the sphere. There was no impression of contact, only the sense of light over his fingers, but it was still startling, seeing her so close, seeing how, as she turned, her head would have been dwarfed by his hand. She would have had Ruby’s ears, her fingers. Goddess help her, she looked like she got his big feet, but maybe she would have grown into those. Or he could have come up with a spell to shrink them for her.

A tremor went through his hand.

RUBY HAD KNOWN DEREK STORMWIND SINCE SHE WAS a little girl, had fallen in love with him from the moment she’d liked boys. He’d been her friend, her mentor, her staunch supporter, and eventually her lover. She was so used to him being a know-it-all, had actually relied on it, hyperaware he was centuries old, always so wise and strong. Though in a sexy, appealing way, not an ancient, bearded-wizard way. She’d teased him about that when she wanted to yank his chain about their age differences.

She thought she knew him pretty well. Even so, she wasn’t at all prepared to see the emotions that crossed his face. Maybe later he’d be angry by what she’d done. Or, worse, repulsed. But right now, she was looking at a father meeting his daughter for the first time, at the same moment he had to face the bittersweet knowledge that the flesh-and-blood person she would have been was dead and gone.

She’d known him to get pissed off, frustrated, and even grieve in a silent, strongman type of way. She’d never seen Derek Stormwind with tears gathering in his eyes, or fingers shaking as he tried to stroke the wisps of energy that flowed around the sphere like fog. The way he might have stroked the wisps of his baby’s hair.

She’d felt shame for what she’d done, even knowing she was going to keep doing it anyway. But she’d never felt that shame as keenly as she felt it at this moment, so sharp it could cut out her heart, if she hadn’t already diced it up to preserve what was in this room.

She’d thought of him as the enemy, the one from whom she had to keep her secret or he’d take it away. Yet he was a male who’d lived for so long without any family. In those first stunning months of pregnancy without him, she’d alternated between yearning for his presence and euphoric rejoicing, imagining his face a hundred times over when he learned he had become a father. She’d nursed the indisputable belief that she was the one, the very special person, the only woman given the gift of offering that to him, though she hadn’t been entirely sure of that until he told her a few minutes ago, in the bedroom above. Before that, the idea of it, the hope of it, had made her believe in his love for her all the more.

Now she couldn’t dispute it.