Heart Fortune

would have a chance?” Jace asked.

“No.”

“And we’ll get weaker and weaker.” He lifted his hand to stroke Zem. “We’re about as strong as we’ll ever be, right now.”

“Yes.” Her pulse rushed in her ears, accepting their death. Not only hers, but Jace’s and their wonderful animal companions. She might have sacrificed herself for them if it would do any good, but it wouldn’t. She wanted to live, her HeartMate to live, her Fam and Jace’s Fam to live.

Jace grimaced. “With all the options for teleporting to somewhere in camp gone, we don’t have any choice but to risk the long chance.”

She nodded. “I agree.” She paused for a breath, then said, “I think it would be best if we trie—if we teleported to my bedroom. I know that room very well, was in it every day for many years. The rest of you have been there, too, so you can add your individual images and knowledge of it. That will be a benefit for all of us.” She smiled at Zem. “It will include your perch, which you know the best.” She actually sounded confident. “I know the light, and all the furnishings. No one should be there. My Family will be at work in the library.”

We can do it! Lepid gamboled around the hallway. Glyssa’s gaze met Jace’s uncommonly serious one. He thought they’d die, too. He glanced up and down the hallway. “Better than staying here, fading away.”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s do it now.” Frowning, Jace lifted Zem from his shoulder. “I think Zem should be held closer.”

And me, too! Lepid said.

“What about slings?” Glyssa asked.

“Those would work,” Jace said.

They rooted around in a couple of bags of the colonists’ pitiful belongings before they found some material and fashioned slings that hung against their chests for both Fams. Jace placed Zem carefully in his, tightened it.

Zem asked, What happens if we don’t make it?

“Another unknown,” Glyssa said. She kept her tone light. “We might disintegrate. Throwing all our effort into this, everything we each have, holding nothing back, we’ll probably go unconscious. So, ah”—she cleared her throat—“if we, uh, materialize in, say, a mountain in one of the ranges between here or there, we will probably never know. I’m sure it’s quick!”

Flying into a mountain often is, Zem said.

Actually, Camellia, who’d been in the next room from a man who’d died teleporting, had told Glyssa his scream had lasted long, agonizing seconds. But he’d been conscious at the time. She didn’t think they would be.

“I’m sure it’s quick,” she repeated.

A couple of minutes later their preparations were done. Glyssa leaned back to stare into Jace’s beautiful misty gray eyes. “You never said what your primary Flair is.”

His mouth twisted. “I did tell you that I’m not strong enough in psi power to manifest a primary Flair.”

“I disagree. You had defined Passages. You made a HeartGift.” She gestured to the bespelled envelope. “Your secondary Flair, leather working, is intricate and gorgeous. That indicates a powerful primary Flair.”

He scoffed a sound of disagreement.

She tightened her arms around him. “I think I know what your Flair is. It’s extremely subtle, but I’ve deduced it.”

“Deduced it, eh?” He smiled.

“Yes.” She framed his face with her hands, made sure his entire focus was on her. “It’s luck.”

“What!”

“You’re luckier than a man should be, especially with regard to dangerous, perhaps potentially fatal events.”

He blinked in astonishment. “You must be joking.”

“No. I’m not. Think of all the hazardous ventures you’ve been in, all the chances you’ve taken, and you’re still whole and sane, haven’t had any major Healings. You’ve been able to do pretty much as you please all of your life and recently you came into a small inheritance. You’re phenomenally lucky, Jace.”

“You really believe this.”

“I do. And you need to, also. That’s what I’m counting on to get us home.” She glanced at Lepid. “When we teleport, you must use all your Flair, saving nothing. You must believe that Jace’s luck will see us through.”

I do. I DO! Lepid looked at Jace with liquid eyes. I KNOW FamMan is lucky. We will be ALL RIGHT!

Zem said, He is lucky, and we who associate with him are lucky, too. He hesitated, then added. I will use all of my Flair in this teleportation. I will hold nothing back, though it kills me.

“Right,” Glyssa said with only a small wince. He didn’t have to have said that last bit. She met the hawkcel’s eyes and nodded, then looked back at Jace, willing him to accept this theory. It was a good theory. Perhaps even true. She refused to doubt.

“And you must not doubt, either, Jace. Lover. HeartMate. We need your total belief.”

His eyes went distant, as if he considered his life. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I am right. You are phenomenally lucky.”

“Phenomenally lucky.”

“‘Say it three and it will be,’” she said an old children’s charm. Anything that would help. “Phenomenally lucky.”

“Phenomenally lucky, phenomenally lucky,” Jace said, his lips curving in a smile. “I’m phenomenally lucky to have you and Zem and Lepid.”

Phenomenally lucky, phenomenally lucky, phenomenally lucky, chanted the Fams.

He picked up the envelope that held his HeartGift and grimaced. “I’ll need to remove the spellshield, and when I do—”

“We’ll be swamped with sexual energy.” A notion wisped through Glyssa’s mind. “Wait, wait!”

He tilted his head. “Yeah?”

“Count down before you release the spell.” She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to recall a spell she and her friends had practiced in their teenaged years, transmuting energy from emotional turmoil to physical energy. They hadn’t done it very often, because it had left them jittery. Still, she and Jace and the Fams would need every iota of energy they could scrape up. She wet her lips, saw Jace focus on her mouth, then meet her eyes with a smile. “I think . . . I think I might be able to snatch that sexual energy and transform it to, um, regular physical and Flair energy, store it in our bodies. There will be, um, increased arousal, but I don’t want to waste any of our time or strength on sex.”

Jace laughed. “Having sex is not a waste of anything.”

Embarrassment painted hot spots on her cheeks. “Maybe not, but our energy would be better spent making sure we can teleport out of here.”

He nodded. “All right. One, HeartGift mine; two, Glyssa mine; three, Flair is ours!” He dropped the shield. A teenage boy’s lust, her HeartMate’s young sexuality hit her with intimate need. Her body clenched. Opening her eyes wide she saw the red orange energy, yanked at it, flipped it, recited the four rhyming couplets.

The intense yearning changed shape into bright blue energy, radiating Flair. An unexpected source of power. Inhaling, she halved it, took some into her body, feeling the lightning jolt, blew the rest to Jace and saw it hit him, sink into him, arc his body.

For a couple of minutes they trembled with the aftermath. Her finger shaking, she pointed at the envelope he’d dropped. Zem hopped over and snipped the soft string tie with his beak, pushed the top up and open.

Glyssa gasped at the beauty of the small rounded rectangular pursenal. Deep wine red, the darker color she