Luna woke on the forest floor several yards from where the fire had been, ears ringing, the taste of smoke thick in her throat. For one disoriented moment she thought, with a lurch of pure animal terror, that she was dying again — that somehow the fire-shape had made good on its fury and this was simply how her second life ended, exactly the way the first one had.
Then a hand closed around her shoulder, careful and enormous, and Ronan's voice broke through the ringing in her ears. "Luna. Luna, look at me. You're all right. You're breathing."
She was. She dragged in a lungful of cold, smoke-tinged air and let it steady her, and slowly the clearing resolved around her — scattered, scorched underbrush, a guard nursing a burned forearm, and five husbands in various states of disarray, all of
