Jon swallows. "H-how much is too much?"

Nothing, thinks Stephen. Then, This is really happening.

"Jon," he breathes. "Treat her like she's yours."

For a couple of seconds everything stands on a knife-edge. Stephen's heart hammers; he can feel Avi's worried gaze on his back, mirroring the courage that flickers and sways in Jon's blues.

Then he picks Honeypie up two-handed.

The shock leaves Stephen too breathless to cry out. Jon cradles the kinkajou to his chest the way he's seen Stephen do a hundred times, with a wholly foreign grip that makes every caress raw and painful and impossible to escape. Stephen's bricked off his heart as far as he dares, built up scar tissue on the parts of his soul that feel, but a lifetime's worth of defenses couldn't wall off the conduit between him and his dæmon, and it's straight into this golden channel that Jon has plunged his bare hands.