Imara
FIFTY-SIX
Walking hurts.
Every step sends jolts of pain through my burned-out channels. The scars along my arms and spine feel raw—fresh wounds instead of old ones. I lean on Kharvek heavily, let him take most of my weight, and force myself forward anyway.
The Red Fields stretch before us. Gray now—the rust color gone, the bleeding stopped, the bone pits dark and silent.
In the distance, where the Sanctum once rose seven levels into the sky, there’s nothing but a crater.
A wound in the earth, still smoking slightly.
The final resting place of two centuries of horror.
“It’s really gone.” I hear the wonder in my own voice. “All of it.”
“All of it.” Kharvek’s arm tightens around my waist. “The wards. The records. The power. Nothing left but ash.”
We walk closer. The ground grows warmer as we approach the crater—residual heat from the ritual’s release. I stop at the edge. Look down into the darkness.
The Sanctum’s foundations are visible far below. Twisted metal. Blackened stone. The remnants of blood-channels, cracked and empty. Everything the Matron built, reduced to rubble.
“I dreamed of this.” The words catch. “For ten years, I dreamed of watching it burn. And now…”
“Now you don’t know what to feel.”
I turn to look at him. He’s watching me with those mismatched eyes—one that sees everything, one that sees nothing—and his expression holds more understanding than I expected.
“I spent so long hating this place.” I gesture at the destruction. “So long planning its destruction. And now that it’s gone…”
“You don’t know who you are without it.”
“Yes.” The word comes out small. Broken. “I don’t know who I am if I’m not fighting.”
He pulls me close. Wraps both arms around me. Holds me against his chest while I tremble with emotions I can’t name.
“You’re Imara.” His voice rumbles through me. “You’re the woman who spent ten years building rebellion from the inside. Who walked into a dying ritual and refused to let me face it alone.”
“That’s not—”
“That’s everything.” He tips my chin up. Makes me look at him. “You’re not defined by what you fought against. You’re defined by what you fought for. Freedom. Choice. A future where children grow up as people instead of property.”
“We don’t know if that future is possible.”
“Then we build it.” His thumb traces my cheekbone. “That’s what we do now. Stop destroying and start building.”
I stare at him. This man who learned gentleness through sheer stubbornness. This impossible person who loves me with a constancy that takes my breath away.
“When did you get so wise?”
“Around the time I fell in love with you.” A ghost of a smile crosses his face. “You’re a terrible influence.”
I laugh. It hurts—my chest still aches from the ritual—but I laugh anyway. And then I kiss him, because I can, because we’re alive, because the world we grew up in is ash and the world we’re building is waiting.
The kiss is slow. Thorough. His arms pull me in while my hands grip his shoulders. We stand at the edge of destruction, wrapped in each other, and I feel what I never expected to feel.
Hope.