Enzo
When I woke, late morning had turned the high windows gray.
Nadia was already awake.
She lay on her side, propped on one elbow, watching me with an expression I had rarely seen on her face and didn't trust myself to name too quickly. The blankets had slipped low enough to reveal the silver marks at her throat and collarbones. Beneath them, she wore nothing at all.
A glance downward informed me that neither did I.
Apparently, someone had gotten me out of blood-soaked armor after all. Given the state I'd been in, there was only one likely suspect.
Across the room, Zoya slept on her perch by the window, head tucked beneath one wing, black feathers smooth, silver throat dim in the muted light. She was smaller asleep, less like a relic stolen from a murdered queen and more like a tired creature finally home.
Beside me, the bond hummed. Quiet. Settled. Alive.
For several breaths, I did nothing but feel that last part.
Alive.
Twelve hours ago, I hadn't been.
I remembered pieces of the courtyard. Nadia beneath the broken storm. Kseniya’s body hitting the stones. Zoya pressing herself to the marks at Nadia’s throat. Shadow Court soldiers kneeling in the blood and ash.
After that, memory thinned.
There had been work. Dead to count. Wounded to move. Prisoners to secure. A gate standing open between Tharros and Mrachgorod with half the world staring at it like it might decide to swallow us all.
Then nothing.
No walk to the chamber. No hands pulling blood-stiff leather from my body. No memory of the bed.
Only this. Warmth. Gray light. Nadia beside me. And my own chest rising when it had no right to.
“You’re awake,” she murmured, her voice low and rough with sleep.
No queen’s weight. No operator’s edge. Just Nadia.
“I am.”
“How long?”
“A few moments.” I shifted against the pillow. My body objected in several places, though none of them were fatal. A novelty.
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “You felt it. The mark.”
“What mark?”
My chin dipped. The bedding had fallen to my hips, leaving a silvery handprint exposed over my heart.
For a moment, I couldn't move. It seemed to live beneath the skin, five fingers spread over the place where Nadia’s palm had pressed down in the courtyard. At its center, a constellation glowed.
The Open Door.
I'd seen it burning above me in Evara’s dark while Nadia stood before me with tears on her face and fury in her hands, yelling at a goddess that she was taking me back.
Now that same shape lived inside the print of her hand over my heart.
She'd marked me.
No. Evara had marked her, and Nadia had carried that mark back with her when she brought me home.
Nadia reached for me. Her fingers settled against the silver. The mark brightened at once, and her breath caught.
Mine did too.
“Mine,” she said quietly, the word slipping from her like a confession.
“Yours,” I answered.
Her fingers stilled. “You don’t mind it?”
“No,” I said quietly, still in awe.
“It’s permanent,” Nadia warned.
As if I had reservations about being brought back to life. As if there wouldn't be consequences. As far as those went, this was pretty tame.
“I assumed as much,” I replied.
“And your father will see it eventually.”
“My father has seen the marks on your throat,” I said, unable to keep a note of dry amusement from my voice. “He'll understand what this means.”
And if he didn't, I couldn't make myself give a fuck.
“Understanding it isn’t the same as enjoying it,” she muttered.
When it came to my father, enjoying anything was low on the probability list.
“No,” I said dryly. “I expect he will be very composed and absolutely terrible about it.”
That earned a soft huff of laughter from her. Brief. Genuine. Progress.
Her fingertips traced the constellation inside the handprint. The Open Door warmed beneath her touch, answering the marks at her throat.
“I didn’t know I was making it,” she said. “When I brought you back.”
“I know.”
“I had my hand on your chest. The deep was going through me into you, and I didn’t know it would leave anything behind.” Her mouth tightened. “I would have warned you.”
“You wouldn’t have done anything differently.”
“No.”
“Then there was nothing to warn me about.”
Her gaze lifted to meet mine. The bond held what she didn't say. That I wore the shape of her hand over my heart. That she’d dragged me out of Evara’s dark, and the choosing had left proof beneath my skin.
I covered her hand with mine. “Nadia.”
“What?”
“Thank you for bringing me back.”
She blinked. A single crack in a face very good at refusing to break. Then her eyes filled. Quietly, of course. Two tears slipped down her cheek before she could turn away.
“Don’t thank me for that.”
“Why not?”
For a moment, she said nothing. Then her gaze dropped to the mark beneath her hand. “Because if you hadn’t come back,” she said, so quietly I almost missed it, “I wasn’t coming back, either.”
The words landed without drama. That somehow made them worse.
The bond opened around them before I could answer. Grief. Terror. Certainty. Truth.
My hand tightened over hers. “You would have stayed with me.”
“Yes.”
The word destroyed me.
She wiped at her cheek with the heel of her free hand, irritated by the evidence. “So don’t thank me like I made some noble sacrifice. I was selfish. Violent. Unreasonable. All of my best qualities, really.”
My breath left me in something too broken to be a laugh. “Then I’ll say it differently.”
Her brows drew together. “How?”
“I’m glad to be alive.” My voice roughened. “I’m glad you were selfish, violent, and unreasonable enough to refuse the alternative.”
Her face changed. Barely. Enough.
“I’m glad,” I said, “that I came back with you.”
She swallowed once. “Fine. That one’s acceptable.”
“I'll make a note.”
“Do that.”
Her fingers stayed over the mark before her gaze sharpened. “You’re still weak.”
“I’m recovering.”
The bond betrayed me before pride could manage a defense. The hollowness in my chest. The ache beneath the mark. The fatigue clinging to every limb as if death had left fingerprints on the bones.
She sat up.
“No,” I said immediately.
A look of exasperation crossed her face. “You don’t know what I’m about to say.”
“You’re about to offer me your blood,” I replied.
“Actually, I was about to insist,” she said dryly.
“You brought me back from death yesterday.”
“And apparently that was only the beginning of my chores,” she muttered.
“Nadia,” I warned.
She sat up and let the sheet fall away, baring herself without hesitation. Silver marks gleamed at her throat and collarbones in the muted light.
“Drink.”
Every argument in me failed at once.
My body wanted it. The bond wanted it. Worse, some ruined part of me wanted to be allowed to need her without turning that need into a debt.
She felt that, too.
Her expression changed. “Enzo.”
“What?”
“You don’t have to earn it.”
That struck harder than it should have.
Her hand closed over the mark on my chest. “I brought you back. I get to keep you that way.”
Devotion with teeth.
I leaned in.
Her breath caught when my mouth touched her throat. Not fear. The bond told me that much. Her pulse jumped beneath my lips, strong and furious and alive, and for one unbearable second, I simply rested there, breathing her in.
Woodsmoke. Steel. Shadow. Nadia.
“Only what I need,” I said.
“You're stalling.”
I sank my fangs into her.
Her hand tightened in my hair, and the sound she made went straight through me.
Fuck.
Because it was Nadia. Because she was holding me against her throat like she never intended to let go. Because after death and gods and the Open Door, she was alive beneath my hands and making that sound for me.
Her blood hit my tongue, dark and hot and alive, and the bond flared wide open.
Not battlefield-wide. Not death-wide. This was different.
This was her choosing me in a quiet room with the door closed. This was warmth moving through a body that had forgotten how to be a body. This was her pulse under my mouth, her fingers holding me there, her anger and relief and love tangling with something hotter every time I swallowed.
Strength didn’t return slowly.
It hit like lightning driven straight into my veins.
The ache in my chest vanished beneath a rush of power so sudden it stole my breath.
The tremor in my hands disappeared. My lungs expanded without resistance.
My vision sharpened. My restored, impossible heart slammed once, hard enough to make the mark over it flare, then settled into a strong, steady rhythm that no longer felt borrowed.
This was not ordinary blood. This was Nadia’s blood.
Deep-touched. Goddess-marked. Saturated with enough power to make my entire body remember what it was supposed to be.
I drew back before need became greed, but Nadia didn’t let me go.
Her hand remained in my hair. Her breathing had changed. So had the bond.
“Nadia.”
“More,” she moaned.
I went still. “You’ve already given me enough.”
Her eyes were dark. Her cheeks flushed. The silver at her throat glowed bright where my mouth had been.
“I said more.”
“You are not fully recovered, either.”
“I'm more recovered than I've ever been in my life.” She swung one leg over my hips and settled astride me, looking entirely too pleased with herself. “The deep is under my skin, Evara wrote herself across my throat, and you are still lying here looking like death tried to keep a receipt. Drink.”
“Nadia—”
She rocked against me, hot and wet and bare, and every disciplined thought I had ever possessed went silent as a growl moved low in my chest.
Her mouth curved. Small. Wicked. Almost familiar enough to hurt.
“There he is,” she murmured. “Drink, Enzo.”
My mouth returned to her throat.
The second bite shattered whatever restraint either of us had been pretending to possess.
I caught the back of her head and held her there, mouth sealed to her throat. Not gentle. Not this time.
Her breath tore from her in a sharp moan as my fangs sank into her. Her back arched. Her fingers knotted in my hair, and the bond exploded wide open between us.
Pleasure. Need. Possession.