Chapter 33 Talia
TALIA
Istiffen involuntarily, inhaling sharply, and closing my eyes.
Memories pushes in, trying to dominate the moment. The pain. The ache. The sting of his rejection. Korr growls, soft, low, rumbling. He presses his hand against the small of my back and I feel him move a half-step closer.
I take a deep breath and hold it. The past is over. He made his choice and I’ve made mine. It shouldn’t hurt still, but saying that in no way makes it real. I open my eyes and Korr is the first thing I see.
Solid. There. Silently studying my face. A smile forms and I lightly place a hand on his chest before turning around to face my ex-husband.
“What is it Brad?” I ask.
My voice sounds weary even to me. Brad doesn’t miss it either. His eyes widen just a bit, the corners of his mouth turning down a little deeper. He blinks, darts a glance at Korr then back to me.
“I need to speak to you,” he says, not tentative or entitled, just… urgent. “Alone.”
I consider him for a long moment. Once, that request would have pulled me off balance. Made me feel responsible for his discomfort. His unfinished thoughts. His regrets. I recognize enough to see that it doesn’t now. I’m not the woman I was.
“No,” I say evenly. “You need to speak with me. Not over me. Not past me. And not as if I owe you something.”
His mouth opens, then closes. He nods once, accepting the boundary even if it costs him.
“Fair,” he says.
Korr hasn’t moved. He stands close enough that I feel him when I shift my weight. A quiet certainty at my back that lets me keep my shoulders squared instead of folded inward.
“I waited,” my former husband says after a beat. “For years. I thought… if you were alive, you’d find me.”
I feel the old ache stir — faint now, like a scar tugged by stretching wrongly.
“I did find you,” I say. “Every time I wondered what was wrong with me. Every time I tried to make myself smaller so you wouldn’t leave. Every time I told myself not being able to have children meant I was broken.”
His breath stutters and he pales. There’s no anger in my voice or in my heart. There was, for so long, but no longer. I’m speaking truth and how that affects him isn’t my problem any longer.
“That’s not—”
“It is,” I say, cutting him off gently but firmly. “You didn’t leave because of fate or circumstance. You left because you wanted a life that didn’t include disappointment. And I couldn’t give you the one thing you decided defined love.”
Silence falls hard between us. Behind him, the city murmurs. Survivors shifting. Zmaj wings adjusting. Life continuing without regard for our past. No concerns for the personal drama playing out like a performance.
“I was afraid,” he says finally. “I thought staying would destroy us both.”
“No,” I say. “Staying would have required you to see me as enough.”
He looks at the ground, then back at me. His eyes are wet, but there’s no performance in it. Just understanding, finally arrived too late to save anything but himself.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I nod once.
“I know.”
The words surprise us both. I don’t feel hollow saying them. I don’t feel relieved. I feel… finished.
His gaze flicks past me again, to Korr. To the way Korr hasn’t inserted himself into the conversation. Hasn’t spoken for me. Hasn’t tried to win.
“Is he—” he starts.
“Yes,” I say, before he can frame it as a question about ownership. “He is.”
Korr’s hand comes to rest at my lower back again. Anchoring. Not because I need it. Because he chooses it.
“I don’t belong to him,” I add, voice steady. “But I am with him. And I am not afraid of what that costs.”
Korr doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to. Everything he is — patience, strength, presence — is already in the space between us. My former husband studies us for a long moment. Then he exhales, something inside him finally letting go.
“You look… whole,” he says quietly. “I don’t think you ever were with me.”
I meet his gaze without flinching.
“I wasn’t allowed to be.”
That is the end of it. He nods once, stepping back, making room where he once took it.
“I won’t interfere,” he says. “Not again.”
I believe him if for no other reason than I no longer need him. When he’s gone, when the space he occupied collapses back into the city’s quiet tension, I feel it then. Not loss. Release.
My knees threaten to buckle.
Korr is there — not catching me, not holding me up — just close enough that I can lean if I choose. I do. Just slightly. Just enough.
“I didn’t know how much I was still carrying,” I admit.
“You don’t have to carry it anymore,” he says.
I look up at him. Seeing the patience in his eyes. The certainty that doesn’t demand. The strength that doesn’t diminish me.
“I’m ready,” I say quietly.
“For what?” he asks.
I don’t answer with words. I turn into him instead. And for the first time, the thought of loving him doesn’t feel like another thing I might lose. It feels like something I’m finally allowed to keep.
I don’t think or measure and I don’t ask permission.
I slide my hands up his chest, over muscle and heat and the steady rise of his breath, until they curl around the back of his neck. His skin is warm beneath my palms. Not just warm from the sun, but alive. Present, solid, and real.
His eyes darken, not with surprise, but recognition. My heart beats once, hard, as I pull him down. The kiss isn’t tentative or careful. It’s a decision.
My mouth finds his and there’s no hesitation, no testing edge. Just heat. His breath catches against mine, a rough exhale that shivers down my spine. His hands move, one bracing at my waist, the other sliding higher along my back, fingers splaying as if he’s mapping the shape of me through fabric.
He doesn’t take over. He answers. That’s what makes it.
His mouth is firm, demanding without force.
When I press closer, he meets me fully, deepening the kiss in a way that steals the last of the air from my lungs.
His lips part against mine and I follow instinct instead of fear, tasting heat and something distinctly him — mineral and sun-warmed air and a faint edge of something sharper that belongs only to Urr’ki.
A low sound builds in his chest. Not a growl this time. A claim. But not the Zmaj kind. Not possession. This is recognition.
My fingers tighten at the base of his skull, and he tilts his head enough to fit us together more completely. The world around us dissolves — stone, survivors, broken skyline — none of it matters in the space where his mouth moves against mine with slow, deliberate certainty.
His hand slides from my waist to the curve of my hip, thumb pressing lightly into the small of my back. Heat pools low in my belly, spreading outward in waves that feel frighteningly like freedom.
I break the kiss only long enough to breathe. He rests his forehead against mine. His breath ghosts across my lips.
“You’re sure?” he murmurs, voice roughened, controlled only by effort.
I don’t step back or lower my hands.
“Yes,” I say.
Not because it’s safe and not because it’s easy, because it’s true. He kisses me again — slower this time.
His mouth moves over mine like he’s learning something sacred.
My body softens without collapsing, leaning into him not from weakness but from choice.
His thumb traces a slow arc along my spine and every place he touches feels steadier, as if he’s not taking anything from me but giving something back.
My past doesn’t ache any longer. No more tugging. No more whispers. No more fear of repeating it. There is only this. His strength braced around me, my hands in his hair, the way our breathing finds the same rhythm without effort.
When we finally separate, it isn’t because something interrupted us. It’s because we’ve said what needed saying. His eyes search mine, not for doubts but for alignment. I smile, small but real.
“I’m not afraid anymore,” I tell him.
His hand remains at my back.
“Neither am I,” he says.
And for the first time since Tajss tried to burn the sky out of me, I believe the future doesn’t have to be something I survive.
It can be something I step into. With him.