Chapter 26 #2
“I have to try. And Jaia and Azora have a role to play too.” The letters I’d exchanged with them through our book was a source of relief for both of us. They wanted to fight in their own way, even though Kaelan wanted them out of the war, to protect Vizia. And Finnias, if we were honest.
Once the enchantment was in place, I lay beside Hanna in the bed we’d shared with Dare and Kae so recently. I gently touched her face, looking at those still, calm features, those eyes that were heavy-lashed and bright and met mine without seeming to see anything that mattered.
And I leaned over and kissed her, as if she were the trapped princess in an old tale.
Hanna
I drifted in warmth and shadow.
The goddess surrounded me like lake water on a summer day, like the gentle shine of the sun on my face. There were no sharp edges here. No decisions to make. No fear of being too slow or too weak while the men I loved paid the price.
“They’re safe,” the Shadow Weaver murmured. “With me guiding you, they’ll stay that way.”
I believed her, because I’d felt the truth of it. Her power was vast and certain in a way I’d never been. With her at the helm, Kaelan would take Edric’s throne. Thorne would survive with his family. Dare would know peace for the first time since he was a boy.
All I had to do was remain here. Floating. Untethered. I helped them most by letting go.
“Exactly.” Her satisfaction was gentle. “You’ve done enough. Let me finish it.”
Had I?
The question surfaced without urgency, then lingered. I tried to remember what enough felt like. Tried to remember the moment when effort ended and rest began.
Nothing came.
Something shifted in the warmth. A presence I recognized instinctively stood at the bank.
Thorne.
The awareness of him came through the bond we shared. He didn’t push into my mind the way Dare had. He simply opened himself and waited.
“Ignore him,” the goddess suggested calmly.
But Thorne would never leave. His voice reached me through the link, steady and patient.
“Do you remember the tent?” he asked. “All four of us crammed together. I was so happy that night, even listening to that snoring.”
The memory flickered—canvas walls, shared warmth, irritation edged with affection.
“There were so many happy moments, but some of them were painful too. You fought for Kaelan even when he acted like a monster, while he was in his father’s grip. He needs you still.”
“He’s manipulating you,” the goddess said. “Trying to make you choose pain as if that’s something holy.”
Was that what this was?
Or was Thorne reminding me that I’d mattered even when I wasn’t powerful?
“I’m not leaving,” Thorne said. “I’ll stay here as long as it takes. Giving you a way back—if you want it. If you’ll come back to me.”
If I wanted it.
The choice rested with me.
Something else stirred at the edges of the dark. Not Thorne.
Voices.
Distant. Reverent.
Prayers.
The goddess’s attention snapped toward them instantly. I felt her focus shift, drawn like a tide toward the sound.
“Worshippers,” she breathed, satisfaction blooming. “At last.”
Two voices, female, calling her deliberately.
Familiar voices.
Jaia. Azora.
They were pulling her attention away from me.
The goddess moved toward the prayers, not severing our bond, but loosening it. Her presence thinned, stretched between me and their makeshift altar.
And suddenly there was space.
Thorne was there, the bond open like a door.
“Come back,” he said. Not commanding. Inviting. “Please.”
Then sensation broke through.
Warmth. Pressure. Lips against mine.
Thorne was kissing me.
The goddess recoiled, withdrawing further—not gone, but retreating from something too human, too embodied, too mortal.
I felt my body again. Felt his hand at my jaw, his mouth warm and real.
“I’m here,” he said through the link. “You just have to choose this real, terrible world. And me. We can face it together.”
The path was open.
I reached for him the way a drowning person reaches for air and pulled.
The darkness fractured.
Cold rushed in. Solid ground pressing uncomfortably against my shoulderblades. Thorne’s cool, soft lips were still on mine.
“Hanna?”
I opened my eyes. Thorne’s face filled my vision with relief, love, and something raw and fragile.
“I’m here,” I whispered. “I’m back.”
He exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for days and kissed me again, harder this time, as if anchoring me in place.
“The goddess,” I started. “She’s distracted by the prayers.”
“Then let’s make sure she doesn’t want to come back to this body anytime soon.
” His hand slid into my hair; his arm pulled me close.
He kissed me again, deepening the kiss. I tilted my head to one side to let him in, letting him nudge my mouth open.
The tips of our tongues teased against each other.
My hands found his shoulders, his back, grounding myself in him. In us.
He knew just what I needed. He began undressing me first, and then I joined him, half-ripping away his clothes to reveal every inch of his lean, powerful body, of hard shoulders and biceps that rippled beneath my fingertips.
He entered me in one long, punishing thrust, as soon as he could, and I arched against him.
I ground my hips up, met him thrust for thrust, and when the angle was just right, I clenched down and felt him shudder.
“You’re mine,” he murmured into my hair, my throat, the curve of my breast. “No goddess could ever take you away.”
I flipped us, surprising him, straddling his waist and pinning his hands above his head. His eyes widened, just a little, before he grinned.
“And you’re mine,” I murmured back.
I set a pace, hard and fast, bouncing in the cramped space of the tent. My thighs burned, my knees slipped on the wool blankets beneath us, but I never broke eye contact. Thorne watched me with pure, molten adoration, and of that adoration, I could spend my life trying to be worthy.
And I’d fall short, and fail, and he’d love me anyway, and it would be a thousand times better to be his than to be the perfect, powerful goddess.
At least now, in this moment, I believed that.
His hands found my ass and steadied me, thumbs digging into flesh, urging me on. I rocked forward, feeling every twitch as he neared the edge. My own orgasm was building, slow at first, then insistent. I clamped down, squeezed, rode him like a wave.
When I came, it was with a violence that left me trembling, gasping, the world blurring around the edges. Thorne followed a second later, his hips jerking up as if he could drive himself through me. He choked out my name, once, and the tremor as he came ran through his whole body and mine.
When we collapsed together, my head on his shoulder, I no longer felt the Shadow Weaver’s perfect, blissful peace.
But I no longer wanted it, either.