Chapter 55
FIFTY-FIVE
ZRYNOK
There’s pressure against my chest.
Rhythmic. Insistent. A voice underneath it—not words, not yet, just sound shaped by someone who refuses to let go.
Then breath against my mouth, forced in, filling lungs that had stopped asking for it.
The pressure again. The breath. The pattern has the grim precision of someone who refuses to accept a thing until it is proven irreversible.
I know that precision. I’ve watched it direct a blade, negotiate a surrender, keep twenty-three people moving through a burning forest. Even now, with the world still dark at the edges, I would know it anywhere.
I wake to crying.
Not sobbing. Not the loud grief of someone who has lost everything. Quiet crying—the kind that happens when someone has been staying strong for too long and finally, finally lets themselves break.
I know those tears. I’ve heard them before, in the cells beneath the monastery, in the storage chamber where we first touched each other, in all the moments when Arwen let herself feel something beyond survival.
“Still here.” My voice comes out as a rasp, barely audible, my throat raw from smoke and screaming. “Told you I’d find you.”
The crying stops. A face appears above me—pale eyes red-rimmed and wet, dark hair tangled with ash and blood, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“You died.” Her voice shakes. “You stopped breathing. I thought—”
“Not dead.” I try to move. Fail. Every muscle in my body feels like it’s been torn apart and reassembled wrong. “Maybe close. But not dead.”
“You were gone too long.” Her hand presses against my chest—feeling for my heartbeat, I realize. Confirming that I’m real. “Too long, Zrynok. Do you have any idea what that felt like?”
“No.” I manage to lift my hand. Find hers. Hold on. “Tell me.”
“It felt like—” She stops. Swallows. Starts again. “It felt like the monastery winning. Like everything we fought for being worth nothing. Like being alone again.”
“You’re not alone.”
“I know.” She leans down. Presses her forehead against mine. “I know. But for three minutes, I forgot.”
The clearing around us is quiet.
We’re some distance from the fire—I can see its glow through the trees, but the heat has faded to something bearable. The monster’s corpse lies nearby, already decomposing, the flowers that covered it turning to black sludge that sinks into the earth.
The infection has receded. Driven back, not killed.
I can feel it still there—will feel it every day for the rest of my life—but it’s quiet now.
Beaten back by will or luck or the strange alchemy of nearly dying.
The tendrils beneath my skin have faded from crimson to pale pink, barely visible in the firelight.
They’ll resurface. For now, the blood beneath my skin is mine again.
“The survivors?” I ask.
“Cael took them. There’s a village half a day’s walk—they’ll be safe there while we figure out next steps.” Arwen’s hand is still on my chest. Still feeling my heartbeat. “Marceline has the documents. She knows people who can help us use them.”
“And us?”
She shifts. Moves so she’s looking down at me, her body stretched alongside mine in the grass. This close, I can see the tracks her tears left through the ash on her face. Can see the exhaustion she’s been hiding, the fear she’s been controlling, the relief that hasn’t quite finished settling in.
“Us.” She tests the word like it’s something fragile. Something that might break if handled wrong. “I meant what I said. Partnership. Hunt down everyone responsible. Make sure this never happens again.”
“Sounds like a lot of killing.”
“Is that a problem?”
I should give her a serious answer. Should discuss logistics, strategy, the thousand practical considerations that will determine whether our mission succeeds or fails.
Instead, I reach up. Thread my fingers through her hair. Pull her down until her lips are close enough to feel my breath.
“Not for me.”
She kisses me.
Not gentle. Not questioning. Fierce—desperate—alive in a way that makes my recently-stopped heart hammer against my ribs. Her mouth claims mine with hunger that the Bloom amplifies into something consuming, and I respond in kind.
This isn’t the storage chamber. That was careful. Exploratory. Two survivors learning to trust each other with their bodies.
This is something else entirely.
This is survivors celebrating survival. Damaged people affirming that damage doesn’t mean destroyed. Two humans who nearly lost each other deciding that nearness isn’t enough—that they need to be closer, need to feel more, need to confirm with touch what words can’t adequately express.
She takes what she wants.
Her hands find the gaps in my ruined armor, strip away the leather that’s hanging in scraps. Her mouth traces paths down my throat, across my chest, over wounds that should hurt but don’t because the Bloom is still magnifying every sensation into something beyond pain or pleasure.
I let her take. Let her have whatever she needs. My body is hers—has been hers since the moment she looked at me like I was worth saving. If she wants to use it to convince herself I’m still alive, I’ll give her that.
But I’m not passive.
My hands find her waist. Pull her onto me, so she’s straddling my hips, so her body presses against mine in ways that make thinking difficult. She gasps—a small sound, surprised—and I use the moment to flip our positions.
Now I’m above her. Looking down at the woman who pulled me back from death. The woman who cried over my still body. The woman who I love with an intensity that the Bloom didn’t create, only revealed.
“My turn.” The words scrape past gritted teeth. Hungry.
She smiles. “Then take it.”