Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
KIELYNE
Idon’t let him pull away.
Not after the kiss. Not when the war band starts stirring around us, Grothak coughing pointedly, Vekra finding somewhere else to look. I keep my hand on the back of Blorjorn’s neck and study his face in the thin morning light.
He looks like hell.
The black veins are still there—crawling across his skin, branching from the oath mark that’s spread across his arm and chest. His eyes are shadowed with exhaustion, his breath coming too shallow, his skin burning hot where my palm rests against his jaw.
He pulled enough blight poison into himself to kill a dozen men, and the only reason he’s still breathing is the shadow-curse that’s lived in his blood since before I was born.
But the curse isn’t a cure. It’s a stay of execution.
“You’re still dying.” The words come out flat. Professional. The healer’s voice I use when I can’t afford to feel what I’m seeing. “The blight is fighting your curse, and your body is the battlefield.”
“I know.” His voice is rough. Resigned. Like he’s already made peace with it.
“No.” I push myself up on one elbow, ignoring the pull of the healing wound in my side. “No, you don’t get to be noble about this. You don’t get to save my life and then die anyway.”
Something flickers in his expression. Surprise, maybe. Or hope he’s afraid to feel.
“Kielyne—”
“Shut up.” I press my hand flat against his chest, over his heart. Feel it beating—strong but uneven, the rhythm stuttering where the poison fights the curse. “I healed you once. I can do it again.”
“This red blight is different. This is—”
“I said shut up.”
I close my eyes. Reach for the oath mark the way I reached for it in the cathedral—not with my hands but with the desperate need to save him that hasn’t faded even now that we’re safe.
The bond hums beneath my skin. Different than before—stronger, brighter, the threads of magic woven tighter after what he did for me. I feel him at the other end of it. Not his thoughts, not his emotions, but his presence. Solid and warm and unmistakably there.
He pulled the poison from me. Gave me his strength when I had none.
Now I return the favor.
I pour everything I have into the oath.
Not blood this time—I’m too weak for that, too drained from my own healing. But strength. Will. The same desperate determination that broke his chains, channeled now into knitting what’s broken inside him.
The blight fights me. I feel it—cold and vicious, clinging to his organs, trying to spread faster than I can push it back. But the curse fights it too, and between my will and the shadow in his blood, the poison begins to lose ground.
Slowly. Inch by inch. The black veins on his skin start to fade.
I don’t know how long it takes. Minutes. Hours. The sun climbs higher through the gaps in the ruined watchtower, casting shifting patterns of light across our bodies. Grothak brings water at some point; I drink without opening my eyes, without breaking concentration.
When I finally surface, the poison is gone.
He won’t die.
The relief hits me so hard, I collapse against his chest.
His arms come up around me—automatic, instinctive, holding me against him like he’s afraid I’ll disappear. His heartbeat pulses steady beneath my ear. Strong now. Even. The stuttering rhythm smoothed out, the battle inside him finally won.
“You saved me.” His voice rumbles through his chest. “Again.”
“You saved me first.” My words come out slurred with exhaustion. “Multiple times. I’m just catching up.”
His laugh is quiet. Ragged. The sound of someone who’s forgotten how to laugh and is relearning. His hand finds my hair, strokes through the tangled curls, gentle despite the calluses.
“We’re quite a pair.”
“We’re alive.” I lift my head, meet his gaze. “That’s more than I expected when this started.”
Something shifts in his expression. Softens. The warrior’s mask slipping to reveal something underneath—something vulnerable and wondering and achingly human despite the tusks and the scars and the century of bloodshed.
“Kielyne.” His hand cups my face. His thumb traces my cheekbone. “I need to tell you something.”
“I know.” I turn my face into his palm, press a kiss to the center of it. “I know. And I—”
The words catch in my throat. All the things I haven’t let myself feel, haven’t let myself name, crowding up behind my teeth and refusing to come out.
But maybe I don’t need words. Maybe there’s another way to say it.
I kiss him.
Not the desperate collision. Not the tender reassurance of this morning. Something else—slower, deeper, my lips parting against his in an invitation that leaves no room for misunderstanding.
He goes still beneath me. A breath. Two.
Then his hand tightens in my hair, and he kisses me back.
The war band has scattered—giving us privacy, I realize dimly.
The ruined watchtower is empty except for us, afternoon light slanting through the gaps in the walls, dust motes drifting lazily in the air.
We’re alone. Finally, impossibly alone, with no one trying to kill us and nowhere we need to be.
His hands find my waist. Careful of the healing wound, careful of everything, but there’s nothing tentative in the way he pulls me closer. Nothing uncertain in the growl that rumbles through his chest when I slide my fingers under his ruined shirt.
“Kielyne.” My name is a warning and a plea. “You’re still recovering. We shouldn’t—”
“I almost died.” I pull back just enough to meet his gaze. “You almost died. Multiple times. I’m tired of almost.” I press my palm flat against his chest, feel his heart pounding beneath my touch. “I want you. I want this. And I’m done pretending I don’t.”
The last of his resistance crumbles.
He rolls us, settles his weight over me, bracing himself on his forearms so he doesn’t crush me. His body blocks the light, turns the world into shadows and warmth and the impossible reality of him—here, alive, mine.
“Tell me if I hurt you.” His voice is gravel and need. “Tell me if anything is too much.”
“You won’t.”
“Kielyne—”
“I trust you.” I reach up, trace the line of his jaw, the edge of his tusk. “I trust you with my body. With my life. With everything I have.” My voice drops to a whisper. “Show me I’m right to.”
This time is different.
In the cellar, in the crumbling building, everything was urgency and desperation—the frantic need of two people trying to forget the death surrounding them.
We crashed together because we didn’t know how to do anything else, because gentleness felt impossible when the world was trying to tear us apart.
Now the world has stopped trying. And we have time.
He undresses me slowly. Peels away the ruined layers of my clothes with hands that shake—not from weakness but from the effort of holding back.
His mouth follows his fingers, pressing kisses to each new inch of skin he exposes.
My shoulder. My collarbone. The curve of my breast. The soft skin of my stomach, careful around the pink scar where the blight blade took me.
“Beautiful.” The word is a rumble against my hip. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”
I pull at his shirt. He helps me drag it over his head, and then he’s bare before me—green skin and ritual scars and the new marks of the transformed oath, branching patterns that pulse faintly when I touch them.
I trace them with my fingertips. Feel the magic humming beneath his skin, the bond that ties his life to mine.
Not a chain. Not anymore. Something chosen.
“I don’t regret it.” The words come out before I can stop them. “Any of it. The capture. The oath. Being dragged across the Bloodscar Plains by an orc captain who wouldn’t let me go.”
He goes still above me. Waiting.
“I should regret it.” I cup his face in my hands, make him look at me.
“By every measure that makes sense, I should hate you. Should resent you. Should be counting the days until I can break the bond and go back to my life.” I swallow hard.
“But I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to break anything.
” My thumb traces the edge of his tusk. “I want to stay.”
Something breaks open in his expression. Raw. Devastating. The face of a man who’s been braced for rejection and can’t quite believe he’s hearing something else.
“Kielyne—”
“I’m not ready to say everything.” I kiss the corner of his mouth. “I’m not ready to name what this is. But I know I’m not leaving. Not because the bond demands it.” I meet his gaze, let him see the truth in my eyes. “Because I choose it. Because I choose you.”
He kisses me then—deep and desperate and aching with everything he’s not saying either. His hands find my hips, pull me up against him, and when he finally slides inside me, it feels like coming home.
We move together slowly.
No urgency now. No fear. Just the slide of skin against skin, the catch of breath, the soft sounds that escape when he hits exactly the right angle. His forehead presses against mine. His hands cradle my face. Every thrust is deliberate, measured, designed to draw this out as long as possible.
He watches me. Watches every flicker of expression, every catch of breath, every moment when my eyes flutter closed because it’s too much, too good, too right. And when I look at him, I see the same thing reflected back—wonder and need and something beautiful.
The pleasure builds slowly. A rising tide instead of a crashing wave. I feel it gathering at the base of my spine, spreading through my limbs, making my toes curl against the bedroll beneath us.
“Blorjorn.” His name comes out broken. Desperate. “Please—”
“I have you.” His voice is rough velvet against my ear. “Let go. I have you.”
I shatter.