TWENTY-SIX DROKHAR
TWENTY-SIX
DROKHAR
Irise with her cradled against my armor, her head tucked against my shoulder, her hair tangled across my arm. The mark burns beneath my breastbone—not pain, but awareness. She’s alive. Unconscious, drained, but alive.
The death wardens stare at me as I carry her back through the gates.
Varn steps into my path, her scarred face unreadable. “The prisoner—”
“Is coming with me.”
“The Council—”
“The Council can burn.” I don’t slow down. Don’t look at her. “She saved every one of us. She gave those soldiers what they needed. If the Council has a problem with that, they can take it up with me.”
Varn steps aside.
I carry Aradya past the collapsed corpses of soldiers who finally found peace.
Past the horrified faces of death wardens who have spent their careers burning the dead and have never seen anyone set them free instead.
Past the pyres that still smolder at the edges of the pit, their flames casting long shadows across ground that has soaked up centuries of endings.
My quarters are in the corner of the main building—spartan even by warden standards, containing nothing personal except a set of dog tags in a drawer I’ve been avoiding.
I lay her on my narrow bed, her small frame barely filling half the mattress, her blood-streaked face pale against the rough sheets.
Then I sit down beside her.
And I wait.
She wakes hours later, when the light through my single window has shifted from dawn gold to afternoon gray.
I’ve been watching her the whole time. Haven’t moved except to clean the blood from her face, to check that her breathing stays steady, to feel the mark pulse between us with every beat of her heart.
The rhythm has become as familiar as my own—two heartbeats syncing, calling to each other across the space between my chair and the bed.
Her eyes open. Dark. Confused. Finding me with the same unerring accuracy the mark provides.
“You stayed.” The word rasps out, raw from the power she channeled.
“I’m not leaving.”
She tries to sit up. Winces. Falls back against the pillow with a grimace that makes my hands curl into fists against the urge to reach for her.
“How long?”
“Six hours. Maybe seven.” I lean forward, elbows on my knees, close enough to touch but not touching. Not yet. “The Council sent three messengers. I told them all to leave.”
“They’ll want my head.”
“They can’t have it.”
Her lips curve. Not quite a smile, but close. “Careful. That almost sounded protective.”
“It was.”
She holds my gaze. The mark flares beneath her collarbone—I can see it through the thin fabric of her clothing, a glow that matches the heat building in my own sternum.
The air between us thickens. Charged. Heavy with awareness that has been building since the moment she touched my mark in that prison cell and spoke my brother’s name.
“The dead.” She swallows. “Did they—”
“They found peace.” The words cost me more than I expected. “Every one of them. They spoke their truths, and then they let go.”
“Good.” Her eyes glisten. “That’s good.”
“You gave them what I couldn’t.” I reach for her then—can’t stop myself, don’t want to stop myself. My hand finds hers on the mattress, rough fingers closing around her smaller ones. The contact sends a pulse through both marks, bright and hot. “What I should have given them all along.”
“Drokhar—”
“This is a terrible idea.” I can feel her pulse racing through our joined hands. Can feel the mark singing between us, demanding completion. “The King is still out there. The Council wants you dead. We have no plan—”
She sits up.
Not slowly, not carefully—she surges upward and grabs the front of my armor, pulling me toward her with strength that shouldn’t be possible for someone who was unconscious minutes ago. Her face is inches from mine. I can feel each exhale ghosting across my mouth.
“I know.” Her fingers tighten in my collar. “I don’t care.”
The first kiss is desperate.
Years of loneliness colliding with years of needing to be needed.
I pin her to the mattress and she arches into me, her fingers scrabbling at armor buckles, her mouth hungry against mine.
There’s nothing gentle about it. Nothing soft.
Two people who deal in death, trying to prove they’re still alive.
I pull back long enough to strip off my armor—leather and iron hitting the floor with thuds I barely register.
She’s working at her own clothing, the thin fabric she was wearing when they threw her in that prison cell, and then there’s nothing between us but skin and the marks that burn where they touch.
She gasps when I press my palm to her collarbone.
I groan when she presses hers to my sternum.
The contact is electric—not simply physical but magical, the mating bond singing between us like a wire pulled taut. Heat floods through me, obliterating thought, reducing me to instinct and need and the desperate certainty that I will die if I don’t have her.
Her hands explore the scars on my torso—burn marks from pyres, blade cuts from revenants, the map of violence that is the only decoration I’ve ever worn.
She traces each one with fingers that speak for the dead, and the touch becomes sacred.
Reverent. An acknowledgment of every ending I’ve witnessed.
My mouth finds her throat. Her collarbone. The mark that blazes beneath her skin, calling to its twin. She moans when I kiss it—a sound that goes straight through me, making my blood run hot.
“Drokhar—”
“Tell me to stop.” I barely recognize my own voice. Rough. Wrecked. The voice of a man who has spent his life burning and is finally learning what it means to kindle instead. “Tell me this isn’t what you want.”
Her answer is to wrap her legs around my hips and pull me closer.
I bury myself in her like a man seeking sanctuary.
She wraps around me like a woman who has finally found home.