Drokhar
FORTY-FIVE
Ikiss her forehead. Feel the salt of dried blood beneath my lips. She shudders—not from pain, from relief. Her fingers tighten on my armor, pulling me closer as if she’s afraid I’ll disappear.
I’m not going anywhere. Not ever again.
I kiss her cheek. The other one. Taste blood and tears and the exhaustion of a woman who gave everything she had to give the dead what they needed.
My lips find the mark on her collarbone—the claiming brand I burned into her flesh, the sign that she’s mine in a way that goes deeper than flesh or bone.
She makes a soft sound when I kiss it. Not pain. Completion.
“You did it.” My mouth moves against her skin. “You gave them peace.”
Her fingers thread through my hair. Tug weakly. “We did it.” She corrects me, her voice steadier now. “I commanded. You listened.”
“I’ll always listen to you.”
I don’t know if it’s a promise or a confession. Both, maybe. The truth of it burns in my throat as I gather her against me, pulling her close enough that her heartbeat echoes against mine. She’s alive. She survived. We survived.
And for the first time since the Mourning Crypts—since the screaming corpse and the chase through the streets and all the horror that followed—we have a moment without crisis pressing in from all sides.
I should be thinking about what comes next. The Council will have questions. Captain Varn will want reports. The city is in chaos, the dead have returned to their graves, and someone will need to explain what happened in the realm beyond the Veil.
But right now, all I can think about is the woman in my arms.
She’s real. She’s breathing. She’s not going to burn on any pyre as long as I draw breath.
Aradya’s head rests against my shoulder. Her body relaxes incrementally, exhaustion finally overcoming the adrenaline that’s been keeping her upright. She’s not asleep—I can tell by the way her fingers keep moving against my armor, tracing patterns she doesn’t seem aware of—but she’s close.
“The city,” she murmurs. “We should...”
“In a minute.”
“Drokhar—”
“In a minute.”
She doesn’t argue. Maybe she doesn’t have the strength. Maybe she’s as desperate for this moment as I am—sixty seconds where the world isn’t ending, where the dead aren’t screaming, where we can be more than the death warden and the mourning witch.
A man holding the woman he loves.
The thought lands in me like a blade finding its mark. Love. That’s what this is. Not the claiming mark’s pull, not the instinct that made me burn the brand into her skin. Simpler and more devastating than any of that.
I love her.
I love a mourning witch who speaks to the dead I’ve spent twenty years silencing. I love a woman whose magic terrifies me more than any revenant. I love someone who gives voice to grief when I’ve built my entire life around ending it.
The universe has a brutal sense of humor.
Aradya shifts in my arms. Tilts her face up to look at me. Her eyes are still bloodshot from the channeling, her skin still pale from exhaustion, but a new quality fills her expression that wasn’t there before.
Understanding. Recognition. The same devastating realization I’m drowning in.
“Hey.” Her voice is soft. “We should probably get out of this tunnel before the ceiling collapses on us.”
“Probably.”
“And let the Council know they still have a city to argue about.”
“Eventually.”
Her lips curve. That smile that’s been getting more frequent since the mating mark first flared to life. “Are you going to let go of me anytime soon?”
“No.”
She laughs. It’s a broken sound, rough with exhaustion and the aftermath of too much magic, but it’s real. I haven’t heard her laugh before. Not once. The dead don’t leave much room for laughter.
I want to hear it again. Every day. For the rest of my life.
I help her to her feet. Keep one arm around her waist when her legs threaten to buckle. She leans into me without hesitation—no more stiffness, no more uncertainty. Her body trusts mine in a way that goes beyond words.
The tunnel stretches ahead of us, leading toward the surface. Toward the city we saved. Toward a future neither of us expected to have.
She takes one step. Then another. Her hand finds mine, fingers interlacing, the calluses on her palm fitting against the scars on mine like they were made to match.
“The Council is going to be insufferable,” she says. “They’ll take credit for everything.”
“Arbiter Thorne already declared it their strategy.”
“And Meren will probably still want me dead.”
“Meren can try.”
She glances up at me. Fierceness blazes in her expression now—not the guardian of endings who commanded a hundred thousand soldiers to rest, but the woman beneath. The one who refuses to be silenced.
“I’m not hiding anymore.”
“Good.”
“I mean it. No more running. No more working in the shadows, waiting for someone like you to drag me to the pyres.” Her grip tightens on my fingers. “If they want to burn me, they can fight for it.”
I stop walking. Turn to face her in the narrow tunnel, witch-lights casting uncertain shadows across her blood-stained features.
“They won’t touch you.” The words come out rougher than I intended. “Anyone who tries will have to go through me first.”
“That’s very alpha of you.”
“It’s the truth.”
Her free hand rises to my face. Traces the line of my jaw, the burn scars at my temple, the gray threading through the hair at my ears. Her touch is gentle. Wondering. Like she’s still surprised that she’s allowed to do this.
She can do whatever she wants. I’m not going anywhere.
“I know it’s the truth.” Her voice drops. “That’s why I love you, you oversized, fire-starting, corpse-burning idiot.”
She’s said it before. In the battlefield, with the realm collapsing around us. But this is different. This is deliberate. This is a woman who has made her choice and refuses to take it back.
I kiss her.
Not desperate, like in the King’s realm. Not claiming, like the first time our mouths met. Slow. Certain. The kind of kiss that says I’m not going anywhere and this is real and you’re mine, I’m yours, and nothing is going to change that.
Her arms wind around my neck. She rises on her toes despite the exhaustion that should have her collapsed on the ground. The mark on her collarbone pulses against my throat where she’s pressed against me—an answering beat to the one burning beneath my armor.
Mates.
The word feels right in a way nothing else ever has.
We break apart slowly. Her forehead rests against mine. Her breath mingles with mine in the cold tunnel air.
“We should get to the surface,” she whispers.
“Mm.”
“The city probably needs—”
“The city can wait.”
Her laugh is softer this time. Warmer. “The Ashwalker, telling the city to wait. What would the Council say?”
“The Council can go to—”
She kisses me again, cutting off the profanity. Which is probably for the best. The words I was about to use weren’t appropriate for mixed company, and the witch in my arms seems to have strong opinions about unnecessary vulgarity.
When we finally pull apart, her eyes are brighter. Less exhausted. The power she burned through is still gone—that won’t come back for days, maybe weeks—but hope has taken its place.
Hope. Future. The possibility of a life that isn’t defined by death.
“Come on.” She takes my hand again. Turns toward the surface. “Let’s go remind the Council that they’re not in charge of anything.”
I follow her through the tunnel. Toward the light. Toward whatever comes next.
The dead are silent. The graves are still. And somewhere above us, dawn is breaking over a city that will never be quite the same.
Neither will we.