Aradya
FORTY-SEVEN
“What happens now?”
The question emerges from nowhere. Or maybe it emerges from everywhere—from the bones of the city shifting above us, from the graves that have finally gone quiet, from the future that stretches uncertain and terrifying before me.
Drokhar is quiet for a long moment. His hand pauses on my back, then resumes its gentle motion. The calluses on his palm are rough from handling torch handles and corpse-iron, softened only slightly by the hours we’ve spent touching each other.
“The Council will try to reassert control.” His voice rumbles through the ribs I’m resting against. “They’ll probably blame both of us for the crisis—the witch who woke the dead and the death warden who let her live. They’ll want us punished. Exiled. Executed.”
I trace the edge of the claiming mark on his sternum. The skin there is smoother than the rest of him—scar tissue from the brand that burned into his flesh when he claimed me. My mark. My claim on this impossible man.
“And you?”
“I’ll tell them to try.” The certainty in his voice is the same certainty that once terrified condemned prisoners.
The flat assurance that the alternative to compliance is worse than whatever punishment they’re contemplating.
“I’m done following orders that don’t serve the dead.
I’m done burning without rites. I’m done pretending that silence is the same as peace. ”
“That’s very noble.”
“It’s very stupid.” He pulls me closer, tucking my body against his like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he loosens his grip. “But you’ve made me stupid. You and your whispers and your ridiculous bravery.”
I laugh against his shoulder. The sound surprises me—I don’t remember the last time I laughed like this. Before the rite went wrong. Before Ira Genn died screaming. Before I learned what it means to speak for the dead and survive the consequences.
This is what it feels like. Being happy. Being safe. Being held by someone who has no intention of letting go.
“We could leave.”
The thought is new. Tentative. A possibility I’ve been circling for hours without acknowledging.
“Blackreach isn’t the only city in the Veillands.” I tilt my head to look at him, reading his expression in the dim light filtering through the window. “Other places have dead who need to speak. Pyres that need to be tended. We could go—”
“Together.”
The word settles between us like a claiming of its own. Not a question. A statement. An acknowledgment of the obvious.
“Together.” I meet his gaze. “The mourning witch and the death warden. Giving the dead what they need—voice or silence, depending on what they ask for.”
“That sounds like a terrible business model.”
“That sounds like the only work worth doing.”
He kisses me. Slow and deep and full of promise. I can taste the future in that kiss—the roads we’ll walk, the graves we’ll tend, the dead we’ll serve without either of us having to sacrifice the parts of ourselves we’ve finally learned to value.
When we break apart, the dawn has fully risen over Blackreach. Golden light streams through the narrow window, painting the spartan room in shades of honey and amber. The pyres outside have burned down to embers. The compound is stirring with the sounds of wardens beginning their day’s work.
A city that will never be quite the same. No matter what the Council decides.
Drokhar shifts, and I feel his muscles tense as he prepares to rise.
“We’ll need supplies.” His practical voice returns—the commander who has planned a thousand operations, pivoting smoothly to planning an escape. “Tools. Provisions for travel. The roads between cities aren’t safe for anyone, let alone a death warden and a witch.”
I sit up, pulling the rough blanket around my shoulders. “I have nothing. Everything I owned was in the Undercroft. It’s probably buried under rubble now.”