Chapter 15 One Final Kiss
One Final Kiss
Onyx
If there’s a last quiet before a war, it sounds like this: the crunch of frost underfoot, the slow exhale of seven men who have killed for less, and the shivering hope that, today, they won’t have to.
I move near the front of the line, my boots treading over leaves and bone-white roots, barely raising a whisper. The woods here remember us. They bend to make way, or maybe just to watch.
Behind me, the others fan out in a loose V, all eyes forward, no one talking. Even Sable keeps his mouth shut, the curve of his lips tight. I don’t know what I expected, but it’s not the absence of birds and a hush so deep it’s chilling.
Raisa walks at my side. Or rather, she glides. There’s no other word for it. She’s too regal for trudging, too other for stumbling. Her head is up, her mouth set, her eyes two bright knives in the dawn.
I study her from the corner of my eye, like a fool staring at the sun, but I can’t help it.
Every time I look, she’s changed again. Grown a little taller, a little brighter.
The perfect lines of her face are as sharp as broken glass.
Her hair is loose, black as midnight, and the wind wraps it around her throat like a living thing.
She could be a goddess, if you squint right. Or a monster. Same difference.
The castle rises ahead, cold and impossible, the walls tinged blue and black by the deep shadows. There are no torches, no sentries pacing the ramparts. Not even the stink of smoke wafts down from the towers. I know what defenses look like, and this isn’t it.
This is a mausoleum waiting for its ghosts.
I angle my body so I’m halfway between Raisa and whatever comes next.
The others do the same in their own ways.
Talon swings wide, his hand on the hilt of a knife that’s longer than most men’s legs.
Grim moves off to the other side, hunched low, his eyes scanning the upper windows.
Rune and Bran close in from behind, each step matched and measured.
Even Shade, who’s never protected anything in his life until Raisa, walks just a little ahead, his spine straight and his jaw set like it’s the last part of him he can control.
The curse used to scream in my bones at moments like this, demanding wing and feather, death and pain. Now it’s a whisper, barely a suggestion. The magic’s not gone, but it’s changed.
Raisa did that. She burned its power out of us, or maybe just rewired it. I feel it under my skin, twisting, trying to find a foothold, but there’s nothing left for it to grasp when every part of me belongs to her now.
“Stop,” she says.
We do. No one hesitates, not even Shade. The air hums, sharp with her command, and we obey.
She turns, studying each of us. Her gaze hits me last. I meet it, let her see I’m not afraid, but my throat is thick with all the things I never learned to say. If she asked, I would walk through hell on my knees. If she asked, I’d gut the world and bring her its heart.
She doesn’t ask. She just looks at me, and then at the castle, and then back, like she’s weighing which one matters more.
I scan the line of trees, every muscle ready for the first shadow to move. But the quiet is complete.
Raisa’s magic pulses, faint but steady. I see it now, where I never did before—an aura under her skin, not so much night as the memory of it, the way shadows still float behind your eyes when light suddenly floods into the dark.
She breathes, and the frost on the ground melts away in a perfect circle around her feet.
She blinks, and I swear the trees bend toward her.
“Almost there,” Bran murmurs. His voice is rough, but there’s a thread of hope in it. “We keep moving?”
Raisa nods, once. “We go straight in. We don’t split up, not until we have to.”
Shade grins, but there’s no humor in it. “He’ll be waiting.”
“That’s the point,” she says.
I want to say something—anything—but words are clumsy things, and there’s nothing I can offer that she doesn’t already know. Instead, I shift closer, close enough that my shoulder almost brushes hers.
She doesn’t move away. Her hand hangs at her side, her fingers flexing, and I want to grab it and never let go, but I don’t. Not yet.
The others tighten the formation. I catch Grim watching me, his mouth a flat line, his hands twitching at his sides.
He wants this over, wants the king dead and gone and the rest of us free to figure out what comes next.
He and I don’t always see eye to eye, but tonight we’re the same animal, one too old to care about subtlety, one too hungry to stop now.
We push through the last screen of trees. The castle fills the sky, every window black, every door shut and barred. I study the main gate, the murder holes, the angles of the stone, but there’s no one on the walls. Not even a stray arrowhead glinting in the dusk.
It’s wrong. It’s so wrong I want to scream.
I step ahead of Raisa, just enough to draw any arrow meant for her. My arm swings wide, creating a wall between her and the castle.
She almost laughs, the sound a thin thread of warmth in the cold. “You don’t have to,” she whispers.
“I know,” I whisper back.
But I do. I always will.
We stop at the edge of the woods, a single line facing down the stone mountain of my nightmares.
I hear the brothers breathing, the soft click of Sable’s tongue as he braces for the rush, the slow, measured exhale of Grim as he centers himself for the kill.
I watch the wind tangle Raisa’s hair, her face already set in the calm before the storm.
I want to say I’m not afraid. I want to believe it.
But if there’s a last regret before a war, this is it: the second when you realize everything you’ve ever wanted is standing right next to you, and you might never have another chance to say goodbye.
I think she realizes it, too.
She moves to Shade first.
He doesn’t flinch as she approaches, though his shoulders tighten, his hands balling into fists at his sides. Raisa lifts one hand and cups his cheek. Shade is taller, heavier, all angles and violence, but he melts under her touch.
She leans in, her lips barely an inch from his ear, and whispers something soft enough I can’t catch it. Whatever it is has Shade’s eyes closing for a heartbeat. When they open again, he looks like he’s been reborn and ruined in the same breath.
She kisses him, once, at the corner of his jaw. His hands hover in the air—he wants to hold her, but he doesn’t. He just lets her go.
Next is Grim.
He tries to act stoic, but I know him too well.
He’s vibrating with nerves, his mouth working soundlessly.
Raisa doesn’t say a word. She runs her thumb along the side of his cheek, tracing all the way to the hinge of his jaw.
Then, slow as the tide, she presses her forehead to his, her eyes squeezed shut, her hands fisted in his shirt.
He sways, just a little, like she’s the only thing tethering him to the earth.
They stand like that for three breaths. When she steps back, Grim’s cheeks are wet with the first tears he’s shed since we were boys. He doesn’t try to hide them.
Bran is next. He looks like he’s about to fall apart just from being seen.
Raisa smiles at him, soft and private, then tugs his shirt aside to bare the patch of skin on his neck where her mark—the one she branded into him—still glows faintly.
She bends down and presses her mouth to it, sucking once, then nipping at it with her teeth.
He shudders, the muscles in his arms bunching, and for a second, he looks more alive than I’ve ever seen him.
She moves on to Talon, who’s still trying to hide the tremor in his hands. Raisa doesn’t tease him. She stands on tiptoe, straightens his collar, and grins at him like he’s the only person who’s ever made her brave.
She smacks his cheek, light but real. “You aren’t allowed to die,” she says, as if it’s a command.
Talon’s mouth splits into a savage, almost childlike grin. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Rune is next, his eyes bright with tears already.
He reaches for her, but Raisa catches his hands in hers and brings them to her chest. She doesn’t kiss him.
Instead, she runs her fingers down the length of his forearm, tracing the tangled runes and sigils inked in his skin.
At his wrist, she pauses, then draws a shape—something quick and secret—into his flesh with her fingertip.
He gasps, a ragged, broken sound. The tattoo flares, light spilling over his skin, and he looks at her like she just handed him the whole world.
She lets him go with a squeeze.
Sable is last before me. I expect him to smirk, to crack a joke, to break the spell with some filthy promise.
He doesn’t. He stands very still, shoulders hunched, eyes locked on hers.
Raisa brushes his hair from his face, then leans in and kisses his cheek—soft, softer than anything I’ve ever seen her do.
She whispers something into his ear, earning a laugh, a real sound, not forced at all. His whole face lights up, and I know I’ll never forget the way he looks in this moment, unburdened, free, forgiven.
She straightens and faces me.
My heart tries to escape through my throat. My hands—so big, so stupid—open and close at my sides, itching to grab her, to pull her in, to keep her forever. But I stand my ground, let her come to me.
She stops a breath away.
Her eyes are locked on mine, that impossible storm gray that haunts my every moment.
I can see every fleck, every secret. She lifts both hands and places them on my chest, over the brand she burned into my heart.
I feel the heat through my shirt, through my bones, through every layer of scar and regret I ever tried to bury.
She doesn’t smile, but her lips part. “My heart is yours.”
That’s it. Nothing fancy, nothing poetic. Just the truth, raw and unvarnished.
I don’t trust myself to speak. If I open my mouth, I’ll break. So I just look at her, memorize the curve of her jaw, the way her hair falls around her shoulders, and the slow tremble in her hands.
She lets them drop.
Then, deliberate as a death sentence, she turns and faces the others, her back to the castle.
She looks at each one of us, and I know what she’s doing. This is goodbye. Maybe not forever, maybe not even for long, but it’s the kind that matters. The kind you make when you know there’s a chance none of you walks away.
The air is thick, choking. Sable wipes his nose on his sleeve. Grim bites his tongue hard enough to draw blood. Shade is stone, but his eyes are red. Bran pulls Rune into his side, and they hold onto each other, neither willing to let go.
I take one last look at Raisa, and then at my brothers, and then at the castle—cold, silent, waiting.
She turns to me, the others bracing in her shadow, and for the first time in my life, I want to pray. Not to gods or fate or anything real, but to her. Just her.
I press my fist to my chest, over her brand, and nod.
She does the same.
The world holds its breath as we step forward, all eight of us prepared to face the past and live—or die—together.