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 memore 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.”