"So he gets on a boat with a white wizard and a bunch of elves and sails to a place where nothing dies… but nothing really lives either. It's peace. It's rest. It's permission to be done."
His hand tightened on mine.
"That's what you feel like to me, Daphne."
A beat. A shiver.
"You're my Undying Lands."
The air tasted of salt; the ocean pressing itself into every single breath. I didn't mean to cry, and yet somehow I did.
Somewhere deep inside of me, I knew I would never get a white dress and a clean altar; it was always going to come down to him and me staring into each other's eyes in the darkness, making promises only we knew how to keep. It was a messy theology, but it was ours. He was my home on earth, and I was his eternity.
"I hate that your life is Mordor," I leaned my forehead to his, feeling the way his fingertips fell to the back of my thighs.
"I'd do it all again if it meant having you," he whispered. "Every. Fucking. Moment of it."
I took the marriage contract and pressed it to his chest, signing my name on every dotted line until the magic clicked into place. It meant something that Wolfe signed as my witness. Maybe this was him keeping me and letting me go at the same time.
"You'll submit it when you get back to Seattle?" I smiled, marveling at the way cold ink could mean so much.
"Fuck, Daph!" Thay's hands went into my hair, pulling me into a stormy kiss that burned into my lungs. I wanted to die inside him. Taste him. Feel him dirty and wipe him clean, the way he had done with me over and over again.
"Thay?" I rocked my hips when the heat of his tongue shifted to my earlobe. "I want you."
In a few hours, I would lose him to the rain. My body would be empty and my bedroom window open… I did not know how to stop time. Keep him locked inside my chest, where nothing could ever hurt him again. How to run away. All I knew was that this moment changed everything.
And change in our world wasn't just dangerous, it called for blood.
"You have me," he mouthed, groaning when my hand dropped low, running the length of his stomach until it met the band of his flannels. I reached in, taking him into my hands and gently stroking him. He moaned into a growl. "You fucking have me."
Thay's hand shot up, palming and squeezing the soft line of my throat, before he pulled me closer. His love was violent, like crimson flowers bleeding in a sea of purple. That strange patch of black in a winter storm. If he didn't push, he didn't feel. And I wanted him tofeeleverything.
But not because he was afraid.
It was one of the many lessons life had taught us: anything good meant something bad could follow. You didn't trust it, whether it came from a person claiming to be your friend or meals that lasted more than a week. Good things never stayed. So the moment I signed those papers and became his was the exact moment he knew he would lose me forever.
Not because it was true, but because it wastoo goodto be true.
With my free hand, I tugged at his wrist, sliding his touch to the beat of my heart.
"Daphne." He swallowed, watching the rise and fall of my lungs between his fingers.
Some men look at your eyes, others your smile,most of them your ass, but it was always my heart he loved the most.
The sound of its tempo.
The way it beat just for him.
"I am not going anywhere," my voice cracked. "I'm all yours."
"The world won't let us have this, Daph. You know that, right?" he broke, the words tumbling in a jagged whisper. I shifted, falling closer against his chest. "You fucking know it."
Anger and something else slammed into me when I pressed his hand down harder until the sound of my body drummed inside his.
"You're wrong because the one thing life gave us was each other. The one fucking thing! It wouldn't take it back just because we believe in it."
"Babe. Daphne. Do you hear yourself? That's halo shit, and you know it," he grabbed my face, his eyes lighting up. "Lifeis an evil fucking whore that takes EVERYTHING, Daphne. Everything good. Everything that breathes. All our parts and all of our time. It takes and takes and then cocks its gun and fucking TAKES some more!"