A pale sapphire light erupted from my chest, cascading outward in blinding waves. It swirled around me like a radiant storm, bathing everything in a glow that made the Inferni flinch from its intensity.
Mavros’s breathing steadied as I watched the blood slowing, the wounds closing. Magic surged through me like a torrent, flooding my veins with a power I had sorely missed. The witch had stripped me of my former identity, but she hadn’t taken my magic. She had merely disguised it, buried it deep within me. I wasn’t just a woman now. I was still the last sylph—the last of my kind.
As his body healed beneath my touch, my heart swelled with a new understanding. I wasn’tjust a victim of some curse. I was powerful. The power to heal, to protect, to fight. It was all still inside me, waiting for this moment.
Bone mended. Flesh sewed together. Fire returned to his dim gaze.
His heart raced beneath my fingers.Alive.
“Mavros,” I breathed. My voice cracked. “Come back to me.”
His expression softened, the lines of pain fading as his lashes fluttered. A groan spilled from his lips, and his eyes met mine. He blinked slowly, dazed, as if he still walked on the knife’s edge between life and death. My tears still shimmered in his fur. My magic hummed beneath his skin, vibrated through his bones, and reactivated his strength to live.
“Astoria...” His voice was weak, his breath still shallow, but his eyes locked onto mine, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, there was something resembling peace in them.
“Don’t leave me,” I whispered again, my voice barely more than a breath. But this time, there was no desperation in it. Just raw, undeniable love.
He smiled. A tired but unmistakable thing. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Tears flowed freely, mingling with the faint remnants of magic that lingered in the air. I could feel the last of the healing magic flow through my fingertips, leaving me trembling with exhaustion. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except him.
“You healed me,” he said at last. “You savedme.”
“No,” I said, tracing the curve of his bottom lip with reverent fingers. “I only reminded the world you were mine, and it could not take you.”
He smiled, and oh, how it undid me.
“I owe you everything,” Mavros murmured.
“No, you foolish beast,” I said. “I would do it a thousand times over if it meant you’d stay with me.”
He looked at me then, really looked at me. His eyes searched mine, and I saw something in them—something that had always been there. Something pure, something real. We were quiet then. The kind of silence that didn’t feel heavy, but bright. Between us was the hush of something sacred. Something ancient. Something true.
“I love you,” I said again, and this time, it was a confession laced with every ache I had carried since meeting Aradia, since the first stolen fruit in his garden, and the first night he made mefeel.
A warm grin spread across his face, and his hand lifted to brush a strand of hair behind my ear. “I love you, too,” he murmured. “With everything I am, Astoria.”
I believed him with every fiber of my being.
It shook the bones of the realm beneath us. The world felt still, as though time had stopped around us. There were no Inferni feasting, no corpses festering in the courtyard, no wizard bones crumbling to ash behind us. Just the two ofus holding tight to our bond and the promise of being together, no matter what.
“You have your freedom, sweet creature. You can have a happy ending in spite of the curse,” Mavros said, his voice filled with resolve. He cupped my cheek, and for a brief moment, I saw something in him. A flicker of possessive devotion. “I’ll make sure of it. If it’s the last thing I do.”
I should have smiled. Should have wept with joy.
But all I could do was look at him, memorize him, touch his face like he was made of embers and nightmares and every dark thing I should have feared—because he was. I would forever grieve what I lost, my former identity, my world, the sky. I was the last of my kind. Air spirits were lost to the world. And I had to live with that pain.
Yet I loved him despite all of it, and I would submit myself to his cursed embrace.
I leaned closer, resting my forehead on his, and in that quiet, I said the only truth I knew for sure. “I’ve found my freedom, and my happy ending, Mavros. Right here. With you.”
