“Kursk…” I whisper, voice raw. “Don’t you dare?—”
He doesn’t. He holds me. The gleam from the Spear burns through us. The light arcs, curves, threads through everything: walls, stone, shadows. The world contracts, implodes in luminous fury.
Then—white-hot.
The spear flashes. Brilliant. It detonates—or maybe itbecomeslight. Incandescent and burning pure. The cave, the Veil, the world blur and splinter in that blast of radiance.
Everything vanishes.
CHAPTER 20
KURSK
Iwake with a crack between my bones. At first I think I’m dead—cold and quiet, everything diffuse, like I’m drifting in an endless tunnel of shadow. Then a sharp slap lands across my face, warm and alive, burning like fire.
“Hey, dumb green bastard,” Olivia snarls, her voice ragged. Her hand stings. I blink and see her above me—eyes wild, hair tangled, sweat and ash on her cheeks. My heart pounding so loud I swear I can hear it in my ears.
“Olivia…” I rasp.
She kneels beside me, hands wrapped in mine. “Donotyou give me the illusion you’re gone,” she says, voice thick. “You alive, you hear me?”
I attempt a grin. Jaws heavy. My mouth tastes of smoke, cold stone, and something metallic. I breathe in and out. Slowly.
She leans in, lips pressed to mine—fierce, trembling. I taste iron, taste hope. I hold her. My arms wrap around her like I’m anchoring myself to this moment, this breath, this living, thisus.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Alive.”
She smiles, one corner of her mouth crooked. “Finally. I thought I lost you.”
“I never left,” I say, voice hoarse.
She laughs soft, then kisses me again—light, fiercely. So fully alive it stings. I press my forehead to hers. Her breath hot on my cheek; her heartbeat thudding against my chest.
We lie there, in what feels like her bed—warm covers, the scent of linen and faint lavender. Outside the world is safe. The Veil is sealed. The terrifying echo of undead shadows has faded. The spear is gone—gone with the light that detonated, with the Veil’s collapse.
I feel safe, for one shallow moment. But the price tugs at me—something we traded, something lost.
Olivia strokes my hair. “We did it,” she says, voice small.
“Yes,” I reply. “But never again ...”
She raises an eyebrow. “What?”
I swallow. “I can never go home. Not wholly. Not ever.”
She presses her lips against mine. “Then let thishomebe what we build.”
The dawn light filters through windows. Birds call. Morning tastes of ash and rain, but also warmth, possibility.
She reaches for my hand. I take it, fingers interlaced.
We are alive.
A whisper in my mind, not quite sound—Chief Rand’s voice, distant, as if carried on wind through broken stone.
“You are a hero, Kursk,” he says. “Your bond to the old world is severed. Your new world awaits.”
I shut my eyes. The words roll over me, warm like fire, healing and mourning at once. The old world—the orc homelands, the blood, the family I’ve lost—that’s a ghost now. His bond severed. I feel it, as if chains around my heart have broken. But what replaces them is raw and untested.
