Then I realized the pitch had changed.
The monsters were fleeing.
Light broke over the horizon in a spill of pale gold, dawn cresting the mountains at last. I stared at it in stunned disbelief as many of the lesser monsters, the Brakhounds, the Wraiths, and the Tharnoks, scattered. As they awoke from whatever spell was holding them fast before retreating toward the treeline and the shadows they had crawled from.
It wasn’t enough to save us from the remaining Korythids, but it was something… A beginning.
I lowered my forehead to Everly’s, my breath shaking as relief crashed through my chest so hard it hurt.
You terrify me.Even through the bond, my voice was hoarse.Do you know that?
The corner of her lips twitched like it had been a compliment.
You are the bravest thing I have ever known,I continued, and her expression faltered.And I am so sorry that bravery cost you so much.
Her breath hitched, the weight of her grief echoing through her once more.
The land itself answered you. Not because you demanded it, but because you belong to it. Because you belong to Winter. To me. Because you are what was missing.
I pressed my lips to her forehead.
You really are the other half of my soul, Morta Mea.I told her.My life. And My Death.
Maybe fate had chosen her for my bride because she was the match to my power, but my soul had chosen her for a mate because she was mine. Intrinsically, everything I had needed in my life.
She searched my gaze for the span of several heartbeats while I waited for her to make some joke, some quip about my words, or the rare bit of sincerity I was offering her.
But instead, her fingers snaked into my hair as she pulled herself up in my lap to brush her lips along mine.
I kissed her back. Deep. Unrestrained. A promise forged in our blood and frost and shadow.
When she was steady enough to stand, I turned us back toward the battlefield.
There was still fighting to be done, still frostbeasts to slay.
But for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt something unfamiliar rise in my chest as the monsters fell and the sun climbed higher.
Hope.
Chapter 54
Everly
The battle was over before the sun crested the horizon. It bathed the palace in a crimson glow, a reflection of the blood that ran red on the ground.
I had expected it to go out with a bang, a moment of silence that transcended the land, or a cry of celebration, something. But it was just, finally, quietly over.
A decade’s worth of torment and uncertainty and slaughter and chaos, ended with the high-pitched scream of the final Wretch that had refused to flee, dying at the hands of an ordinary footsoldier.
Even then,overwas a stretch. We would have to send out patrols to hunt the rest of the monsters down. Even if they were behaving more like the typical predators that always had and always would haunt the land, there were still far too many of them right now.
And we would have to burn our dead.
Draven pressed his lips against my forehead. The swell of our thoughts and feelings mingled until I could hardly pick them apart, a convoluted concoction of relief and loss and shock and devastation.
I stayed there for as long as I could, trying to soak in the warmth he always seemed to possess, steadying myself in his strength before I finally stepped away to survey the… damages.
The scene was even more gruesome in the sunlight.
