She looked down at our joined hands, trembling faintly, as if the truth was something she’d been waiting her whole life to be granted permission to believe.
And as the silence stretched, I felt the words circle back like a blade turned inward.
Because it was true of me, and all the lies I had told. True of Draven, and the carnage he had wrought. True of the wreckage we’d carved through this frozen kingdom with our mistakes, our desperation, our love, our fear, our hatred, and somewhere buried deeper, our hope.
So many pieces of ourselves had been bargained away or shattered entirely just to survive long enough to stand here.
And still, I knew… we had done the best we could with the choices we were given, the best anyone could have expected of us.
I only hoped that someday it would feel like enough.
Chapter 55
Everly
Last time I had been covered in congealed bits of monster, at least my wings had been tucked inside.
This time, it was everywhere.
I stood under the steaming shower for what felt like an eternity, staring at the blood that swirled down the drain without really seeing it. Instead, I saw soldiers snapped in half, wings bubbling into nothing, limbs sailing across a bloody field, my sister trembling in my uncle’s grasp.
A flaming body falling from the sky.
Draven didn’t hesitate before stepping in this time, washing my hair with a care that bordered on reverence.
When my hair was finally clean, he moved onto my wings. Slowly, he dragged the soap across the sensitive skin. I leaned into his touch, letting it thaw some of the frost that had seeped into my bones.
But I was still so cold.
“Morta Mea.”
It wasn’t until he spoke the words aloud that I realized I had been unintentionally blocking him from my thoughts—from allthe gruesome images running through my mind and the endless onslaught of emotions I hadn’t yet sorted through.
He gently turned me to face him, his gaze tripping over my expression with concern. I hitched in a breath, water still streaming down my cheeks.
Which made no sense at all because the shower had stopped running.
Draven’s hands came up to my face, his thumbs tenderly wiping the tears before they could spill down to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know this is ridiculous. I know that there are casualties of war and that we won today… that this is what we wanted.”
“No,” he said the word firmly, shaking his head like that had been the most ridiculous thing I’d ever said. “No one ever wants to lose the people they love, and you will not apologize for mourning.”
My lip trembled, and I tried to look away, but he wouldn’t let me. Draven’s eyes burned into mine as if he were willing me to understand him.
“You saved a kingdom today, Morta Mea. But you lost your mother, and grief is not a numerical equation."
He bent down, pressing his lips against my forehead, the warmth of his breath a welcome contrast to the cold I felt so deeply in my bones. Then he skated his lips down to my cheeks, kissing away the remaining tears, his mana gently prodding at mine, a reminder to bring down my shields.
“Together or not at all,” he murmured against my skin.
I squeezed my eyes shut, hearing everything he didn’t say.
That this, too, was a battle, and it was far from the last one we would face, but he was right here. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Not by circumstance or by choice.
That part still didn’t feel real. I was still half waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something to come along and take himfrom me, too. For fate to systematically remove every person I loved from my life until I was alone again, just like I had been for so many years in the bedroom at my father’s estate.
