"What are you thinking?" Kaan asks, his thumb tracing circles on my palm.
"That I'm happy," I say, and the truth of it surprises me. "Genuinely, ridiculously happy. Despite everything."
His shadows flicker—a tell I've learned means he's feeling something too large for words. "Good," he says simply. "You deserve to be."
"So do you."
"I have you." He says it like it's obvious. Like I am the answer to every question. "What more could I possibly need?"
The night is beautiful and bittersweet, a moment of peace before the next storm we all know is coming. But as I raise my glass in response to a courtier's toast, twilight magic shimmering beneath my skin, I feel something I haven't felt in a long time.
Not just survival. Not just endurance.
Hope.
And the bone-deep certainty that whatever comes next, I won't face it alone.
Tomorrow will bring its own battles. The endless conflict between shadow and light that defines our world. The rebuilding. The grief that still surfaces without warning. The long, slow work of healing.
Tonight, I let myself believe that we've already won the war that mattered most.
We survived.
We found our way back to each other.
And that, in the end, is its own kind of magic.
Together.
Always together.
CHAPTER 40
MY MIRACLE
Nesilhan
6 monthslater
The morning lightfilters through sheer curtains, painting golden paths across our bedchamber. I stretch languidly, feeling the cool sheets against my bare skin and the delicious soreness in my muscles that reminds me of Kaan's passion from the night before. My fingers drift to my belly, tracing the small but unmistakable curve there. Four months along now. Ourmucize.
"You're thinking too loudly," Kaan mumbles beside me, his voice rough with sleep. His arm tightens around my waist as he nuzzles into the curve of my neck.
I turn in his embrace, my palm finding the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. "Good thoughts," I whisper. "Promise."
The shadows around us ripple contentedly, no longer fighting the light that pulses beneath my skin. For months after the binding transfer, my magic was chaos—twilight battling itself. Now it flows in harmony, light and shadow entwined like lovers.
"The baby?" Kaan asks, his hand covering mine over my belly.
"Peaceful." I smile, feeling the gentle flutter of life inside me. "Strong, like her father."
His eyes darken with emotion, and I know he's remembering our son—the child we lost. The grief never disappears completely; it just changes form. Where once it was a raging beast, it's now a quiet companion that walks beside us.
"You don't know it's a girl," he says, but there's tenderness in his teasing.
"I know." My certainty is bone-deep. After everything we've endured, this gift feels like compensation from the universe—a daughter to heal the wounds left by our son's death.
My hand drifts to the empty space at my own throat—the only person in the palace not required to wear one of Kaan's verification stones. When I first discovered I was pregnant again, the joy had been immediately shadowed by terror. The memory of that day haunted us both: Banu's face twisted with malice that wasn't hers, the shapeshifter wearing her skin, the blade piercing my stomach. Our son, gone before he'd even had a chance to live.
