I blinked. “What?”
“Human females.” His eyes gleamed faintly, the amber in them flickering like embers through fog. “Are they all as… defiant as you?”
Zaph stiffened beside me, a low rumble curling up from his chest. I felt it against my back before I heard it. “Careful,” he warned, each syllable lined with quiet threat.
Dravok’s smile sharpened, the kind that never reached his eyes. “Relax, Praetor. I’ve already found mine.” He tilted his head, shadows licking up his jaw. “She just hasn’t accepted it yet.”
Something in his tone—dark amusement layered over a hint of reverence—made my pulse trip.
“She’s human?” I asked before I could stop myself.
A low chuckle slid through the hall, roughand amused. “Oh, she’ssomething.” He brushed invisible dust from his coat, every movement calculated indifference. “Stubborn. Infuriating. Soft in ways that make you forget the war outside your ribs. You’ll like her, little historian, if she doesn’t stab me first.”
Selkaris hid a smile behind his hand.
Dravok’s gaze drifted to me once more, softer now. “Your kind has teeth. I like that.” Then to Zaph, “Keep her close, brother. The dark eats more than it swallows these days.”
Before either of us could answer, his shadow peeled away from the wall, spreading like wings, and he was gone, leaving the scent of ozone and a thousand unasked questions behind.
I exhaled slowly. “Was that… normal?”
Zaph’s hand slid down my arm, grounding me. “For Dravok?” He paused. “That was almost polite.”
"Am I the only one who wonders how the hell he knew what we were talking about?" I asked out loud, not wanting to think about the unsuspecting human woman Dravok had set his eyes on.
"Dravok is… Dravok," Zaph explained without clarification, letting out a long, deep sigh.
Silence pressed for a moment, full and electric. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and looked down at the stone in my palm. It was cool again, ordinary, except my fingers still tingled where the fog had breathed through me.
“Ashera,” I said, trying the name once more, not as ascholar but as a daughter. It felt right. Heavy and bright. “If you planted Earth, we’ll find your trail.”
Selkaris inclined his head, formal and fond all at once. “Then let us begin, Ella of Earth. We will lay your myths beside our memories and see where the lines agree.”
Zaph’s hand covered mine around the stone, warm and steady. “And when the lines converge,” he murmured, “we follow them home, or perhaps into the mouth that wants to swallow them.” He bent, brushed a kiss against my temple, and the gold in my skin answered his like a promise. “Either way, we go together.”
The palace breathed quietly aroundus, all black stone and soft light, the kind of silence a warrior doesn’t trust until he’s learned it by heart. I stood with Ella on the balcony of our chamber, the wind coming off the dark ocean cool against my skin. There was no sky here, only the illusion of one. The vault above Nox Eternum glowed without a sun.
Below, the surf rolled in slow, ink-dark sighs against the obsidian shore. Far beyond the palace cliffs, where my lines held, the Mmuhr’Rhong had been pushed back a few leagues, nothing the poets would sing about, but it was the kind of victory my soldiers had needed.
Since I found her, my legions have been fighting like the light has a pulse again. My second said as much: the men look at me and see the golden aura they used to have.
I should have been satisfied. Instead, there was that old pressure in my chest, not rage, but want. The brutal,simple urge to make my Aelyth safe. This place was a fortress, not a home. I had worn Nox Eternum like armor for eons; I would not make her live inside my armor.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, elbows on the balustrade, chin tilted to the false sky. “But imagine it with a moon. And stars. Real ones.” She didn't know it, but the wistfulness in her voice bit deeper than any blade I’d ever taken.
“I'm sorry,” my voice was rough against the night. “This world is a shadow of what should be. You’ve given up so much to be here, with me.” I turned, caught the line of her throat, the stubborn tilt of her mouth that always undid me. “I will get you a moon and the stars, Ella, if I have to drag them home myself. Whatever it takes to bring you to a world that isn’t a mockery of one.”
She looked at me then, those green-gold eyes catching the palace light and throwing it back like something holy. A smile curved, soft and certain. “Oh, Zaph,” she said, and it cracked the last of my defenses. “All I need is you.”
My name in her mouth did to me what a thousand campaigns could not. I stepped in behind her, caging her against the stone, not to trap, but to offer an anchor. Her back met my chest; her breath found my rhythm. I lowered my forehead to her temple and let the truth I’d been carrying finally leave me.
“I love you,” I said—no armor on it. No vows, no titles. Just the thing itself. It felt like opening a fist I’d kept clenched for centuries.
She turned in my arms, hands sliding up mychest, and rose onto her toes. “I love you,” she answered, as if it were the simplest law in the universe.
For a few heartbeats, we just looked at each other, as if stunned by our own words. I could feel my heart, my actual heart—armored, relentless as any of my weapons—now exposed to every late-night breeze and every bright, impossible future she wanted. I thought I would combust from holding it from the sharp, almost animal panic of needing her to hear it and needing her to say it again.
As if she heard my plea, she did.
