"No," he says firmly. "You are powerful. There is a difference."
I look up at him, searching his face for any sign of fear. I showed him the abyss. I showed him that I can reach into a mind and turn it to ash. He should be terrified of me. He should be running.
"Does it matter?" I ask, my voice barely a whisper. "That I am Purna? That I have this... this thing inside me?"
He goes still. His gaze drops to my mouth, then back to my eyes.
"It matters," he says slowly. "It matters because it is part of you. But it does not change what you are to me."
"And what am I?" I ask, a tear escaping the corner of my eye to track hot and wet down my temple. "Am I still your poison? Your silence?"
"You are my life," he says. The words are simple, unadorned by the flowery language of the court. They land with the weight of absolute truth. "I would be anyone, Leora. I would beDfam. I would be a beggar in the gutters of Lowtown. I would be nothing, as long as I can be with you."
"Are you not afraid?" I push, needing to hear it. "Aren't you scared that one day I might lose control? That I might turn you into... into that?" I gesture vaguely at the catatonic soldiers. "That I might control you?"
He goes silent. He looks at Malek’s corpse, then at the empty air where his magic used to be. He looks back at me, and his expression is open, stripped of all defenses.
"I am terrified," he admits. "But not of your power. I am terrified of a world where you are not in it."
He leans in, his forehead resting against mine.
"I trust you," he whispers against my skin. "With my mind. With my body. With the jagged, broken pieces of my soul. You can do anything to me, Leora. Because I know you won't."
The confession hits me harder than the psychic backlash. He, who has spent centuries trusting no one, who built walls of cruelty to keep the world out, has laid his throat bare to the one creature capable of destroying him.
I sob, a short, sharp sound, and pull him into a kiss. It is salty with tears and sweet with relief. It is a promise.
We cling to each other, breathing the same air, sharing the same heartbeat.
But the world outside this room has not stopped.
A distant shout echoes from the upper levels of the estate. The sound of boots on stone. The massacre in the panic room was silent, but the explosion that killed Asema was not. Others are coming. The other Houses. The Temple Guard.
Imas pulls back, his head snapping up. The softness vanishes from his face, replaced by a grim, practical resolve.
"We have to move," he says, helping me to my feet. "If they find us here... if they see what you did... they will not just kill us. They will study us."
He studies me, his hand tightening on mine. "Even with Malek dead, I am a Lord who has lost his magic. By the laws of Lliandor, I am to be executed before sunset to prevent the stain of weakness from spreading to the caste."
"Then we leave," I say, finding my strength in his grip. "We leave Lliandor."
"Yes." He looks around the room, his eyes landing on the heavy iron safe concealed behind the tapestry Malek tore down. "But not empty-handed. We will need coin for the crossing."
He strides to the safe. He does not need magic to open it; he uses the combination of a master tactician who always planned for a rainy day. The door swings open.
Inside, stacks of gold coins gleam in the torchlight. But Imas ignores the gold. He reaches for a leather pouch at the back.He opens it, revealing a spill ofZanthenite gems—emerald, sapphire, and ruby stones that glow with their own inner fire .
"Portable," he says, shoving the pouch into his tunic. "And enough to buy a kingdom in the south."
He grabs a heavy cloak from a hook by the door and wraps it around my shoulders, covering the ruins of my dress. He pulls the hood up, hiding my face.
"Stay close to me," he says. "We are ghosts now, Leora. We do not fight. We disappear."
We step over the bodies of the men who tried to kill us. We step over Malek, the rival who thought power was a loud voice and a heavy axe.
We slip out of the shattered door and into the labyrinth of the estate. We move through the shadows, silent and swift, guided by Imas’s memory of the servant passages.
We burst out a side door into the courtyard. The rain is falling again, a heavy, relentless curtain that washes the blood from the stones. The air smells of wet earth and the metallic tang of the storm.
