Blood streaked his bare chest, his ashen hair tangled, his pale skin marred with bruises and wounds, but none of that mattered.
He was alive.
My body moved without thought. I scrambled to my feet and launched myself at him.
Varyth barely had time to brace before I crashed into him. My arms wrapped around his neck, my fingers tangling into his hair, seeking proof that he was real. That we were here. That we were free.
His arms locked around me instantly, crushing me against him, his breath a shudder against my temple. His scent hit me—blood, sweat, mist. Familiar.
“You’re here,” I gasped, my fingers digging into his back, the fabric of his tunic bunching beneath my grip. “You’re here?—”
Varyth pulled back to cup my face between his hands. His thumb brushed over my cheekbone, my lips, as though needing to confirm that I was whole, that I was truly in front of him.
“Isara.” He said my name like it was the only thing keeping him breathing.
His mouth crashed against mine with a hunger that didn’t come from the body but from the soul, from the raw, aching place that had feared this would never happen again.
I moaned into him, arms wrapping tighter around his neck as his fingers speared into my hair, tugging just enough to make me gasp. My lips parted, and hetook. Every inch of control I had left, every thought that wasn’t him, gone. Obliterated.
I kissed him back like I wanted to burn the world down with our mouths. Like I could carve away the pain if I just kissed him hard enough, deep enough, long enough to forgeteverythingexcept the shape of him against me.
“When you’re healed,” he growled against my lips, “when you’re whole again, I’m going to make you scream. Until you forget every name but mine. Until your legs shake and your voice breaks and youbegme not to stop.”
He kissed me again, slower this time, but just as deep. His hands splayed across my back, one rising to cradle the back of my skull, and I felt the tremble in him. The restraint. Thepromise.
Not now. Butsoon.
When we broke apart, he pressed his forehead to mine.
“Never again,” he growled, “I will never let anyone take you from me again.”
For a heartbeat, we stared at each other, the realisation of our freedom, our survival, crashing over us.
“I thought I’d lost you,” Varyth murmured, his arms locked around me as if afraid I might disappear. “When I saw what you were about to do?—”
“I couldn’t choose. I couldn’t?—”
“Shh,” he soothed, pressing his lips to my temple. “It’s over now. We’re home.”
He set me down, hands gripping my waist, unwilling to let go completely.
“What happened after we left?” he asked. “How did you escape Ashterion?”
I hesitated, the memory of those final moments in Nyxaria still fresh and unsettling. “He... let me go,” I admitted. “Said he had no reason to keep me now that you were all gone.”
Varyth’s grip tightened imperceptibly. “And you believe him?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” I said honestly. “He told me to tell you there would be no war. That his forces would return to his territory.”
Varyth’s jaw clenched, scepticism etched into every line of his face. “Ashterion doesn’t surrender. This isn’t over.”
Shaelith stepped forward, and it was not calm that radiated from her. It was fury. Grief sharpened into something jagged and volatile, burning in her eyes like a wildfire that had found too much to consume and not enough to save.
Her hands were shaking. Her mouth trembled, but not with sorrow. With rage.
“We can dissect Ashterion’s motives later,” she spat. “Right now, we need healers. And we need to—” Her breath hitched in her throat before it exploded into a broken snarl. “Weneedto honour Brynelle.”
The name cleaved through the air.
