And they’re not weak. Not dim.
They’rehim—that sharp, ruby heat that first terrified me and now…
Now feels like safety.
I whisper, because my voice won’t work right:
“What… are you?”
His lips part, slow.
And in the softest voice I’ve ever heard from him, he says:
“I am… Maug.”
He says it like it’s enough.
Like it’s all I need to know.
And maybe it is.
I look at him—reallylook—and all I see is the man who nearly died to carry me out of the fire.
My tears burn down my cheeks. I lurch forward, arms sliding around his shoulders, wrapping tight.
I don’t care that he’s still smoldering. I don’t care about the blood. I don’t care about the soot smeared across my face.
I hold him like he’s the last truth I’ve got left.
And I whisper into his neck:
“Then why did you?”
His hands curl around me. Gentle. Unbelievably gentle.
There’s a pause. Long enough I think maybe he won’t answer.
Then, low—like it hurts him to say it:
“Because you came back.”
CHAPTER 30
MAUG
She won’t let go.
Her arms wrap around me like she’s afraid I’ll vanish if she blinks too long. Her breath is shaky against my shoulder, her heartbeat a wild little thing fluttering in her chest. But she stays. Even now. After everything.
The burn along my back still screams. Deep, bone-deep—worse than a sting-tail’s venom, worse than blade wounds. Solar sear. The kind that keeps cooking even after the fire’s gone. I’ve had it once before. I’d rather take a dozen clean kills than that again.
But her presence dulls it.
Her fingers ghost over the worst of it, dabbing clean water—gathered from my reserve pool in the cave’s rear—onto my skin. The water hisses when it touches open meat. I grunt. She flinches.
“Sorry,” she murmurs.
“No. Again.”
