Her eyes widened, misting with tears.
He shook his head, his stomach clenching. “Yet I was determined to have you… even if you despised me.”
“I do…” Alora whispered and he stilled. “I despise you for you have made me love you. And now you hold the power to break me because of it.”
Rune exhaled a faint breath, taken aback by her ardent response.
She meant it.
“I didn’t know it was love, not at first,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. “I thought it was madness. Obsession. Some cruel spell you cast on my heart. And even when I hated you—especially then—you haunted even my dreams.”
Placing her hands together, a pomegranate appeared in her palms.
His chest tightened.
“I love you, Rune,” her voice trembled. “Not due to fate or bonds or prophecy. I love you because I have chosen who I want to spend eternity with. Even if the world ends tomorrow.”
He had seen devastation. He had survived disfigurement, defeat, and centuries of carnage.
Butnothinghad prepared him for this.
“And what of you?” Alora asked in a softer voice. “Could you love me… knowing what I am?”
Rune released a low breath and stepped closer. “When I was a Seraph,” he murmured. “I would often fly into the cosmos to watch the River of Souls make their journey through the Seven Gates. That was the first time I saw you.” His fingers faintly brushed the tendrils of her hair. “You were but a flicker of light. So bright I thought it a star. I followed it as I watched, knowingit wasn’t permitted. Yet I was so taken by your light, I longed for it.”
Tears welled in her eyes, holding his.
“You were my first sin,” Rune said, a quiet, aching sigh escaping him. “My desire to steal something so pure, if only for the chance to hold it in my hands.”
And he had carried that truth longer than his own fall.
Alora stilled as he lowered to his knees, cupping her hands in his. With a gentle press of his claws, the pomegranate split open and the juice spilled down her fingers as he took a bite.
“You ask me if I could love you.” He stroked her cheek, bringing her lips to his. “Ra’ayati, before everything that ever was, I already did.”
CHAPTER 58
Alora
After revelations meant to shatter the Heavens, after truths that should have split fate clean in two, they were still here. His mouth pressed against hers, tasting so sweet, and Alora kissed him back, pouring everything she was into him. Grief for what had been lost and wonder for what still lived.
Alora rose on her toes, wrapping her around his neck and kissed him again. Her fingers tangled in his hair, giving herself over to the fire of it.
The bond hummed, no longer fractured by secrets, but full and blazing and achingly real. Their magic sparked like flame in oil and shadows surged around them in waves, swallowing the room in a storm.
“What doesra’ayatimean?” she murmured between kisses.
Rune’s hands trembled where they framed her face, reverent now, almost unsure, as if loving her openly were a risk he had never before been allowed to take. “It is the language of theHeavens,” he said, hands sliding up her back. “It means ‘my beloved wife’.”
Tears shimmered in her vision, not falling yet, caught in that fragile place between breaking and becoming.
“Say it again,” he breathed. “I want to hear those sweet words again.”
“I love you?—”
His mouth crashed into hers. And this time, his kiss wasn’t merely yearning.
There was no air, no thought, only Rune, his mouth, his touch. His vow written in the press of his lips and the tremor of his breath. It took over everything until there was nothing left but light and dark colliding.
