She closed her eyes at the sensation.
“I forgot,” she whispered, “that the world could be quiet.”
His hand stilled.
He let the silence stretch before answering. “So did I.”
They didn’t speak after that.
There was nothing else to say.
Just the slow, steady breathing between them. The soft hush of sunrise. And the memory of all they’d lost and all they might still lose, carved into every fragile second they held.
Kael shifted first, barely more than a breath, his fingertips grazing her jaw to guide her gaze back to his. There was no urgency in his touch. No fire.
Maris looked at him, and for once, there was no war behind her eyes. Only stillness. Sadness. And a quiet kind of trust that undid him more thoroughly than any battlefield ever could.
Her hand slid up, fingers curling at the nape of his neck. “If this is all we get…” she whispered, “I want to remember being only yours.”
He kissed her without rush. A gentle press of lips that lingered more than moved, like a promise too delicate to be spoken aloud. Her breath hitched, a tear slid down her cheek, but she didn’t pull away. She leaned in instead, parting her lips with a vulnerability that broke his heart clean open.
They undressed each other without ceremony. Not in heat, but in care, tugging silk, linen, and leather aside like they were peeling back armor neither of them needed here. Kael’s hands trembled only once, when he bared her completely. She was all pale light and shadowed curves, more moonlight than mortal, and yet still his.
He kissed her collarbone, the inside of her wrist, the hollow at her hip. And each time, her breath stuttered like she was learning how to live in a body that had known only pain.
When he finally eased into her, it wasn’t sharp or wild.
It was slow.
Measured.
Sacred.
They moved in rhythm with the morning, the hush of wind, the glow of dawn, the soundless ache of two souls clinging to a past that may never resurface beyond this stolen moment.
Maris curled around him, her eyes closed but her hands restless, roaming his back, his chest, as if memorizing the shape of him. He whispered her name like a prayer, kissed the edge of her brow, the swell of her cheek, and held her like he might never again.
And maybe he wouldn’t.
But in that hour, time stilled. The war outside the walls faded. The gods fell silent. And all that remained was the softness of skin on skin, the ache of breathless closeness, and the quiet, aching truth of two hearts.
Afterward, they didn’t speak.
Maris curled into him once more, her head tucked beneath his chin, her legs tangled with his.
Kael stroked her hair as the sun climbed higher, warming the room with fragile gold. He pressed a kiss to her temple.
And for just a little while, they let the world wait.
Chapter sixty-five
Godkiller’s Tomb
-Alarik-
Six days he had been told.
That’s all they had.
