Then, slowly, he looks up.
The whole world narrows to the heat in his gaze.
“Shula,” he murmurs, voice raw. “You came for me.”
“Of course I came.” I huff out something that’s half laugh, half sob. “What did you think, Lord of Fire? That I was going to sit in a library and knit while you burned yourself out saving the world?”
His mouth curves, just a little.
Not a smile.
Something fiercer.
“I think,” he says slowly, reverently, “that the Fates have outplayed me.”
I cup his face in my hands, thumbs smoothing soot from his cheekbones.
“No,” I whisper. “They finally did something right.”
He huffs out a breath that might be a laugh.
“I love you, my viyella. With every last ember, I love you.”
My heart squeezes. My breath catches. Tears prick my eyes, but he doesn’t let them fall.
Thorne cups my cheeks and I grab his waist. He leans into my touch like a man who’s walked through hell and finally finds home.
Then, he kisses me—a long, deep, devastating kiss.
And for the first time since the bond began, I feel it settle between us—not as a chain.
Not as a trick.
But as a promise.
We don’t know what comes next.
The war. Idris. The crown. The Vein.
But I do know this, whatever infernos wait ahead, we’re walking into them together.
Epilogue 1: Thorne
Ashfell, The Broken Plains
The Great Hall of Ashfell has never been this full.
It has seen tribunals and war councils, sentencing and strategy, my solitary meals taken in silence before the Great Flame.
It has echoed with the crack of orders and the hiss of grudges.
Tonight, it holds laughter.
Music.
Life.
The long stone tables are crowded with miners and their families, shoulders pressed together, plates piled high.
