His forehead pressed harder against hers. Shadows wrapped them deeper into darkness.
"But know this." His voice dropped to something that barely qualified as human. "If death tries to take you from me, I will tear through every realm to bring you back. I will unmake reality itself before I let you go." His hand slid to the back of her neck. "You're mine. And I keep what's mine. Even if I have to rebuild existence to do it."
Her breath shuddered.
Then she was kissing him again.
He slowed it this time. Made it aching. Tender. Memorizing the taste of her mouth. The way she fit against him. The sound she made when his shadows traced her spine.
In case this was the last time.
She matched him. Fierce and fragile at once. Her hands sliding around his neck, holding on like he was the only solid thing left.
When they finally pulled apart, neither moved far. Shadows wrapped around them both like armor against everything waiting outside.
Crimson light flared across the courtyard. Seraphina's signal, burning violently against the twilight.
Time was up.
Brynn glanced toward it. Something shifted in her face. Fear and grief folding themselves away, buried under focus. "That's Seraphina. The armies are ready."
"I know." His hands lingered on her waist. "Two hours."
"Two hours." She straightened. He watched her rebuild her walls, brick by brick. "Every signal synchronized. Every contingency planned. We can do this."
"Brynn."
"I'm fine." She touched his face. "We'll do what needs doing. Both of us."
They'd both come back.
Or they'd finish the mission and carry that weight forever.
He took her hand. Threaded his fingers through hers. Led her out of the shadows and back toward the courtyard.
Back into the twilight and thirty-five hundred souls preparing for war.
LXXIV.
BRYNN
Her boots hit ground that rippled with each step—solid stone becoming soft, then solid again, like walking on something that couldn't make up its mind. Above her, the sky had cracked where the realms collided—purple and red and silver bleeding through the fractures like light through a broken window. And seeping through all of it, Caelum's golden glow. The color of warm honey. The feeling of something rotting underneath.
Thirty-five hundred souls materialized around her. Death-knights. Shadow-guards. A thousand freed souls from Nightfall who'd believed her when she said this was worth dying for.
What if she was wrong?
The thought came to her before she could stop it. What if she couldn't close the gateway? What if she froze at the critical moment and everyone who'd followed her here paid for her failure with their existence?
"Brynn." Dante's voice cut through. His shadows brushed her wrist. "Stay with me."
She nodded. Shoved the doubt down where it couldn't paralyze her. Straightened her spine.
Other transport circles flared across the convergence point.
Seraphina's army hit the ground to the east like a storm makinglandfall—four thousand warriors in red-stone armor, war machines towering behind them. Frames of fused bone built from the dead of wars they'd already won.
Vex's forces materialized to the west—two thousand beautiful nightmares that prowled instead of standing, vibrating with hunger that made the air shimmer.
