And the rocks at the bottom of the sea—worn smooth by currents, heavy with the weight of water that had been pressing down for centuries.
I breathed him in.
And sank into the ocean of him.
The watery surface broke. Cool relief washed over my overheated skin—my flushed cheeks, my burning forehead, the back of my neck where sweat had gathered. The heat loosened its grip.
Then deeper I sank until the water closed over my head and sound changed, going muffled.
Distant.
The crackle of flames faded.
The kitchen noise softened to nothing.
Just the low thrum of pressure against my ears and the steady rhythm of Hiro's heartbeat beneath my cheek.
Deeper still.
The cold seeped through my chest. Into my smoke-scorched lungs. I took a breath and tasted salt instead of ash.
Clean.
Cool peace.
The fire couldn't follow me here.
My pulse slowed.
My trembling stopped.
The throbbing in my burned fingertips dulled to a faraway ache—pain that belonged to a woman on the surface, not the one drifting down here in the dark ocean.
And at the bottom, there was that continued silence.
No pyre.
No bodies.
No flames licking at the edges of my mind.
Just cold. Just quiet. Just the heavy, pressing calm of water that had been holding the earth together since before fire ever learned to burn.
I shivered in relief and whispered, “Thank you, Hiro.”
It hit me then. How similar Kenji and Hiro were. These two brothers.
Yet how they were so different too.
Kenji was fire. Sandalwood and burning ginger. He consumed me. Scorched me. Left me branded with bite marks and heat that never fully disappeared.
Hiro was water. Cool and deep. The kind of calm that came after a storm had already torn through everything.
Both dangerous.
Both capable of killing me without trying.
And yet here I was.
