The kiss tastes like rain on stone.
Like the after of wildfire when the soil is finally rich enough to grow again.
When we break apart, my forehead stays against his and my voice comes out as a shaky laugh.
“So… no leaving for either of us.”
Dagan’s lips brush mine once more. “Never.”
And for the first time since I fell through a crack in New Jersey and landed in a realm that shouldn’t exist, I believe peace can be real.
Not because it’s easy.
Because we chose it.
And we’re going to keep choosing it—together.
Chapter 30
Dagan
The Rooted Marches
The pyres burn for three nights.
Not because we lack the strength to light them faster—Thorne could turn the whole horizon into a ribbon of flame with a single breath—but because the dead deserve time.
They deserve names spoken slowly.
They deserve hands clasped.
They deserve grief that isn’t rushed like ore through a smelter.
The Barrow’s terraces become a river of mourning.
Miners with soot still embedded in the lines of their palms, soldiers with bandaged ribs and hollow eyes, Dreamwrights whose fingers shake as if they’re still weaving prayers out of air.
I stand at the head of the largest pyre field, stone under my boots warmed by ash.
The Marches hum low—somber, respectful—roots listening, remembering. And all of Nightfall feels it.
Alaric’s people arrive first, bearing wind-chimes of bone and silver thread that sing when the mourning gust passes through them.
Kael’s follow with seawater in dark glass, poured over certain pyres so the souls rise clean, not snarled in smoke.
Thorne’s Broken Plains Demons bring ember-salt and black iron tokens—old rites, hard rites.
The kind that says, “We saw you. We will not forget you.”
And my people—mine, theirs, ours—carve the names into memorial stones that will outlast every fragile thing Idris tried to unmake.
Oona stands beside me for every single one.
Not because I ask.
Because she chooses.
Her fingers curl around mine when the first child’s name is spoken and the mother collapses, keening.
