“If we took a trip back ‘home’—Earth-home—I could check the fault lines near the Jersey sites, make sure nothing’s still bleeding through.”
I narrow my eyes. “You want to return.”
“Not leave,” she corrects instantly, turning in my arms so she can face me fully. “Just visit. Also, I miss real pizza.”
I stare at her.
She stares back.
Defiant. Bright. Grounded.
Mine.
“You are impossible,” I say.
“I know.” Her grin is wicked. “That’s why you like me.”
I catch her waist and pull her closer until our bodies align, until the bond settles warm and content between us.
“You are my home,” I tell her, voice low, honest as stone. “Wherever you want to visit—on Nightfall or Earth or anywhere else—I shall make it so. Because by your side is where I belong.”
Her expression softens so fast it almost undoes me.
“Dagan,” she whispers, like my name is something fragile.
I press my forehead to hers.
Her hands slide up my chest, fingers splaying over my heart as if she still can’t believe it’s there and beating.
“Stone and storm, roots and wings,” she murmurs, lacing her fingers through mine. “Looks like we’re not falling apart after all.”
Her fingers are warm where they thread between mine—soft human skin against the calluses I earned long before she existed in my world.
The amulet at my neck gives a quiet pulse, answering the faint shimmer of her bond like the Marches themselves are listening in.
I breathe her in.
Earth after rain.
Heat from the hearth.
A trace of smoke from the festival below.
And her—that sharp, clean note that steadies something feral in me like a hand pressed to a fault line mid-quake.
Beneath our feet, The Barrow hums. Not loud. Not demanding.
Approval.
As if the land has decided she belongs here as surely as I do.
“No, we’re not falling apart,” I rumble, letting my mouth brush the corner of hers—barely a touch, enough to promise without taking. “We’re just getting started.”
She huffs a small laugh, but it’s thin at the edges. Her gaze drops for half a heartbeat, and I feel it—because the bond refuses to let me miss anything important now.
Uncertainty.
Not in me.
