I can feel his heart pounding against my back.
“You said a lot of things,” I manage, lungs burning. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
He turns me in his arms so fast my feet leave the ground.
His eyes are wild.
Not glowing with power, but with something darker. Fiercer.
“You could have been crushed,” he growls. “Buried. Torn from me before the bond has even settled.”
“But I wasn’t,” I say, planting a hand flat on his chest. His heart slams against my palm. “And the buildings are still standing. That matters, Dagan. Those people matter.”
His throat works.
He presses his forehead to mine, breath hot and ragged.
“You moved the earth.”
“We moved it,” I correct softly. “You and me. Together.”
For a heartbeat, neither of us moves.
The Marches hum under my boots, calmer now, like a muscle that’s finally relaxed.
Dust hangs in the air, glittering in the late light. A distant chorus of voices rises from below—shouts, relief, the crackle of people realizing they’re still alive.
His hand slides up my spine, big and warm, fingers splaying between my shoulder blades.
“Do not do that again,” he says.
“You mean save people?” I arch a brow. “Wrong girl to ask that of, Dirt Lord.”
Something in his face breaks then.
Not in a bad way.
In a finally way.
“You infuriate me,” he murmurs, and his thumb strokes along my jaw with aching gentleness. “You terrify me. You steady me.”
My breath stutters.
“That sounds like a you problem,” I whisper, but the words wobble.
I’ve been staring at his mouth without meaning to. Full, stern, usually pressed into a line. Now it’s so close I can feel his breath on my lips.
“Alina,” he says, my name a growl and a prayer at once. “Oona.”
The zareth between us flares.
Warmth rushes up from the ground, through my boots, my legs, flooding my chest. Like the whole damn valley is exhaling into us.
Then he kisses me.
Not careful like the first time.
Not measured.
