Deep and strong and spreading.
I have spent years telling myself I was content walking alone. That, like my fallen friend, I needed no one to complete me or to boost my power like Alaric and the others believed.
Turns out I was wrong. I’ve simply been dormant.
In my arms, within me, Alina murmurs against my throat, already half-asleep from exhaustion and the drain of shared power.
She’s not used to this—to us—but she will be.
I will see to it. Because that is my mission now, alongside saving Nightfall.
Varen’s message reaches me through the roots before we’re even halfway back to the main trail.
A low shiver runs through the earth, then resolves into words only I can hear. Like a message that enters directly into my head.
All accounted for. None dead. Some broken stone. Some broken fences.
But we live, my Lord.
I breathe out slowly.
Relief tastes like rain on dust.
I send a pulse back through the network—thanks, reassurance, the promise of stone and lumber from The Barrow and a troop of soldiers already on their way to help them rebuild.
They will arrive by dusk. Until then, the makeshift shelters I raised will hold.
The Marches settle around us, no longer on the edge of breaking.
The only thing still shaking is the woman in my arms.
Alina—my viyella, my impossible Oona—sags against my chest, boneless with exhaustion.
Power always takes its toll, and she channeled more than she knows.
I tuck her tighter against me, wings mantling, keeping the mountain winds off her.
“Where are we going?” Alina murmurs against my throat, voice blurred with weariness.
“I was going to take you straight home,” I say, my voice low, “but I think you need a rest.”
“Mmm,” she hums. “And what are you thinking, exactly?”
I can’t help the smile that curves my mouth against her hair.
“That this started as a bargain to save Nightfall,” I answer honestly. “And ends, if I am very fortunate, with you and me united as one.”
She huffs a soft, sleepy laugh. “Sounds like a fair trade, Lord of Dirt.”
The Marches, traitorous things, pulse with amusement beneath my boots.
“Yes,” I murmur as I step over the threshold of the small shelter Varen bade us use, fortified by me—a bubble of stone and woven roots tucked into the curve of the hillside. “It does.”
I pause, let the door seal behind us, earth knitting shut with a whisper.
“But if you call me Lord of Dirt again,” I add, letting my tone drop, “I’m afraid I shall have to discipline you.”
The effect is immediate.
