When we separate, both breathing harder than combat alone can account for, her thumb traces a line across my jaw with deliberate attention.
“Right now, there’s nothing that requires our immediate attention except this.” Her voice has roughened.
“This.” I test the weight of the word. Find it accurate. “Yes.”
The Choir is still operating. The Cardinal is still hunting her. The Reach is still expanding. None of it is resolved. None of it waits for us to finish being what we are to each other.
“When we leave this plaza, the world intrudes again.”
“Yes.”
“There are conversations we haven’t had. Decisions we haven’t made. Consequences we haven’t calculated.”
“Yes.” Her fingers thread through my hair, ash-streaked and bloodied, and pull me back down. “That’s the point.”
The second kiss lasts longer than the first.
Her hand finds mine. I take it. Hold it with the same certainty I hold every decision I have made about her—without apology, without qualification, without the pretense that this is anything other than what it is.
She doesn’t let go.
Neither do I.
