I’m crying, I realize dimly. Not from pain. From the overwhelming certainty that I’m his, and he’s mine, and nothing—not Malakor, not Beda, not the entire rotting world—will ever take that away again.
He presses his face into my hair, breathing me in like I’m the only oxygen left on earth.
“I love you,” he whispers, voice cracked open and raw. “Love you so much it fucking terrifies me.”
I turn in his arms, kiss him slow and deep, tasting salt and pine and us.
“I know,” I whisper back. “Me too.”
We stay like that until dawn creeps pale through the trees—tangled, sticky, branded inside and out. When the first rays touch us, his heart-light flares once more, softer this time. A promise.
Whatever comes next, whatever horrors wait beyond these trees, we’ll face them together.
Covered in each other, claimed down to the marrow.
Unbreakable.
