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He named a part of me I did not know had survived all those centuries. He reached into the thing humans called monster, warning, death in the trees, Lantern Stalker, and found heart there. Not a gentle heart or a safe one. A wild one. Teeth and roots and old law, but heart still. His hand at the side of my face taught me that before Aestrata ever put a voice in my throat.

…then I watched that hand fall from my wrist in the stone circle.

My breath breaks.

Lucas feels it through the bond before the sound leaves me. His hands come up, one to my cheek, the other to the back of my neck, fingers sliding into my hair as if he can anchor me there. I am in human form, folded small enough to hold him without bone and skull between us, but the true body presses beneath this one. Antlers ache under skin. The skull remembers his cooling brow. The bond remembers the thread snapping.

His mouth brushes mine. “Hey,” he murmurs. “Look at me.”

I do, and it is almost unbearable.

He is too alive. That thought makes no sense, but it fills me anyway.

His eyes are too bright in the dim warmth of the den, green touched now with green-white that appears when the bond stirs. His freckles stand out against skin still pale from dying, each ember-mark familiar and newly sacred. The mark I gave him lies beneath my thumb, warmer than before, threaded with Aestrata’s rootfire. His mouth is swollen from kisses, his hair a copper mess, his body heavy with exhaustion, need, and stubborn living.

I saw this body without life. I held it, begged over it until my voice tore itself into speech. I offered the forest everything, and still he left.

My eyes burn again.

Lucas’s face crumples a little in response, not with pity—never pity—but with the same grief reflected back in human shape. “Onyx.”

“I felt you leave,” I say aloud.

The words come slowly. My mouth can shape them now, but each one still feels like pushing roots through stone. I use them anyway because Lucas deserves every language I own. Mind-speech is easier, fuller, but spoken words touch the air between us, and he died with my mouth begging him to stay. I need my mouth to tell him this too. “I felt the bond collapse. I held you, and there was no answer.”

His eyes shine. “I know.”

“No.” My hands tighten, then loosen at once when I remember my strength. “No, you know because you saw. You do not know inside me.”

He swallows, and I feel the small hurt of that, because I have made it sound like I am alone in the memory when he carries his own. I press my forehead to his again, trying to repair the shape of the words.

“I do not mean you cannot understand,” I say, voice rougher. “I mean there is no place inside me that did not become empty.”

Lucas exhales shakily before he kisses me again.

This kiss is not the first soft beginning of what comes next. It is grief answering grief, his mouth firm and warm against mine, his hands steadying themselves in my hair. He kisses me as if he can crawl into that empty place and light a fire there with his own stubborn breath.

I make a sound against him, broken and low, and my arms go around him before fear can tell me how easily bodies fail. He is careful with himself when he shifts closer, but he does not treat himself like something ruined. He moves with intention, slow and aching, until his chest presses to mine and his thighs frame my hips and the whole changed warmth of him settles over me.

The bond opens slowly—green-white and gold. Root and ember. His life touching mine in careful waves, letting me feel what his body cannot say all at once.

I am alive.

I chose this.

I chose you.

A sob moves through me before I can stop it.

Lucas pauses immediately, drawing back enough to search my face. His breathing is uneven, his gaze dark with want and concern, and that mixture undoes me more than either thing alone.

“We can stop,” he says.

I shake my head too quickly, then force myself to slow. If I answer from fear, he will hear it. If I answer from hunger only, he will hear that too. This bond has become less forgiving of hidden things since Aestrata touched him. Perhaps it is not the bond. Perhaps he has simply become better at seeing me.

“No,” I say, and my hand rises to cup the side of his face. His skin is warm. Living. I stroke my thumb beneath his eye and let the wonder of that small motion steady me. “I want, but I need slow because my remembering is… sharp.”

His mouth softens. “Mine too.”