“You are mine,” she whispered back.
“Yes.”His voice vibrated down their bond, fierce and bright.“There is no end to how I feel about you. No limit.”There was silver lining his eyes when she looked at him.“We are infinite.”
A single tear slipped from Elyria’s own eye, and he kissed it away. She wanted to echo him. Wanted to give him everything. Give him more. But those little words wouldn’t form. The ones sheshouldsay, the ones sheneededto say.
They lodged in her chest like a splintered blade.
She rolled her hips, relishing in the long drag of him inside her. She drank in his needy sounds, the flush in his cheeks, the swirl of shadow dancing around them, the whisper of light. He backed up onto the bed,crashing down on it, the two of them laughing as they repositioned themselves on the mattress.
Elyria looked down at Cedric laid out beneath her, chest rising and falling, and the bond between them pulsed like a heartbeat. That golden thread shimmered to life in her mind’s eye—solid and radiant and vibrant.
Unbreakable.
She placed her hands on his chest as she moved over him, their bodies meeting again and again and again. There was nothing frantic about it, nothing hurried. It was steady, sacred.
Like worship.
He touched her like she was the only thing he’d ever believed in.
Cedric ran one hand up Elyria’s side, then around to her back, skimming the base of her wing. She tensed, sensation rippling through her at the gentle touch.
He inhaled.“I’m sorry, does it still hurt? From before?”
She let out a light laugh, rocking against him once more.“It is the furthest thing from pain.”
Their magic swirled together, his sun brushing the edges of her soul, her shadows and wild magic tangling in his. And then she was crying out as pleasure crested, throwing her head back in ecstasy. When she returned her gaze to Cedric’s face, it, too, held nothing but reverent bliss as they came together. She felt the moment his control slipped, the way his magic flared white-hot, the way hers surged to meet it.
It didn’t burn. Didn’t hurt.
Nothing could hurt her, so long as he was with her.
They were matching constellations dotting the sky, opposing forces forged together—sun and shadow, day and night, radiance and ruin.
The Phoenix and the Revenant.
The glow from their bond bled into the moonlit air, golden and violet, edged in silver. Elyria’s vision dimmed as she collapsed atop Cedric, trembling with aftershocks of pleasure, her wings curling over them both, while his arms wrapped around her like armor.
They lay like that for a while, tangled together, bodies still combined, sweat cooling on their skin. The room was quiet but for their mingled breath and the pounding beats of their hearts.
Eventually, her pulse slowed. She slid off Cedric, and he instantly rolled onto his side, curling his body around hers. His breathing eased to a sleepy cadence, his eyes closing.
In the silence, Elyria made a new kind of vow.
One to each of the Five—Solaris, Lunara, Earth Mother Gaia, Noctis, and even Aurelia, sitting somewhere in her Sanctum.
Whatever awaited them in Seastone . . .
Whatever price a victory against Malchior would demand...
Her knight would not be the one to pay it.
This was not a bond forged by fate.
It was hers and his andtheirs.
And if she needed to, Elyria would crawl through all four quarters of hell to protect it.
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