“What if what comes next is hard?”
“Then we handle it.” His hand found mine. “Together.”
I closed my eyes. Let exhaustion pull me under. Let the warmth and safety and Viktor wash over me like absolution.
We'd survived.
We'd won.
And whatever came next, we'd face it together.
That was enough.
That was everything.
31
OBSIDIAN
SEBASTIAN
Light filtered through gauze curtains, turning everything soft. Unreal. Like the world had been wrapped in fog and hung out to dry.
Two weeks since Hollowvale. Two weeks since fire and bullets and Marcel's laughter echoing through stone. The city still looked like a war zone in places. Charred stone. Half-mended roads. Scars carved into London's streets that would take years to fade.
But we were breathing.
Viktor lay beside me, chest rising and falling steady. One arm draped across my waist, protective even in sleep. Bandages on his shoulder and thigh, fresh from this morning. He never let me see him tend his wounds. Too much pride. Too much habit of hiding pain behind discipline.
I traced the edge of the bandage on his shoulder with one finger. Felt the heat of healing skin beneath white gauze. Counted the scars I could see in the morning light. Each one a story. Each one proof he'd survived when he shouldn't have.
His eyes opened. Grey like winter storms, but warm when they looked at me.
“You're staring,” he said. Voice rough with sleep.
“You're worth staring at.”
“Liar.” But he smiled. Small. Real. The kind that made his whole face soften.
I shifted closer. Felt the pull and burn along my ribs where they'd wrapped me tight. Everything still hurt. Probably would for weeks. But it was the good kind of hurt. The kind that reminded you that you'd survived.
“He's gone,” Viktor said quietly. Like he'd been waiting to tell me. Like he knew I'd been thinking about it.
I didn't need to ask who. “When?”
“This morning. The tribunal finished before dawn. Life imprisonment, no parole.” Viktor's jaw tightened. “They shipped him to St. Edda's Island two hours ago.”
St. Edda's. An island prison cut off from the mainland by storms and sea. Reserved for the worst traitors the kingdom had ever produced. A place where men went to be forgotten. To rot in stone cells while the world moved on without them.
Good.
I should've felt something. Relief, maybe. Or triumph. The man who'd orchestrated my mother's murder, who'd tried to kill me more times than I could count, who'd nearly succeeded in burning everything I loved to ash. He was gone. Locked away where he couldn't hurt anyone ever again.
But all I felt was tired.
“And Élodie?” The name tasted like ash.
Viktor's hand found mine. Squeezed. “Your father exiled her. She left at dawn. One-way passage to the territories. No return. No contact with the crown. No communication with London ever again.”
