There is no next threat.
The realization takes a moment to register on his face. I watch him scan the perimeter—habit ingrained through centuries of combat, the instinctive vigilance of a predator who survived by never assuming safety. His attention sweeps across the fractured landscape, the slowly fading residue, the sky that hasn’t quite remembered what color it’s supposed to be.
Nothing moves.
Nothing stalks.
Nothing waits for an opening.
His gaze returns to me. The predator focus that carried him through the fight begins to recede, replaced by attention thathas become familiar—assessment, evaluation, the particular intensity with which he checks my condition after every engagement.
“Soreia.”
My name comes rough from his throat. Not a question. Not a command. Confirmation that I’m still standing. Still breathing. Still here.
“I’m fine.” I hold up my hands, turning them so he can see the lack of damage. “It didn’t cost me.”
His attention drops to my steady fingers. Studies them with an intensity that suggests he doesn’t quite believe me. He remembers what anchoring used to cost—the blood from my nose, the shaking hands, the way each use shortened the life I was desperately trying to extend.
“Fine.” He repeats the word like he’s testing it for lies.
“The god is dead. Permanently.” I gesture at the void where the Veiled One used to exist. “And I’m standing here without a single symptom of magical overextension. So, yes. Fine.”
He crosses the crater in six strides, moving through the broken terrain like it’s level ground. When he reaches me, he doesn’t stop at conversational distance. He stops close enough that I feel the heat radiating from his wounds, close enough that his breath stirs my hair.
His clawed hand rises to my face. Cups my jaw with pressure that stops short of bruising—the same controlled intensity he brings to everything. His thumb traces my cheekbone, my temple, the pulse point beneath my ear.
Checking. Verifying. Making sure I’m real.
“I felt you anchor it.” His voice has dropped to a private register. “Felt your magic wrap around an entity that has existed since before my kind learned to breathe fire. And you held it.”
“That’s what Anchor witches do.”
“That’s what you do.” The distinction matters to him. “Other Anchor witches would have been destroyed attempting what you accomplished. Your bloodline has ended more monsters than any other in recorded history—and still none of them have ended a god.”
“None of them had a dragon tearing the god apart while they worked.”
His expression shifts. Not softer—Kaster doesn’t do soft—but present in a way he rarely allows. The tension that holds him in permanent combat readiness eases by fractions. Not gone, but diminished.
“We ended it.” The statement lands with finality. “The thing that wanted us dead. The entity that designed our extinction. The god that has been hunting us since we first drew its attention.”
“We ended it,” I agree.
THIRTY-THREE
SOREIA
The crater feels different with nothing to fill it.
Divine residue continues to evaporate, the last traces of the Veiled One’s remnants dissipating into an atmosphere that no longer carries its weight. The sky overhead has begun to normalize—the wrong hues fading into ordinary clouds, ordinary light, ordinary emptiness.
I study Kaster’s face while he studies mine.
I look—truly look—without the overlay of immediate threat assessment, without calculating escape routes or evaluating combat positioning. He’s covered in blood—his and the god’s—exhaustion visible in the lines of his face, in the way he holds his body, in the slight tremor that runs through his hands.
Not weakness. The kind of tiredness that comes from finally being done.
I’ve never seen him tired before. Not during the weeks of running, not during the endless fights, not during the mating that saved my life. He’s been running on predator instinct and protective fury for so long that I forgot he could experience anything else.
