I’ve never experienced anything like it.
We come apart and back.
Twice. Three times. Each time more intense than the last, each time stripping away another layer of the armor we’ve both built around ourselves. By the end, we’re both shaking—exhausted in ways that have nothing to do with battle, sated in ways I didn’t know I could feel.
The grass beneath us is warm from distant fires. The sky above is lightening—dawn approaching, the longest night of my life finally ending. The monastery’s glow has faded to ember-red on the horizon, its destruction nearly complete.
Arwen lies in my arms, her head on my chest, her breathing gradually slowing. I trace patterns on her skin—the scars from the Garden, the ritual marks from her initiation, the new wounds she earned tonight fighting beside me.
“The survivors.” Her voice is drowsy. Content in a way I’ve never heard from her. “Cael will take care of them?”
“He will.” I press a kiss to her hair. “He has something to prove.”
“And us?”
“Us.” I feel the word settle into my chest, taking root there, becoming something permanent. “We have work to do.”
She props herself up. Looks down at me with eyes I’ll spend the rest of my life learning to read. Her hair is tangled, her face still streaked with ash, her body marked with evidence of what we just shared.
She’s never looked more beautiful.
“I meant what I said.” Her voice is steady despite everything. “Partnership. Hunt down everyone responsible. Make sure this never happens again.”
“I know.” I reach up. Cup her face in my palm. Feel her lean into the touch with trust that she’s earned the right to give. “You find them. I end them. Until they’re all dead or we are.”
“That could take years.”
“Good.” I pull her down for another kiss—gentle this time, a promise rather than a claim. “I wasn’t planning on going anywhere.”
She smiles against my mouth. “Neither was I.”
Dawn breaks over the Thornwood’s burned remains.
The monastery is gone—reduced to rubble and ash, its centuries of horror finally ended. The forest around it still smolders, but the fire has burned itself out, leaving a scar of charred earth that will take decades to heal.
We dress in what remains of our clothing. Gather the weapons that survived the night. Check the monster’s corpse one final time to confirm it won’t be getting up again.
It doesn’t. The flowers have rotted completely, leaving nothing but bones and black sludge. Whatever the Abbot created, it’s truly dead now.
“The village.” Arwen’s voice is practical, the softness from our time in the clearing replaced with the strategic competence I first saw in the Thornwood. “Half a day’s walk. The survivors will need care, supplies, transport to wherever they’re going.”
“And after that?”
“After that, we start hunting.” She checks the blade she salvaged from the chapel—still sharp, despite everything. “Marceline knows which names are most dangerous. We’ll start with the ones who can’t afford to let us live.”
“A logical approach.”
“I’m a logical person.” She looks at me. Lets me see the woman beneath the strategist—the one who cried over my still body, who held her breath against the dark, who refused to accept a thing until it was proven irreversible. “Most of the time.”
I take her hand. Not because we need to hold hands to walk through a burned forest. Not because the gesture serves any tactical purpose.
Because I want to. Because she’s mine, and I’m hers, and we’ve earned the right to touch each other simply because we choose to.
“Then let’s be logical.” I pull her toward the forest’s edge. Toward the village. Toward the survivors who need our help and the future that waits beyond them. “We have a lot of people to kill.”
She laughs. The sound is rusty, unpracticed—she hasn’t laughed in years, probably. But it’s real.
“That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
