"You know," I say, tipping my chin up to look at him, "most people just say, 'I missed you.'"
The corner of his mouth twitches. It is not quite a smile, but it is the closest thing I have seen from him since we landed. "'I missed you' is insufficient."
"Noted." I rise on my toes and press a quick kiss to his jaw. "I missed you too. And I'm not going anywhere."
His arm wraps around my waist again, and this time when he pulls me against him there is no urgency in it. Just weight. Just warmth. Just two people standing in the shadows between living towers, holding on.
"If you two are quite finished," Peeble's voice drifts from somewhere above us, "there is an entire magical city out here and I am standing on a stranger's roof being stared at by something with bark for skin. It is making sustained eye contact, and I am deeply uncomfortable."
I laugh. I can't help it. It bubbles up from somewhere deep and uncontrolled, and Kaelren's arm tightens around me, as if even my laughter is something he needs to hold on to.
"We're coming," I call up.
"Take your time. I'll just be here. Alone. Being stared at. By a tree person. Who may or may not be considering eating me."
We step out of the passage and back into the light. Thalia is waiting at the edge of the plaza. If she noticed us disappearing, her face gives nothing away. She stands with her arms folded, one hip cocked slightly, watching the repair crews on the nearest tower with the focused attention of someone who does this every day and never stops finding new things to worry about.
When we approach, she glances at Kaelren's hand on my hip and then at my face. Something shifts in her expression, brief and controlled and gone before I can name it.
"The council chamber is deeper in the city," she says. "I'll take you there. You'll meet the people who run the Verdance alongside me."
"Alongside you," I repeat. "You govern here."
"I govern with a council," she corrects. "I lead the defense. The council handles everything else: food, shelter, repair, diplomacy with the settlements outside the walls. It's not a monarchy." She pauses. "Monarchies haven't worked out well for this timeline."
"Fair enough."
We walk. The city opens around us as we move deeper in, and the damage becomes less severe. The inner towers are taller and older; their surfaces smooth with age and covered in a fine lacework of luminescent moss that pulses with the same green-and-gold light I saw from the outside. The bridges here are intact, arching between towers at dizzying heights, and I can see people crossing them, small figures moving with the easy confidence of those who have walked these paths their whole lives.
Kaelren stays close. His hand migrates between my lower back and my hip, never breaking contact. Every few minutes his fingers tighten, a squeeze that lasts exactly one second, as if he is pressing a button that confirms I am still here.
I let him. After what we have been through, I would let him hold on to me for the rest of my life and not say a word about it.
Well, maybe a few words.
"You're doing the thing again," I say.
"What thing?"
"The thing where you touch me like you're checking for a pulse."
"I am checking for a pulse."
"Kaelren. I have a pulse."
"I prefer to verify independently."
Peeble snorts from my shoulder. "He's been like this for months, you know. The entire time you were scattered across the cosmos, he was pacing, brooding, holding that locket, and radiating the intense emotional energy that made everyone within a thirty-foot radius profoundly uncomfortable."
"Peeble," Kaelren says, in the tone of a man who has said this name in this tone roughly ten thousand times.
"What? She should know. It was an ordeal for all of us. I had to watch him pine. Do you know how exhausting it is to watch someone pine? It's like being trapped in the world's longest, most depressing stage play, except the lead actor refuses to deliver any lines. He just stands there. Brooding. Looking at the moon."
"I did not look at the moon."
"You looked at the moon, Kaelren. You looked at it with your whole chest. Multiple times. I have witnesses."
I slip my hand into Kaelren's and squeeze. Through our shared connection, I send him something warm, not words, just feeling. A steady pulse reassuringI'm here, I'm here, I'm here.
