“I needed to feel you fall apart and come back together again. I needed to hear my name in your mouth and know you meant it.”
“I always mean it.”
“I know.”
He pulls me closer until my head rests in the hollow of his shoulder and his chin settles on my hair.
“Soon,” he murmurs, “I am going to do everything I imagined for the last six months. And I am going to take my time doing it.”
His voice drops lower.
“I am going to learn every new mark on your body. I am going to make you say my name in ways you have not invented yet.And when I finish, I am going to start over again. Once will never be enough.”
My chest tightens with the strange sweetness of being wanted by someone who nearly lost you.
“Is that a promise?”
“That is a vow.”
His hand slides slowly up my spine and settles between my shoulder blades.
“But tonight,” he continues quietly, “I just want to hold you. I want to fall asleep knowing you are breathing. I want to wake up and feel you beside me and know it is real.”
The petals have stopped falling. The vines along the window have settled into a heavy bloom. The moss dims to a warm glow that turns the chamber into something like the inside of a lantern.
I press closer to him.
“You really talked to me,” I say softly. “Through the locket.”
“Every night,” he answers. “I told you about the iterations. About Peeble being impossible. About every version of you I found.”
His fingers move slowly through my hair.
“I told you I was coming for you. That I would not stop.”
“You didn’t.”
“No.”
He presses his lips to the top of my head.
For a while neither of us speaks. His hand keeps moving through my hair in slow, steady strokes as the frantic energy that drove him since my return finally settles.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him.
“Give me a few minutes,” he murmurs.
“Take all the time you need.”
He does.
His breathing gradually slows, and I feel the exact moment his body fully
I stay awake a little longer.
I listen to his heartbeat. I feel the quiet pulse of the Verdance in the surrounding walls. I watch the last petals settle across the blanket in the amber light.
Outside the window, the living city glows green and gold. It has survived everything thrown at it and still stands.
