I don’t know how long I’ve been kneeling here. The sky has changed—the blood-red that painted the heavens during the ritual has faded to ordinary gray, clouds gathering where magic once held them at bay. Hours, then. Perhaps more.
Dena crouches beside me, her small hand resting on Imara’s arm. The other children hang back—forty-two of them, plus Dena at my side, all clustered at the safe side of the markers, watching us with expressions that mix fear and hope and raw uncertainty.
They don’t know what to do. Neither do I.
“She saved us.” Dena’s voice is small. Awed. “Both of you. You saved us.”
“She saved me.” I brush hair from Imara’s face. Her skin is cool—not cold, not the chill of death, but cooler than it should be. “I was ready to die in there. She wouldn’t let me.”
“That’s what love is.” The child says it with the simple certainty of youth. “Not letting someone die alone.”
I don’t have an answer for that. Don’t have words for the tangle of emotions choking my throat.
Instead, I lift Imara higher in my arms. Hold her close. Press my lips to her forehead and breathe in the scent of her—smoke and blood and underneath it, beneath everything else, the familiar warmth that means home.
“Wake up,” I whisper against her skin. “Please. I need you to wake up.”
The resonance flickers. Steadies.
And her eyelids flutter open.
FIFTY-TWO
IMARA
Gray.
The sky is gray.
I blink. Try to make sense of what I’m seeing. The red is gone—the blood-light that has painted every sky I’ve ever known, the crimson glow that marked the Vale’s power. Gone.
“Imara.” Kharvek’s voice. Rough. Broken. Beautiful. “Can you hear me?”
I try to speak. Manage a croak that doesn’t sound like words.
His arms tighten around me. I’m in his lap—I realize that now, feel the solid warmth of his chest beneath my back, the gentle pressure of his hands cradling my body. His scars are dim. Changed. The channels that blazed crimson for as long as I’ve known him now carry different patterns—lines of silver and gold woven through the red, catching the gray light in ways that make them seem almost beautiful.
“The ritual.” My voice comes out scratched. Thin. “Did it?—”
“It’s done.” His forehead drops to rest against mine. “It’s over. Everything the clan built for two hundred years—gone.”
“And you?” I reach up. Touch his face. His scarred cheek. The clouded eye that sees nothing but somehow still looks at me with such intensity. “Are you?—”
“Alive.” A sound escapes him—half laugh, half sob. “Against all odds. Because of you.”
“Because of us.”
He kisses me then. Soft. Searching. The taste of blood and ash on both our lips, the taste of survival against impossible odds. I grip his collar, pull him closer, let the kiss deepen until I forget that everything hurts, forget that we should both be dead, forget everything except the reality of his mouth on mine.
When we finally part, his breath comes ragged.
“Don’t ever do that again.” His voice cracks. “Don’t ever almost die on me.”
“Same to you.” I manage a weak smile. “We had a deal. You don’t get to break it.”
FIFTY-THREE
KHARVEK
