The distance that’s already started.
Tears sting my eyes. He kisses them away, his face betraying the quiet war within him. Worry for me. For himself.
The weight of us is drawn deeper—toward some darker part of a lake we can’t yet see.
He follows the trail of my tears with his lips, murmuring soft comforts to chase the thoughts away. He kisses my cheeks, my lips, my chin, my neck… lower still, worshipping me like he’s trying to memorize the way I feel beneath his mouth, his skin. His warm hands glide down my body as if I’m made of silk.
I gasp as I feel his fingers slide into me at the same time his tongue circles my breast. The heat of him is a balm against the chill lacing the air.
The rain now drips silently down my window, like the tears he kissed away.
He moves up to kiss me again, his fingers still moving with a gentle rhythm that makes me moan against his mouth.
The wave begins to build—rising, cresting.
“Noa… please,” I beg.
He nods and moves between my thighs, his hard length pressing against me, moving so agonizingly slow that I stop breathing for a moment.
He eases into me, his hand cupping my jaw, thumb brushing my cheek as he watches me with unwavering focus.
“I love you,” he whispers, a breath away.
I say it back—not just with words, but with my body. My soul.
I take what I can. Give what I can. We move like that—slow, then faster. Deep, then deeper still.
We make love through the night, finding our release, returning to each other again and again. Both chasing the chance of forever we are afraid might not come.
In between, there is laughter. Soft teasing. Stories of his childhood and mine. Lives we’ve lived. Lives we only dare to dream of. We speak of the change pressing in around us—his future bound in flame and oath, mine unraveling with every tide.
I tell him the truth I barely admit to myself: that I’m afraid I’ll be swallowed by the water. That I’ll become current and memory, lost to drown in something ancient, vast and merciless.
At that, he grips my chin and turns me to face him. “Youcould drown the stars and wipe the sky clean… and I’d still find you. Still love you. Even in the dark.”
I kiss him again, long and lingering.
And when the dawn breaks, sparkling on the crystals the rain left behind, we drift to sleep, wrapped in each other’s arms.
Because, for a little while, we still have this.
Because tomorrow is not today.
CHAPTER 46
The fiercest storms are not born from skies, but from within.
—“The Tempest of the Hollow King,” fromTales from the Breath of Stone
The final duel of the year is to be held in the Garden Grove—between Whittaker’s fourth-year earth-wielder Beatrice and the Vikhrostrum wind master, Vihar.
The Garden Grove doesn’t seem like a place meant for violence. It is a place that smells of crushed basil and spring blooms, not blood and fury. The courtyard at its heart has been cleared: sand freshly raked, vines pulled back. The air feels alive with expectation. Professors line the perimeter. Even the fruit trees and insects that would normally buzz around us fall silent.
Beatrice stands at the center, bare feet planted in the soft earth. Her curls are pulled into a loose knot, her sleeves rolled to the elbows. Nothing about her looks dangerous—until you see the stillness in her stance. The patience. Like stone waiting to shape itself.
Across from her, Vihar prowls forward, a tempest incarnate, his hair tossing around like ocean surf during a storm. His coat snaps sharply at his knees as he steps forward, eyes flashing. There is no patience or kindness in his gaze—only determination.
No one has forgotten what Jin Feng did to Teo. And no one is expecting Vihar to hold back.
