She went limp.
Her eyes closed, silver tears slipping from their corners.
Kailorien cradled her, stunned. Staring. Trembling.
“Auryn?” he whispered, hands shaking as they hovered near her cheek, her throat, her chest.
No black veins. No chill in her skin. No ragged breath.
Her chest rose and fell—slow. Measured.
Alive.
She was alive.
He exhaled a choked sound and gathered her against him, pressing her head to his heart. His fingers threaded into her hair over and over, needing to feel her warmth beneath them.Her breathing matched his now. Perfectly in sync. Like she wasborrowing his rhythm. His breath. His heartbeat.
Because she is—something inside him whispered.
Because she’d asked him to.
Breathe into me, Silari.
And without knowing how, without understanding what it meant—hehad.
He rocked her in his arms, forehead pressed to hers. “Whatever breath is left in me—all of it belongs to you.”
She didn’t stir. Didn’t answer.
And in the silence, he kept breathing.
Kept guiding her.
Trying to memorize this moment.
Immortalize it.
In case she needed him to do this very thing again.
Because she would.
Shewould.
After all, she’d chosen to follow him into the Dark.
And he, in turn, had chosen to take her as his Divine.
Kailorien didn’t move for a long time. Wouldn’t dare. Not while her body still curved so perfectly around his, her breath fluttering against his throat—in and out.A rhythm given... and a rhythm borrowed.
His arms wrapped around her like a second skin, and he refused to loosen them—not when he’d only just found her. Not when the world still felt like it might unravel if he let go.
He had dipped his hands into the Nine Rivers, and something had swum into his grasp—divine, perfect, fragile. Now, standing on that impossible shore with his arms full of light and hope and wonder, he feared to move lest it slip through his scarred, brutal palms.
“Auryn…” he whispered, brushing the backs of his fingers along her temple, gentle as starlight. “I can still feel you. What is this miracle?”
I don’t deserve it.
Yes, you do.
