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“We did it.”
Ezra stares at Mercy.
“No.”
His expression shifts as he looks across the field, at the flowers blooming through blood-soaked soil and the empty places where the Brides once stood.
“We changed it.”
The difference matters.
For a moment, none of us moves.
Then Rhett bends and starts gathering clothes from the ground.
“Well,” he mutters, tossing Malakai his pants, “if the ancient fertility nightmare is over, I’d personally like to stop standing around with my dick out.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
It sounds half hysterical.
Maybe it is.
Malakai pulls on his pants while Ezra retrieves his from beside the altar. Rhett finds mine among the mess, but the second he lifts what remains of my shirt, scraps of torn fabric dangle between his fingers.
He looks at Malakai.
Then at the shirt.
Then back at Malakai.
“You murdered it.”
Malakai doesn’t look remotely sorry.
“It was in the way.”
“Of course it was.”
Rhett drops the ruined pieces back into the dirt.
Ezra picks up his shirt instead.
He looks at it for a second before holding it out to me.
“Here.”
I take it.
His fingers brush mine.
Such a small thing after everything that just happened, but somehow it makes my throat tighten.
“Thanks.”
I pull his shirt over my head. It hangs ridiculously low on me, swallowing my body and carrying the faint scent of smoke, Earth, and him.
For one tiny, impossible moment, everything feels almost normal.
