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“Elarian?” Lucan whispered, brushing his hand over her cheek.
She stirred, eyes fluttering closed.
“It doesn’t burn anymore.”
“I know,” he said, voice breaking at the confirmation of his suspicions. A moon elf-born dhampir…Gods, how long had she suffered? The realization brought tears to his eyes.
Elarian shifted, nuzzling into Lucan’s arm still wrapped around her. “You knew.”
“It would have broken you.”
“I am not a delicate thing,” she whispered, voice already heavy with sleep.
“That you are not, Elarian.”
A thousand words crowded his tongue, centuries of thoughts wishing to spill forth now that the wall holding them hostage had been thoroughly destroyed by the very woman who built them. Unable to summon a single strand from the ever-growing web, Lucan only pulled Elarian closer.
This was never supposed to be how it ended.
Gods.
What had they done?
Elarian only closed her eyes and sank into a deep, peaceful sleep.
Lucan almost forgot what silence sounded like.
Not the silence of empty halls, where every footstep echoed with ghosts. Nor the silence of battlefields after the dying had finally stopped screaming. Those silences carried weight. They pressed upon the chest until breathing itself became an act of defiance.
This silence breathed.
Elarian lay against him, silver hair streaked with black spilling across midnight silk like liquid starlight. One arm remained draped loosely over his waist, fingers curled over his hip as though even in sleep, she feared he might disappear before morning. Her breathing had settled into a slow, steady rhythm, each quiet exhale stirring the loose strands resting against his throat.
No fever.
Gairan preserve her.
No fever.
Lucan scarcely dared believe it. Carefully, almost reverently, he brushed his knuckles over the bite at the curve of her neck. The wounds had already begun to knit together, leaving only the faintest crescents where his fangs had pierced her skin. Warmth lingered beneath them, the gentle heat of living flesh he found so undeniable.
Alive.
She was simply…
Alive.
He closed his eyes.
Five centuries. Five centuries spent watching people die.
His father. His mother. His entire kingdom, now nothing but ash and bone dust in the wind. The living did not last long in his shadowed world. The handful of lovers foolish enough to mistake the monster for the frightened human buried beneath him always left once they realized he was too broken to be saved. Even Jace had left him, though he lasted longer than the rest.
Everyone eventually slipped through his fingers.
Yet tonight…
Tonight he had stolen one soul back from She Who Is Death.
