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When they finish, I’m cleaner than I have ever been, but I don’t feel it.
I bury my face into Kaito’s shoulder as I cry.
I feel the water moving around me before arms lock me against them, their warmth holding me as they kneel in the cooling water and let me cry. “Let it out. That’s it, my love, just cry. We have you. We will always have you. It’s okay.”
They all offer comforting words, their hands sliding across my body as I cry, and when I can’t cry anymore, they wash my hair, their touches soft and loving. They do not leave one inch of me unwashed and unloved.
Lifting me from the bath, they work together to dry me off and dress me in an oversized shirt before I’m carried to bed.
For a moment, a flame of desire fills me before I squash it. I need to rest, but more than that, I need them to hold me and remind me that I am a good person, and they do.
All night.
Chapter
Sixty-Three
CORA
The castle is quiet as everyone rests after a long, trying day. My monsters are waiting for me in our bed. I can feel their eyes on me as I linger before the open balcony doors of our room.
They almost lost me today, and it terrified them. If it wasn’t for Kai, I would be dead. They know it, and I know it, yet I’m strangely calm about it all. Them? Not so much. I feel their anger, their need to assure themselves that I’m alive and well, and I know there won’t be any rest for me tonight.
My lips curve at that, but for now, I stare at my lands.
There has been so much death and destruction. Even now, the Dead Lands still burn, bathed in embers of what the human hunters did, and I know our lands and souls will forever be changed and scarred by what transpired. Now, it is up to us to make it worthwhile and make every death, every act of sacrifice and bravery, mean something.
We must do better than our past. I will ensure it, with Kai at my side.
She is my moral compass. She is true and strong, and the heart of this world and life itself breathes through her. I sawthat today. She is life, and I am magic—together, we will be unstoppable. We will protect our lands and people. We will usher in a new age, and while she heals what has been done, I will prowl the darkness with my monsters, ready to stop anyone who dares to threaten what we are building here.
For a moment, my magic travels through the castle and touches upon my sister. Knowing she is safe makes my tension ease, even as my hand lifts to the strand of copper hair that now stands out at the front—a small price to pay for my life.
Kai is magnificent.
She always was, but now she sees it. She stands taller with confidence and shines brightly with life despite everything she has been through.
She fights for her beliefs with conviction.
She’s here with me.
For so long, a part of my soul rested at the bottom of this castle where she plummeted, but now it lingers in the shadows of her room, whole once more.
Smiling to myself, I blink my eyes back into focus and stare across the lands before me. Fires are burning low in the Shadow Lands and Gilded Lands, a reminder of the lives we saved, and I smile. In the darkness between nightfall and dawn, people are resting, celebrating, and hoping.
As am I.
Turning away, I head back to my mates, knowing tomorrow can only be better than today.
And the next day.
And the one after that.
We write our own stories, and ours is just beginning.
Chapter
Sixty-Four
