Page 176

His fingers find my face, brushing over my cheek with a tenderness that only twists the knife deeper.

"Then we adapt. As we have done since the tower."

It should be reassuring. Maybe itis. But the knot low in my stomach pulls tighter.

Something is coming. I can feel it breathing against my skin … Waiting.

Still, I nod, letting my head rest against his chest. His heartbeat is steady beneath my ear, strong and certain. As if he believes every word. As ifthis—the warmth between us, the pull neither of us can deny—changes nothing.

Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it changes everything.

His shadows stir again, spreading over my back, slipping around my shoulders, curling over my legs, wrapping around us both like a living blanket.

A shield. A promise. A tether.

And yet, as my eyes close, as sleep begins to pull me under, I can’t shake the feeling curling low in my gut.

Tomorrow will changeeverything.

For him. For me.

For the fragile, impossible connection we’ve only just begun to understand.

The dream resurfaces with startling clarity. Shadow devouring everything in its path, silver slicing through it like lightning across a storm-wracked sky.

And I know, with bone-deep certainty, that whatever happens when the sun rises tomorrow, neither of us will emerge unchanged.

Chapter Thirty-Four

SACHA

“Some prayers were never meant to be answered.”

Veinwarden Prayers

Ellie is asleep,her breath warm against my skin, her arm draped across my chest. One hand rests against my shoulder. A point of contact. A tether I never expected to want. And one I should sever before it sinks deeper.

I should move. Distance myself. Return to the vigilance that has kept me alive.

Instead, I lie there, caught inside a maelstrom of thoughts I can't silence. The vulnerability of this moment unsettles me more than any battlefield ever has. Her touch is more dangerous than any blade.

I don't remember the last time I lay beside someone like this. If I ever did.

I spent the first fifteen years of my life learning to wield a power I was never supposed to have, and balancing it with the magic that was my birthright. Then another span moving through battlefields like a weapon myself—calculating, commanding, making choices that carved away anything that wasn't necessary to survival.

I belonged to thewar.

I fought. I led. I sacrificed. Wars don't permit softness. Hunted Veinbloods don't wake slowly in someone's arms, savoring the quiet rhythm of shared breath. I never stayed. I took what relief I could. Stolen moments before bloodshed, before another march, before another betrayal. Then I left, because staying meant vulnerability, and vulnerability meant death.

Trust was a luxury I couldn't afford when the line between ally and traitor blurred with each new Authority infiltration.

And then the tower took even those moments from me.

Twenty-seven years. I was isolated, locked away where even the sound of my own breathing felt too loud. Cold walls, blue light, time bleeding into nothing.

I forgot what it was like to be touched. To share warmth. To not wonder if your lover would be the one to slide a knife between your ribs.

And now, all of it has been undone.