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Emotion bloomed in her chest. ‘You’d do that?’

‘For you and them,naam,’ he nodded toward the door where her patients waited.

She stepped closer, her hand wrapping around one of his sinewed ones. ‘Sante,my love. I never imagined.’

‘You don’t have to imagine carrying this burden alone anymore.’

Lips brushed each other, and fingers linked as a tentative knock sounded.

They pulled apart when an older Pikani man shuffled in, clutching his abdomen.

Issa went to him first, lifting the man’s sleeve and checking for signs of systemic infection.

K’Remi moved in beside her, retrieving a diagnostic reader from the shelf without being asked.

They worked in tandem. Not speaking, not needing to.

Her movements were sure, practiced, his, precise, and methodical.

Together, they tended to each patient who appeared.

Cleansing wounds, checking vitals, and setting broken bones.

At the end of the long shift, when the last patient had left and the cave had grown still, Issa sat back on a wonky stool, sweat lining her collar.

K’Remi stood across from her, arms crossed, studying her.

‘Tis why I adore you, Issandra. You reach where no one else dares. You’ve taught me that healing comes in many forms and that breaking the rules to aid those most in despair, to see their real need, is true selflessness.’

She lifted her chin. ‘I was once shattered, sullied, and unseen, too.’

He crossed the room, pulled her to her feet, and pressed his lips to her forehead.

‘Not anymore,kidaya. Never again.’

The Rider’s terrace was a sanctuary from the never-resting city unfurling below.

Above, the night stretched in velvet inkiness, constellations winking in and out of the haze as if the cosmos bore silent witness to their coming together.

Ki’Remi’s metanoid barrier shimmered around his woman and him, an iridescent cocoon sealing them from time, noise, and distraction.

Where nothing else existed but the glide of their bodies over each other and the grunts and soft moans expressing their longing.

Issa lay sprawled beneath him, her golden curls splayed against the silk cushions of the expansive terrace divan, her skin luminous in the soft glow of the shielded moonlight.

Ki’Remi braced above her, sinking into her as he traced down the length of her throat.

Across the delicate line of her collarbone, with reverence, as if he were mapping her.

‘You’re sofokkin’ exquisite,’ he murmured, timbre hoarse and thick with such deep passion her chest tightened.

She arched into his touch, a sigh slipping from her mouth, fingers entwining with his locs. ‘You say that like it’s new.’

He leaned down, brushing his mouth along the edge of her jaw, then lower, tracking the curve of her nape in slow, languid kisses. ‘Because it is,’ he rasped, his lips finding the place where her heartbeat hammered. ‘Every damn time.’

‘You, on the other hand, blow my mind, my very existence.’

‘I do now?’