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O ne . “Walk with me?” I ask, sitting up. I try not to look at him directly, instead focusing somewhere vaguely over his shoulder while my heart gallops forward all fists and feet, like Gent racing across a distant ridge.

Fortiss shakes his head, his expression immediately turning to one of concern. “Talia, no. You should rest.”

Two . I push my hair out of my face, straightening my clothes, and rake my gaze across his face. He’s worried over me—ordinarily, I’d welcome that, but I don’t need him to think of me as some injured warrior. Not tonight.

I offer him a casual, easy smile. Three . “I’m done with resting, Fortiss. There’s a river here, and I, for one, need a bath.” Four . “This far from the Eighth House, I can only pray I’ve cleared enough of the ash of the Western Realms to take advantage of it.”

“A bath?” He blinks at me.

Five . Before he can object, I roll off the pallet and stand, shoving down the dizziness that I feel at the sudden elevation change.

I brush by him, but he easily falls into step as I lead him away from where the sick beds are clustered.

There are fewer of those beds tonight, I see, and my heart skips a little in relief.

Then it skips some more as I realize Fortiss has quickened his step, drawing up close behind me. Six .

“It’s off to the right,” he murmurs, taking my hand. “This way. We should stay together.”

Seven , and it’s done.

I swallow down another rush of emotion, so intense it borders on hysteria. What’s wrong with me? It’s not like Fortiss and I are strangers to each other. And yet in many ways, we are. We’ve gone through so much in such a short time that every day it’s as if we’ve been forged in fire all over again.

Will he want me the way he did before the great battle? Before I saved him and lost my connection to Gent? Am I just a warrior to him now, not a woman?

I blow all these fears out in a quick exhale. “No one will be looking for us, will they?” I ask quietly as we step into the woods.

Fortiss squeezes my hand, and my heart nearly surges straight out of my chest.

“Not until morning,” he murmurs back. “Thank the Light.”

It takes us no more than a quarter hour to reach the river, far enough away from the camp for privacy, but not so much that should danger come we would be useless to help defend our party.

If anything, at least for Fortiss, the distance would allow him to call upon his Divh and she would help carry him into the fight.

With an intuition I don’t know whether to credit to him or to the books of magic he’s been consulting, Fortiss speaks to me in the darkness, spinning tales of possibility.

“You will regain your connection to Gent, you know,” he murmurs.

“You had the crown on your head for mere breaths, just enough to free Zhang and me and to forge your connection with the skrill. You can’t be punished for a lifetime for such a brief action.

Light, I can’t even call it a mistake. It wasn’t a mistake, as far as I’m concerned.

It saved my life. It restored Zhang’s freedom.

It gave us a glimpse of what the skrill can truly do. ”

“I know,” I say, and I think of Syril’s story. Mirador was able to band with a Divh after he removed the crown. Could I reband to Gent? Would my beautiful goliath even want that?

I send up silent prayers to the Light as we walk.

Eventually, the path opens up to a soft, loamy space, edged with boulders that line the riverbank. Without hesitating, I pull away from Fortiss and in a few, efficient motions, strip down to the skin.

“Talia—” He practically chokes with surprise, but I don’t give him time to think.

I step toward him and reach up, placing my hands on either side of his head and pulling him in for a sharp, greedy kiss, as if this is something I do all the time.

My heart leaps again, pounding frantically, and he gasps as I turn away and sprint toward the river.

It’s a testament to Fortiss’s skill as a warrior that he’s out of his clothes and on me before I’ve even waded more than five long strides into the bracing chill of the river.

He lifts me up then dives with me into the deep, cool water, pulling me up a few breaths later and holding me apart from him as his legs scissor through the slow-moving water to keep us afloat.

He searches my hair, my face, his expression taking on an air of severity. “How are you feeling? You don’t seem like you weigh any more than usual. I think you would if there were cement chunks weighing you down.”

“I think I’m—oh!” Fortiss doesn’t allow me to finish. He pulls me close, wrapping his arms around me tightly as his lips meet mine. We turn in the water, our legs treading easily beneath the surface, keeping us afloat.

“Talia,” he murmurs between kisses, but the time is long past for talking.

In this moment, there’s merely him and me and a time carved away from everything else.

He breaks away and pulls me across the water to the far side of the bank, the two of us matching each other’s movements.

I’ve never swum across a body of water like this, but there were enough mountain lakes near the Tenth—whose waters were far colder—that I can keep up with him easily.

When we reach the far edge of the embankment, he exits first, holding his arm out and leading me along the rocky shale, picking out a path that won’t lacerate our heels.

He’s rewarded when the rocks give way to a soft, grassy embankment, and he pulls me down with him.

Through a break in the rocks, we can see the campfires in the distance that mark our presence, and we watch the flickering flames for a few moments without speaking, our arms wrapped tight around each other.

“You know, if we were any other two people, we could walk the other way,” he murmurs. “We could make a life or travel beyond the borders of the Protectorate and see what the wide world holds, never having to fight another battle or face another wall of skrill.”

I smile. “Then I thank the Light we’re not,” I whisper as he turns to me.

He reaches out and draws my face to him, leaning in for a long, lingering kiss. His fingers thread through my hair, now almost down to my shoulders, slicking the river water away and continuing down to caress my shoulder, my arms, trailing lightly across the band.

When he does, something deep and needful shifts within me, a door opening where before it was clamped shut.

But I can’t focus entirely on it as his fingers continue their quest across my body and he cups my breasts, my breath growing ragged as he draws his thumb over the tight, pebbling flesh at their tips.

He groans and says another word, something I can’t make out and the door within me expands, a light kindling in its depths, as his hands draw down my waist and flare out over my hips.

Slowly, intently, he kneads his palms into the aching muscles of my legs, his nimble fingers picking out every knot.

I groan with a soft, guttural release I didn’t know I was capable of as something unbends within me, a surrender that goes far beyond the unclenching of muscles and release of control.

His chuckle is warm and knowing, and it undoes me even more.

I sigh, whispering inarticulately as he lays me back in the grass.

“Just relax,” he murmurs, his hands continuing their slow, rhythmic movement over me, as if he’s somehow memorized my body so well that he knows what still hurts, what has ever hurt, and he alone can make it right again.

I realize my eyes have drifted shut. When I flicker them open, he’s staring at me, his eyes hard, intent, his jaw set.

“If you ask my permission again—” I warn him and he grins at me with wild, fierce abandon, then leans in and captures my mouth with his as his body covers me. I revel in the weight of him, pressing me down, covering me. Covering, not smothering. Protecting, not imprisoning.

Who is this warrior who was taught the creed of the Protectorate virtually from birth, but is still willing to accept me, to want me, to give to me all of this?

Every touch feels like a revelation—not just of pleasure, but understanding.

Every sigh feels like a benediction. Every murmur another twist of soaring energy that binds us closer together, our breaths flowing like water, our hearts beating as one.

I arch up into him, and it’s my turn to brand his body with my hands, my skin, to press into his warmth and surround myself with it.

In one moment, I feel incredibly frail and weak, as ephemeral as a feather on the wind, able to be swept away by the merest puff of air…

and in the next, I feel as mighty as a Divh pounding across the earth, surging into the sky.

Fortiss makes me weak, he makes me strong.

And in the racing of our thudding heartbeats, I hear the music I’ve been missing my whole life, never knowing it was even possible.

I slide my hands down his waist until I lock onto his hips, our gazes meeting with fierce resolve as I draw him into me.

The pressure builds almost to the point of pain—past the point of pain, but I grip him tight when he would shift to ease it.

I want this. I want him. The moment he sinks into me, fully joining our bodies as one, all other thoughts go out of my mind.

Twin spires of pain and pleasure intertwine, and I can no sooner stop the tide of my need than I can the gasp that escapes my lips, the groan of pleasure that chases it.

After that, all sense of time and place slips away from me. He thrusts into me, and I press back, our bodies flowing together like water and racing like fire, our breath as one between us.

Then slowly, slowly, just when I thought that there could be nothing but the inevitable rush to reach the pinnacle of sensation and crash over the top, the dance falters and eases back, and Fortiss and I are staring at each other almost in wonder, as if we’re seeing each other for the first time.

We whisper and smile, we laugh and play, we drift and explore and revel in the magic of our bodies and our minds and this perfect moment on this perfect night.

When his intensity builds anew, the air snaps tight around us—only this time, no Divhs break through to this plane.

If anything, it’s as if we break through to theirs, leaping higher—higher—soaring through a starlit sky.

The fire that has kindled within me grows to a burning crescendo, and all that was empty is filled, all that was lost is found, and the sharp, fierce scream of a dragon sings through my mind—joyful, triumphant, and bold.

And over it, so far distant it seems like little more than a memory of a long-ago dream, is a long, ululating howl of pure, transcendent joy.