Page 33

Q uin sets us carefully down at the pyres. Makarios slumps to the ground, his breath ragged, and the young girl coils her small arms around his neck. I step forward, carefully arranging Mikros’s body atop the dry stacked wood.

When I step back, Quin has returned with Florentius and Akilah. They rush to the pyre, gasping, and sink to their knees beside Makarios, swallowed by tortured, sniffling silence.

Quin strikes the flame. It catches, crackling, the light licking at the wood.

I kneel beside Akilah. Her knuckles bump against mine as she exhales a shuddery breath. “He was funny,” she whispers. “And so kind to me in Hinsard.”

Florentius murmurs his own quiet memories. When Makarios sobs, he shuffles over, wrapping him in a tight embrace, the young girl pressing in beside them.

Makarios stares over Florentius’s shoulder at the rising flames. His voice is hoarse, barely above a whisper. “He was like a brother to me.” A shudder rolls through him. “I wish you could hold me again. I didn’t know the last time would be the last.”

A hollow ache swells in my chest. I grab Akilah’s hand and squeeze. She’s like a sister to me, too. We’ve been through hell, but we’re still standing. I have to hold on—to her, to all of them. Who knows how much time we have left?

Akilah turns her damp eyes to me. Her hand slips from mine, and then, suddenly, she throws her arms around my neck, holding on as if she, too, is afraid of what might come next.

A sob rips from Makarios. He stumbles forward, out of the embrace, crawling towards the pyre. “We had plans,” he chokes. “What now? I do them alone?”

Silence. Only fire, answering him with its relentless crackle.

His fingers twitch at his eye—the green one. “Fine,” he rasps, the word like a blade against his throat. “You will miss out.” He trembles. “I will raise this orphaned girl. I will teach her all our spells. I will experience all her love.”

No one speaks. We only watch, grief clawing at our ribs.

Only the young girl moves. She rises, steps forward, and slips her small hand into Makarios’s. She tilts her face up to him, eyes wide and hopeful. “You’ll be... big brother?”

Something inside him cracks. His body folds, like the grief has finally torn him in two, and he pulls her into his arms, holding her tight. “I will,” he swears. “I’ll be your family, if you want me.”

The girl nods. Then she looks to the fire, pointing with a small, steady hand. “He saved me. Does that mean his spirit is in here?” She presses her fingers to her chest.

Makarios shudders and nods, his breath hitching.

“I’ll take good care of you,” he promises. “You’ll become a grand healer, like him.”

The girl shakes her head. “No magic.”

Makarios blinks, then shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.” A small, wry laugh escapes him—wet with grief, but filled with something else, too. Determination. “I met a team of healers once who rivalled the best vitalians. We’ll find them. We’ll learn.”

A team of healers. I know who he means.

Megaera. Olyn. Me.

Makarios will find us. He will learn.

And we will teach.

I stare into the flames as they climb higher, consuming what was and scattering it into embers. Mikros will not be forgotten. We will carry him forward.

The thought grips my heart so tight it hurts, but I hold onto it, feeling each beat pound against my ribs. When we leave the pyre, it feels like each of us choosing a new fork in the road.

Akilah and Florentius walk ahead together. Makarios takes the young girl home. Quin and I, we step into the city, where luminists are ushering the displaced into the luminariums .

The domes shine against the darkened sky. A half day ago, they shone only for the linea. Now, they shine for all.

I glance at Quin, the king who promised to make this happen—and who is making it happen. He doesn’t look at me; he keeps his gaze ahead, but he knows I’m watching him. He always does.

His jaw tenses, the faintest movement. Then, as if hearing my thoughts, he exhales and shakes his head. “This is all your work,” he murmurs.

I rest a hand on his cane, halting him. The motion is small, but it stills him completely. His dark eyes lock onto mine, unreadable in the flickering luminist glow.

I step forward until the shaft of his cane presses against the length of my leg—until I can feel the slight tremor shivering through the wood. A tension coiled beneath his steady exterior.

“It’s ours,” I whisper.

The city hums around us—distant hopeful voices, the absence of luminist bells, a wail and a laugh in the night—but none of it truly sinks into me. There is only him. The warmth of his breath against the cool air. The press of his cane deepening against my leg.

His fingers shift subtly against the cane’s handle, tightening, combing my hip. The tension is more tremulous now. No longer heavy with war, or the burden of duty.

It’s more desperate. More aware.

It flickers along with the luminarium light that catches in his eyes.

And I don’t move away .

I slide closer.

I slide until I can feel the hum of him battling his self-control.

I slide until he loses it.

A visceral shiver rolls through him, blooming with magic.

The winds rise, lifting us—through the lingering smoke above the city, through the thick curtain of mist, until we break into a sky full of stars.

His magic pockets us, wind keeping steady beneath our feet, very little above—just enough to flutter the hem of his cloak.

His cane is still against my thigh, his fingers still resting at my hip. His breath still caught between us.

The vast sky glitters above us and under it is just the two of us. Down there, the weight of the world rests on his shoulders. But up here, he is free. He is light. He can take off his crown and be .

I raise a trembling hand to his cane, fingers curling over his. Slowly, I loosen his grip, freeing him of it. Up here the only support we need should be from one another. I toss the cane onto the soft, moonlit cloud that Quin reins in, and the cane sinks slightly into its glow.

I take his fist, tight and trembling, and slowly pry his fingers open. I guide his hand, press his palm against my waist. A place to anchor himself—to me.

His breath stutters. His eyes shutter. And then—his fingers curl in, clamping onto me, desperate, like I might slip through his grasp if he doesn’t hold tight.

“Cael...” His voice is a rumble, low and uneven. A warning .

A warning that he’s coming undone.

That if he does, he won’t stop.

It all sinks low into me on a delicate shiver and I pull myself forward, a hand in his shirt, a whisper landing on the flutette I gave him, sitting at the base of his throat.

“I don’t want you to—”

He moves.

He tilts my head up and his lips crash into mine, hard, messy.

Raw. Years of longing, years of suppressing.

.. his kiss is uncontrolled, fiery, like he’s tearing down all and any walls between us.

I clutch his jaw and pull him even harder against my lips so he knows not to stop.

I don’t want anything more between us. So long we’ve worn layers of masks around one another, for so long we’ve slowly peeled them off, and this is what’s under them all.

Relentless desire for one another, an insatiable need to feel .

His one hand is riveted on my waist; the other skims my face, thumbs my chin, pulls my lips open to catch a breath—his breath.

It slinks inside me with an intimacy that has me trembling. He feels it too and gathers me close, pressing his forehead against mine, his pulse ticking in his throat, unsteady, wild. Neither of us speaks, the words simply don’t exist. This is us. This is our truth.

A braid drags lightly along my jaw, under my ear, where it rubs. Flickers of sensation—ticklish, sharp, magical—snap down my middle in quick, pulsing waves.

I gasp, searching his darkening eyes, my fingers already moving, already slipping into his hair.

The bejewelled fastening kisses my neck, while his others glint under the stars.

I roll it between my fingers, slow and deliberate.

I have touched his braids before. I have plaited them into his hair.

I’ve worn them around my wrists, felt them in every way—except one.

The one way that is most intimate. That is only meant for one other person.

I feel the fastening warming under my touch. Holding his gaze, I slowly, carefully pull it free. A piece of him. A piece of his life that he’s letting me take into my hands. A piece of him that is also mine now.

I press the bead into his hand, then slip my fingers into his hair. I touch the braid, tease it loose. The strands are silky, soft. They curl around my skin like whispers, like sharing secrets they have waited too long to tell.

One by one, I remove his braids. One by one, I undo them all.

His breath hitches, his grip falters, and then—his hands curl around the beads and around me. A shudder ripples through him, low and deep, as if he’s just been unlocked.

His kiss—his whole body—throbs against me, urgent, unrestrained, consumed. And at the slide of his tongue against mine, at my guttural hum—he moves. Hard. Certain. Desperate.

The stars tilt and I fall in a tantalising rush, my back sinking into a bed of cloud, weightless, cradled by Quin’s magic.

He lets go of the fastenings, discarding them alongside his cane, and then the scent of him—fresh rain, earth, wind—wraps around me as his hands tear at my clothes and find my skin.

His hair spills around my head like a curtain and I scrunch it in my hand as I lift my face to his. I smile into a teasing kiss. “You’ve taken all my layers off.” I pluck at his shirt—and tear it too. “Now the very last of your own.”