Page 41

Kieran

Preparing to face a witch who’s already taken everything from you isn’t the kind of thing you can pack for neatly.

There was no list.

No ritual.

Just movement.

Dahlia was across the villa, gathering herbs and ingredients like someone in a trance. Her hands moved fast, but her face stayed still. Too still. The calm of someone bracing for disaster.

I didn’t interrupt her. Not yet.

I laid out what I could: warding stones, two vials of oil I’d charged with protective runes, a dagger she’d once insisted was “too pretty to actually stab anything with”. I had sharpened it anyway. Just in case.

She came into the room without a word, arms full of cloth and jars and a single silver charm I didn’t recognize.

“What’s that?” I asked.

She looked down. “Jane’s. From her journals. A ward against entrapment. Figured we could use all the help we can get.”

Smart. Of course she was.

I watched her set the supplies down, her fingers trembling just slightly now that she thought I wasn’t looking.

“You scared?” she asked.

I gave her a thin smile. “Terrified.”

She tried to laugh, but it broke halfway. I crossed the room, closing the space between us, and touched her wrist.

“I’ll keep you safe.”

“I know,” she said, eyes searching mine. “But who keeps you safe?”

I had no answer to that.

So she stepped closer, reached up, and pressed her palm to my chest.

“We do this together. Or not at all.”

I covered her hand with mine.

Something about that moment made the rest fall into place.

The bags. The gear. The magic. It all mattered—but it wasn’t what would win this.

We were.

Sunset wrapped the room in firelight, painting the walls with long shadows and molten light.

It touched her first—Dahlia—where she stood near the open window, the wind pulling gently at the loose strands of her hair.

She was still in her boots from earlier, half-undressed, a map abandoned on the bed beside her.

We were leaving at dawn.

Not for escape.

For war.

She didn’t move when I entered the room, but I saw her shoulders rise with the breath she took. Heard the way her exhale trembled, just once.

I stepped behind her, my hand finding the small of her back. She didn’t turn, just leaned into me.

“The last quiet we’ll have for a while,” she said softly.

“Then I want it with you, Flower.”

She turned slowly, and when her eyes met mine, everything I’d been bracing for—the fear, the guilt, the weight of the fight ahead—quieted. She looked tired, yes. But steady. And so fucking beautiful I could barely stand it.

I kissed her without asking.

Her hands came to my chest, then slid up to my shoulders, pulling me closer with something that wasn’t urgency, but a need for something true . I held her like I’d break if I didn’t. I tasted salt at the edge of her lips. Maybe mine. Maybe hers.

Clothes came away slowly, carefully, as the sun slipped lower—warm fingers tugging buttons, soft fabric falling to the floor like petals. Her skin glowed in the gold light. She looked like dusk incarnate.

She climbed back onto the bed, pulling me with her, both of us sinking into the rumpled sheets and the weight of what we couldn’t say out loud.

I laid over her, hands exploring reverently. She arched beneath me, her thighs parting to welcome me, her breath a soft gasp against my mouth.

When I entered her, it was slow. Deep. Her eyes locked with mine, unblinking.

“We come back,” she whispered.

It wasn’t a question. It was a spell.

I held her hips, moved within her with aching precision, every thrust deliberate. I kissed her chest, her throat, her mouth. I murmured her name against her skin like it might anchor us both.

Outside, the wind stirred the trees. The world kept turning.

But here, in this moment, she was all I felt.

She moaned my name, and I nearly lost myself. But I didn’t speed up. I stayed with her, in the rhythm we found between gasps and heartbeats and the fading light. I could feel her pulse around me. Her hands tangled in my hair.

When she came, it was silent—her back arched, her mouth parted, her nails digging into my back as if to keep me there, inside her, alive . I followed a moment later, body shuddering as I emptied myself into her, breath ragged and teeth clenched.

We didn’t speak for a long time after.

We just stayed wrapped around each other, her head tucked under my chin, her leg over my hip, my hand resting over her heart.

The sun finally vanished, leaving only the flicker of the bedside candle.

She traced lazy circles into my chest. “You’re not allowed to die,” she said quietly.

I smiled against her hair. “Not without you.”

“Not funny.”

“I wasn’t joking.”

She lifted her head then, and I looked into her eyes—serious, tired, and burning with the same fire I’d fallen into since the first moment she unlatched that cursed locket.

“I’ll keep you alive,” she said.

“I know,” I answered. “And I’ll tear the world apart if it tries to take you.”

She kissed me once more. Slower than before. The kind of kiss that didn’t demand anything.

Just… sealed something.

We slept like that—naked, tangled, still warm from each other. Not because we were safe.

But because we were going together.

And that was enough.

We didn’t speak for the first hour.

The path was narrow, barely more than a suggestion carved into the side of the mountain.

Roots and shale made the footing rough, but Dahlia never stumbled.

If she was afraid, she didn’t show it. She just walked—shoulders squared, eyes focused, hair pulled back with one of my spare rune ties like it was armor.

The farther we went, the quieter it got.

Even the wind felt like it was holding its breath.

By the time we reached the ridge line, dusk had thickened into something denser. Blue and gray layered across the sky like smoke-stained silk. We were deep enough now that the road behind us had vanished. All that remained was stone and shadow.

And then we saw it.

A torch.

Just one.

Set into the mountainside with strange, deliberate precision. Twisted vines and bleached bone wove together into a shaft that should’ve long since crumbled with time, but it hadn’t. The torch burned with a steady, pale blue flame, the same unnatural color I’d seen once before.

The same torch Calliope had used outside the cottage.

Dahlia moved toward it, her expression unreadable.

“It’s the same,” she murmured. “From that night.”

I nodded. “Exactly the same. Bones and vines.”

“The first time we saw it,” she said, voice quieter now, “I thought we were all going to die.”

“And now?”

I let my hand rest near the flame. It didn’t burn. It pulsed—like it recognized me.

“Now I burn back.”

She looked at me then, and I could see the storm in her eyes. All the weight, all the choice, all the aching hope that this wouldn’t be the last time we stood together.

I stepped close and cupped her face in my hands. “Before we do this, you need to know something.”

She didn’t pull away.

“I was dead for centuries. Waiting. Angry. Hollow.” My voice cracked. “And then you found me. You saw me. And I’m not afraid to die now—but I am terrified of losing you.”

Her eyes filled, and I felt her hands settle on my waist like she needed the anchor.

“I don’t want to be brave without you,” she said.

“So don’t be,” I whispered. “Be with me, Flower.”

She kissed me.

And gods, it meant something. It wasn’t a promise. It wasn’t a goodbye. It was a vow of another kind—pressed into skin and breath and the tremble of her fingers in my shirt.

When we broke apart, I didn’t let go.

Not right away.

She touched my chest once, softly. “Let’s finish this.”

I turned to the cliff face. The torch flickered, then dimmed as I plucked it from the ground.

And when I brought the torch close to them, the stone cracked.

The mouth of the cave yawned open, black as memory.

I took her hand.

And we stepped inside.