No Spiritsdamned way.
Racing across the grounds was a shock of platinum hair and a lithe, silk-robed body.
“Mila,” I breathed.
And then, I was running, flying over the damn desert, until I collided with her like two of those shooting stars she loved so much. I caught her, every tensed inch of my body uncoiling, the realm so fucking right again. I sank to my knees in the soft sand with her legs wrapped around my waist, arms tight behind my neck.
“Mila,” I whispered into her hair, a sob catching in my throat. My chest unlocked, flooding with a rush of emotion. Every single thing I’d been stuffing aside since the theater broke free as Mila’s heart pounded in time with mine. As the weight of her body pressed against my chest and her hands dove into my hair.
Terror at what she could be going through.
Longing to hold her after Lyria’s death.
Pain knowing how much she’d hurt.
It all rushed to the surface.
“Malakai,” she choked out, and fuck, she really was crying.
I pulled back, keeping her body pressed to mine, and cupped her cheek. Her eyes were glassy, but they were open. Awake and alert, and she washere. But grief weighed down every blink, a brokenness, loss, and confusion I hadn’t seen before cracking her fortress.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Mila,” I whispered, voice shaking as I pressed my lips to her forehead.
“Why?” She pulled back to look at me, and her jaw trembled as she understood. “It’s not your fault.”
“I never wanted to leave you,” I swore, and everything came pouring out, my arms tightening around her. “I wanted to be here for you. To claw my way back to you.”
“I know, Malakai.” She sighed, tears hot as I kissed the tracks they left down her cheeks. “I know.”
She could feel it in each desperate beat of my heart, pounding loud enough for us both to hear. In the promise searing my words. We were two broken people who had been tortured and scarred, but somehow found safety in each other, and something in that shared, fucked up history meant that we found truth in the silence between breaths. Strength in each other’s heartbeats, the rhythm a reliable melody when the world was too loud.
“Fucking Angels, I missed you,” I breathed. “Rina said you were okay, but a part of me didn’t believe it.”
“I’m here,” she cried, nodding. “I’ve been—I don’t know, but I’m here.”
Dropping my forehead to hers, I said, “Tell me later.”
And then I kissed her. And Mila’s kiss in return was like coming home after too long at war. Every little breath, every inch she clung to me, was her sayingI missed youin a way words couldn’t quite convey.
Sliding my hand to the back of Mila’s neck, I tilted her head so I could cement my lips to hers and wipe away the lingering pain of Echnid’s torture. Relieve the fear haunting her stare.
Because to me, she was absolution and healing and grace. I’d been broken, but she was the fire that forged me back together. As she trembled against me, I swore I’d mend the agony that rippled off her every move.
Together, we’d fix all of it, even if it killed me.
Ophelia hadn’t gottenanother word out before she was unconscious again, but the Soulguiders and Cypherion took her inside, leaving me with Mila.
“That door,” she said, pointing to a bronzed archway at the end of the hall in this guest house. Her legs were still wrapped around my waist as I barreled inside and flicked the lock.
I placed her down on the bed and tilted her chin up to me. The room was full of lush jewel tones, bedding in deep emerald and amethysts, gilded decor glittering the walls, but all I truly saw were those ice-blue eyes gazing up at me.
What did you even say after something like this?
Brushing my thumb along her jaw, I settled on, “How are you?”
Mila considered, and for a brief moment, I thought the doors of her fortress were going to snap closed, but she released a trembling sigh weighed down by the last few weeks, and it fucking undid something within me.
I crouched down, pressing my forehead to her thighs. For a few minutes, I breathed her in, this warm and sweet cinnamon and vanilla scent. An aura that had come to mean home and healing and the best damn moments of my recent months. Iallowed myself to be my broken form, on my knees before the woman I loved.
