Myccael shouted, impaling one. Darryck and Thalia fought side by side, synchronized like breath and heartbeat. He blocked; she fired. Another Eulach dropped.
Oksana distracted the final one just long enough for Mallack to finish it with a spinning slash that split its arm from its body.
Then—
Silence.
A deafening silence that was only interrupted by our hard breathing. My feet moved before I even realized. I ran. Straight into Mallack’s arms.
He caught me with a broken gasp, crushed me to him. My cheek pressed to his ripped-to-shreds shirt, and his pulse thundered beneath it.
“Daphne,” he whispered, voice cracking. “By the gods—Daphne.”
I couldn’t speak. All I could do was cling to him. He kissed my forehead, my cheeks, then my mouth. Over and over, as if afraid I’d vanish again.
Behind us, Thalia wrapped herself around Darryck, laughing and sobbing. Oksana tackled Myccael, both of them falling to their knees in the rubble, clutching each other like lifelines.
I cupped Mallack’s face, staring into his eyes. “I’m sorry. For dying. For staying gone.”
He choked on a sound that might’ve been a laugh. “Don’t be sorry.Just stay.”
“I will.”
And then I kissed him again, longer, deeper, the kind of kiss meant for after war, after death, after loss.
Around us, the mountain held its breath.
But we were whole again.
At least for now.
And that was enough.
Daphne and I were the last to enter the elevator for the ride up. The others had gone ahead of us, bruised and bone-weary, but she stood beside me with a crooked grin and her pride tucked neatly behind it.
I was still too angry to meet it. Too mad at her for going down there. For throwing herself into danger as if her life didn’t carry the weight of the gods. As if it didn’t hold mine. And yet—despite the fury coiled low in my gut—relief pulsed through me like a second heartbeat. She was here. Against all the odds. Against every death sentence those tunnels had whispered into the stone.
We’d found each other again.
“You’re welcome,”she said once the elevator doors sealed shut with a sigh of pressure. Her tone was casual, a mix of teasing and petulance.
I blinked down at her. “For what?”
She crossed her arms over her chest, lifting her breasts high enough to throw off my thoughts, and tipped her head with that maddening glint in her eye. “For saving your life.”
A laugh almost escaped me. It reached my chest and got stuck there, caught between amusement and disbelief. The audacity of this seffy was eternal. I had nearly forgotten how difficult she could be, how defiant. Especially when caught red-handed doing exactly the kind of thing she knew I wouldn’t approve of.
And gods help me, I loved her for it.
“You could’ve died down there,” I said lowly. “Again.”
“But I didn’t,” she countered, chin rising. “Again.”
I stared at her. “You always do this.”
“What?”
“Do things without thinking about the consequences, pretending you’re not the most important thing in the damn galaxy to me.”
