I cupped his face, brushing my thumb along the line of his jaw. “I’m sorry you had to live through that alone.”
“I wasn’t alone,” he said hoarsely. “You were with me. Always. I carried you in every breath, every beat of my heart. Every waking moment, and even when I slept, I dreamed of you.”
I blinked against the burn behind my eyes. “You never gave up on me.”
“Never,” he said, lowering his forehead to mine. “Even when the gods took you. Even when I buried you, I still believed we’d find our way back.”
“We did,” I breathed.
His mouth brushed against mine, so soft and reverent. It wasn't claiming, not yet. This was just us, a remembering and a promise.
“I love you,” he whispered into the space between our lips. “In this life. In the next. In all the ones we lost and all the ones we’ll build again.”
I closed my eyes as he kissed me.
And this time, I kissed him back with everything we’d survived, every broken piece remade, every shadow burned away.
The stars outside the window blurred, and somewhere behind us, the ship shifted into motion. We were going home, to Hoerst.
EPILOGUE
The shrine stood hidden in a valley of glass and fire, carved from pale stone and veined with gold. The air shimmered with heat and reverence. There were no crowds. No throne. No titles. Just the two of us, standing on sacred ground in the presence of Fraysa.
A single flame, equal parts blue and gold, burned low before her statue, nestled in the hollow between outstretched hands and the intricate circlet of the goddess’s crown. Around it, the walls were covered with sigils old as the planet—unreadable, yet the meanings rang clear somewhere in the back of my mind. A dish of river stones, impossibly smooth and cold, balanced on the altar’s lip and caught the dancing shadows. The flame flickered as if it recognized us, as if it had been waiting all these years for us to finally return.
I reached for Mallack’s hand, and he met mine halfway, his fingers warm and rough and entirely, beautifully familiar. I woke up in the dim cave, alone and devoid of memories, not even knowing my own name. The first time I saw him, I dashed right past him onto the spaceship. He followed me, and though I couldn't admit it, it felt as if my soul recognized him even then. Even before he told me my name, before the fragments of memory pieced together, I remembered his eyes. The certainty there. The promise. Now, there was no more confusion, no more ache of unknowing; I was Daphne. I was his. He was mine.
For a long moment we stood, not speaking, breathing in the scent of dust and melted wax and the faintest sweetness of crushed stone. In this place, time was a thread stretched so thin you could see the memories strung along it like beads: Every version of us, every faded echo, converged in a single heartbeat.
Mallack turned to me, and in the strange light, his eyes were blacker than the basalt columns lining the shrine, deeper than any shadow. They gleamed with tears, and with something bright and sharp behind them, a love so fierce it nearly frightened me. “You are my beginning,” he said, his voice cracking, almost childlike in its earnestness. “My end. My only ever.”
He held out the candle we’d brought, the one we’d made together before the journey. I took it in both hands, and together we leaned into the altar. The flame from Fraysa’s statue reached out, bridged the gap, and set our candle alight. For an instant, the two flames remained separate, parallel, each burning with its own color and energy. Then, as the wax softened and the wicks curved closer, they merged. One flame, feeding on two hearts, burning higher.
That was the moment the past and future collided, and all the things I might have said about the first life and the lives before that, about the pain and the joy and the long, tireless search, vanished. There was only us, and the warmth between our hands, and the light that blessed our faces.
Mallack drew a ragged breath. “I vow, here, now, that I will find you in every world. Every time. Every place the stars scatter us, I will remember. Even if the gods themselves tear us apart, I will not lose you.”
I smiled with tears running down my cheeks and repeated the ancient words from the book of Fraysa. “I will seek you in the next life. And the next. I will love you even if you do not remember me, even if the darkness comes and you become a stranger, I will find you and love you anyway. I will love you until the end of the worlds and after.”
The words fell into the silence, and the shrine received them. The air grew heavy, vibrated with the energy of old faiths and older promises, with the loves that came here before us and would come after us. I closed my eyes and let the heat of the candle soak into my skin. It didn’t burn; it healed. The hollow inside me that had gaped and ached for so long, that threatened to swallow me from the inside, was suddenly filled, as if some essential piece had at last found its way home.
Mallack shifted closer, and we pressed our foreheads together. The candle flame danced at the edge of my vision, burning a constellation behind my eyelids. When I opened them, I saw myself reflected in his eyes, and him in mine, and thousands of lifetimes rippled between us.
“We’re bound,” he said, a trace of laughter in the words, though his voice still trembled.
“For eternity,” I replied, then, “For longer than eternity. For every story the gods have ever told.”
The flame on the altar burned higher, and a strange wind circled the shrine, swirling my hair, lifting the edges of Mallack’s coat. The air itself seemed to shimmer with meaning. I felt it, the veil of the goddess, descend on us like an embrace. All around, tiny motes of light—diamond-bright and spinning—filled the air, catching on our skin, crowning us. We had found Fraysa’s blessing once again.
Mallack kissed me, and the old world ended. The new world began.
We knelt side by side at the altar and offered our vows, and in that moment, there was no separation. Two bodies, maybe, but one soul, one story, finally at peace.
Mallack spread out his coat on the ground where furs had been placed to receive the goddess’s last blessing. Without a word, we began to undress. No matter how many times I had seen my mate now without clothes, he still managed to amaze me. Old scars didn’t mar but, instead, accentuated his thick muscles. His aqua skin gleamed darker in the candlelight, and the scales on his right arm and shoulder glimmered like diamonds. Slowly, I moved forward and put my hand on his chest to feel the tautstretch of his ropey muscles and the strong beat of his heart slamming against my palm. Mallack’s hand settled on my hip, steady and warm and so careful, as if I might break in his hold in stark contrast to his hot gaze that carried a hunger that went so deep it was nearly animalistic. The holy fire of the shrine cast wild patterns over our skin, painting us in blue and gold. I watched the way his gaze traced every new inch of me, reverent, worshipful, almost desperate to map each memory of my body to those lost to time and pain.
He kissed my collarbone, and the world around us blinked out for a moment, all the centuries and previous selves folding down into this single, white-hot instant. His tongue lingered over the scar on my neck—an old wound I had no memory of, but it didn’t bother me at all—and when he pulled back, his teeth dragged gently, just enough to send a shudder chasing through my limbs. We fell together over the pile of furs, limbs tangling, laughter and sighs echoing in the silence of the shrine.
My body was alive in his arms, blood singing with the thrill of something both new and eternal. There was no script or choreography, just the raw wonder of rediscovery. His hand threaded into my hair, his lips split open on my shoulder; softly, we mumbled each other’s names.
