Page 95 of Of Empires and Dust

“Things like what?”

“You’re such a fucking idiot,” she said, laughing again. “Kallinvar, you are my counterpoint in this world. You are the thing around which everything flows. It has been that way since as long as I can remember. Your company, your conversation, your heart. That heart that does nothing but care for others. I would have given the moon and the stars to have met you before all this. To have found you and held you…”

“Ruon—”

“No, shut up. It’s taken me over six hundred years to speak these words. I was always so afraid of destroying what we had. But if everything might end, I refuse to go quietly into Achyron’s halls.” She swallowed hard. “I love you in a way that physically hurts. I feel it clenching in my chest. I feel it in the way my heart aches every time yours does. And now, as I sit here, finally saying these words out loud, I realise how many nights we’ve lost because I’ve been too much of a coward to speak my mind. How many nights we’ve both spent cold and alone that could have been warm and together. I like to think there’s a world out there in which we did meet, and we had children, and they had children, and we died old, me first so I wouldn’t have to spend a moment without you. But that world isn’t this world, and so I’ll settle for every second I can get. I’m not scared anymore. I know you love me. I know you would stand by my side through anything in this life. That you would give the air in your lungs so that I could breathe. That you would walk through fire to keep me safe. I know because you would do that same thing for a man you’d never met, and that is why I love you. Because you are the single greatest soul I have ever known in this horrible, bloody,godsforsaken world. You sit around and wallow and think that the best of us died with Verathin, but you are wrong. Even he knew it. You are everything this knighthood is meant to be. You?—”

“Ruon.”

“What?”

Kallinvar reached across and rested his hand against her chin, brushing the tears from her cheek with his thumb. “Stop talking.”

He looked into her eyes. Those beautiful, vivid green eyes he had looked into a thousand times over – those eyes that searched his soul – and pressed his lips against hers, his heart seeming to swell in his chest.

In that moment, he felt calmer and safer than at any other point in his life. His lips pulled away from hers for just a second, their foreheads pressing together, their noses touching. “I have loved you for the better half of a thousand years.”

“I know.” Ruon kissed him once more, her fingers tangling through the hair at the back of his head. “You are never alone, Kallinvar. Never. We will do what must be done, and we will do it together. And if we die in the trying, then we will see each other again in Achyron’s halls. I just need you to promise me one thing.”

Kallinvar stroked the sides of Ruon’s head with his thumbs. “Name it.”

“I need you to promise you won’t die before me.”

Kallinvar shook his head gently. “You know I can’t do that.”

“I know,” she said, smiling softly. “I just had to ask.”

Ruon pulled away and stood. She walked to the door and reached out her hand. “Are you coming?”

“Where?”

“To bed, Kallinvar. And then we will sleep, because two suns have set since the last time you did. And then we will make the hard choice, and we will do our duty.”

Chapter 22

Deep in the Belly

10thDay of the Blood Moon

Somewhere in the Dwarven Freehold of Lodhar – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom

Silence and darknesswere all Kira knew. Echoes drifted down the corridor outside, the creak of metal, the occasional drum of footsteps, the sounds of the groaning mountain.

She lay on her back, partly unwilling to move, partly unable. It had been days since she’d found the strip of red cloth. Days since that ray of hope had faded. How naive had she been to think anyone was coming for her? Hoffnar was meticulous. He always had been. The reality was that every member of her guard had likely returned to the stone and that the Belduarans were dead, their blood feeding the mountain. The king toyed with her, twisting her mind.

She still held the strip of linen in her right hand, the fabric soft against her cracked skin.

Kira grunted as she tried to lift herself upright, the air catching in her throat, pain flaring. They’d fed her that morning. Stale bread and dried goat. But afterwards, they’d kicked her so hard in the ribs she’d spewed most of it up in the middle of the cell.

That was one positive: she’d spent long enough in this place that the smell of her own vomit, shit, and piss was barely noticeable.

Eventually, she gave up trying to move and just let her head rest on the hard stone, her eyes closing to the same darkness as when they were open. She gave a deep sigh, her lungs and throat groaning as she did. Perhaps Hafaesir had abandoned her, or perhaps he had never watched over her at all. Either way, she was alone now and she would die alone. But she would not die quietly. When they came for her, she would fight. And she would return herself to the stone rather than let Hoffnar do it for her.

Kira joltedawake at the creaking sound of the door bolts sliding open. She tried to move, but her body fought back, weak and broken. Her eyes were all but stuck shut, blinding blue-green light burning through her lids. Where the cell had been dark and silent, it was now bright as the sun and filled with thunder, the sudden shift overwhelming her senses.

Hands grabbed at her torn tunic and slipped beneath her armpits, hauling her upright. She heard voices but couldn’t distinguish the words amidst the chaos of shouts and metal boots clanging against stone. She tightened her fist, the strip of red linen still tangled between her fingers.

“Get your… hands… off…” It had been days since a word had left Kira’s lips, and she barely had the energy to stay awake.

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