Page 110 of Stormvein
“And I’m yours.” Her arms wind around my neck, lips finding my jaw, my throat, my mouth.
When she throws her head back, I watch her face as pleasure builds again. The flush spreading across her cheeks, the way her lips part, her eyes half-closed but never leaving mine. When she comes apart a second time, the sight of her abandon, the sound of my name on her lips, the way her body tightens around mine—it all pulls me over the edge with her.
Pleasure crashes through me in waves. My shadows flare with the intensity of it, momentarily plunging the room into darkness before receding. For a moment, I forget everything. Revenge, plans, the years of imprisonment, torture.
There is only this. Only her. Only us.
Afterward, we lie tangled together, sweat cooling on our skin, breathing gradually slowing. She curls against my side, her head finding its place on my chest where she can hear my heartbeat. Her hair spills across my skin, new streaks of silver mixing with the brown, while her fingers draw idle patterns over my chest and stomach. No longer searching for wounds, but simply wanting to touch.
I find myself doing the same, my hand moving slowly along the curve of her spine, memorizing the silky softness of her skin, the small dip at the base of her back.
“I keep thinking I’ll wake up and find this was all a dream. That you’ll still be dying, and I’ll be helpless to stop it.”
I press my lips to the top of her head. “I’m here. I’m alive.”
She raises herself up on one elbow, and palms my jaw, bringing my head around to meet her gaze. “Promise me something.”
“What?”
“When you go to Blackstone Ridge, I go with you.” The determination in her eyes is impossible to ignore. “I won’t stay behind while you face Sereven. Not after everything that’s happened.”
I study her face in the dim light. “You understand the danger of being there.”
“Better than most,” she counters. “I’ve seen what he’s capable of. What he did to you.”
I understand what she’s telling me. That her stake in this isn’t about justice or resistance, it’s about something far more personal to her.
“I won’t leave you behind.”
She nods once, accepting my word, then settles back against my chest. Her breathing gradually slows as sleep claims her. After days of desperate vigilance, of holding my death at bay with nothing but her sheer force of will, she finally surrenders to exhaustion.
I remain awake, one hand moving absently through her hair, up and down her spine, while my mind turns to Blackstone Ridge, and the confrontation that potentially awaits us there … to justice long overdue.
But for the first time since my initial capture all those years ago, something has shifted in my purpose. The shadows inside me still hunger for Sereven’s blood, for justice against the Authority. That hasn’t changed. But now they curl protectively around Ellie’s sleeping form, responding to desires I’ve never acknowledged.
When I first encountered her, she was nothing more than a means to an end—the key to my freedom, a tool to break my binding, and nothing more. I calculated her usefulness with the same precision I applied to everything else in my need to survive.
Now, holding her in my arms and watching her sleep against my chest, I recognize that something essential has changed. The prophecy spoke of shadow and storm uniting, but never mentioned what that union would create within me.
Sereven will pay for what he’s done. To me, to the Veinwardens, to countless others whose names are lost to time. But my purpose has expanded beyond mere vengeance.
Maybe the prophecy saw this. Maybe my summons finding her wasn’t mere chance, but something written in the stars long before either of us drew breath.
She sighs in her sleep, shifting closer, one leg sliding between mine. My arms tighten around her, holding her close.
Freedom, I told her when she asked what I wanted. And for the first time, I begin to consider what that freedom might look like. What it might mean to exist beyond the Authority. What it might mean to live rather than to survive.
If we survive what’s coming. If we manage to defeat Sereven. Might there be a future I never dared to imagine? One that includes her?
The last conscious thought I have before surrendering to darkness is that I might have found something worth building from the ashes of destruction.
Something worth surviving for.
Chapter Twenty-Six
ELLIE
There is no peace between memory and consequence.
