Page 118 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
“Yeah. Sure. That too.” She gave him a sidelong look. “But also maybe a little cursed? I mean, what if I walk into a bar and accidentally germinate a cactus next to the jukebox?”
He stopped walking.
Just stood there.
Then tilted his head, mouth twitching.
“I don’t know what a jukebox is,” he said. “Or a podcast, if I’m being honest.”
She stared at him.
Then laughed.
It broke out of her like light through cracked stone. Raw. Real. Joyful.
The sound startled the birds around them into flight.
He smiled.
They kept walking.
When they reached the edge of the Hollow, they turned back, shoulder to shoulder, and looked down over what they had survived.
The Watcher had fallen.
Split clean through, the upper curve of its head collapsed in a spray of dark stone. Vines grew now from the cracks. A fine shimmer of pollen drifted from the breach.
It no longer looked like something watching.
It looked like something that had wept.
Asher reached for her hand.
She gave it without hesitation.
The wind passed over them again. It moved through her hair like fingers. It curled under her jaw like a whisper.
The words weren’t spoken aloud.
But she heard them.
You may stay.
Nora looked out over the basin.
Then at the sky.
Then at him.
“I think it’s ours now,” she said.
Asher didn’t speak.
Just squeezed her hand.
And in the silence between them, something deep and old gave way.
CHAPTER 24
