“No, I should—I shouldn’t be putting this on you.”

He pulls my hand up with his own, putting it to his heart. “You had to be strong for a long time on your own, didn’t you?”

I can feel two heartbeats under my palm—mine and his. His, in his chest, and mine kept in the bag near his chest.

“You have me now,” he presses. “And Malachite and Fione. But I like to think you have me most of all. Your problems are my problems. Your feelings are my feelings. We deal with them together—that’s what it means. Or what I think it means, anyway. To be in love.”

His face flushes red on the edges, and the sight bubbles up a laugh in me.

He cocks his head, still smiling. “What?”

“You,” I say. “Just you.”

He leans in, bit by bit, until he’s almost touching my lips with his as he echoes me.

“Just you.”

I don’t know how long we stay up or when we fall asleep, but when I next wake, the sun’s slatting through the branches from above, a particularly intense light lancing right into my face. I eke out of Lucien’s arms, blinking away sun dust, and look up.

“Thank you, gods. Needed that one right in the eye.”

“Oh, relax,” Malachite drawls from a stump, whittling a piece of wood with his boot dagger. “You have five more of them.”

I stand up and stretch, turning it into a formal bow. “Good morning to you too, grumpy.”

“Interestin’ approach to thanking the guy who just covered your last three shifts.”

I meander to him and peer over his shoulder at the carving—a little dog. Lucien was right. I do have him. Him, and Fione, and Malachite. They’re still here, after everything. Gratitude.

What is gratitude, but a promise made whole?

I sneak in a quick kiss to the side of the beneather’s pale face. “Thank you dearly, dear.”

He wipes his cheek with the back of his knife hand and grimaces. But when I turn away, I swear I see a flash of a contented smirk.

When Lucien and Fione wake up, I tell them. Gathered around the remains of last night’s fire and a breakfast of freshly picked summer blackberries, I tell them everything I saw in my dream last night—the valkerax attacking Windonhigh, the valkerax flying, Varia’s boot, and the glass and bone trying so desperately to meet.

“She knows where you are? All the time?” Fione presses.

“Maybe? I got the feeling she’d know if she touched me in the dream.”

“Either way, we should think about leaving shortly,” Lucien dryly muses. I catch him mid-eating, and he flashes one of his golden smiles at me, flooding warmth into my whole body. My return smile feels goofy almost. Blissful.

what have you done, to earn this?