Him. A kiss, a clasp, fire burning in my mouth and in my stomach and in my face and he’s everywhere and I want him to be everywhere. The hunger evaporates in the heat, there one moment and gone the next, not even ash left.

Ah, some faint part of my disconnected brain thinks, so a kiss can be like this. Not like the world ending. But like the world beginning, too.

It has to end. Everything has to end sometime, and time stops behaving badly when I least want it to—cold air lashing my skin as we pull apart.

“Every day.” He cups my face in his hands, his gloves doing nothing to stop the warmth radiating from his palms. “Every day you weren’t at my side dragged on like slow torture.”

“I’m sorry.” I laugh. “It was my duty, wasn’t it? To keep you entertained. And I vanished on you.”

“This is not entertainment—” His lips meet mine, mumble half buried in my skin. “This is a promise. You and I, for as long as Arathess exists with us on it. And after that. And after that.”

It’s silly. It’s sweet. Can I have this? Do I deserve this? Maybe. Maybe not.

Maybe what I deserve is not for me to decide.

I can’t even think about the past. It’s blown away, like strong wind over dandelions. Every mistake, every hurt, every betrayal, everything we did to each other in Vetris, said to each other—these kisses heal it all shut. Heal it all closed. They will scar—of course they will. But they’ve stopped bleeding.

And I’m so deliriously glad to stop bleeding.

My laugh this time is water, running unsteadily and recklessly. “I’ll have you know, eternity is unbearable.”

He leans his forehead on mine, our breath mixing white in the freezing air and his dark eyes gleaming with sun. “But with me?”

“But with you, Lucien d’Malvane.” I kiss his proud nose, making a pressed line down to his lips. “Far less so.”

3

3

THE HARDEST
PROMISE

Love is, of course, a tad bit different for me than it is for everyone else.

Lucien is still very much my witch. But it’s hard to remember that when we spend the rest of the afternoon wandering Breych’s hundred bridges, taking in every angle of the view, and talking about nothing at all—jokes about the nobles back home, about my time in the woods, his childhood memories. He says Fione’s all right, as all right as anyone can be after losing their loved one. Varia threatens at the surface of it all, his parents and his people, too. But he pulls it back—for me or for himself, I can’t tell.