“Yes?” he answered, drawing his hands down to her waist, the pressure of his fingers warm through the thin fabric of her shirt.

“I don’t know what happens to us—to me—when this is all over,” she said. “But right now, I need you here even if that means I ask you to do terrible things, to watch me do terrible things.” She drew her head up to look into his eyes. “Because you’ve done this. You’ve compromised parts of yourself in service to others. You’ve turned yourself into something terrible and vicious. But that’s not why I need you. I need you by my side because after you did all of that, you made your way back.” She flattened her palms against his chest, feeling the heat radiating off him. “When this is over, I want to be able to come back from all that I’ve done. I want you to help me do that.”

“Hell.” Oran frowned, his head bowing slightly, fingers pulling at her waist. “I don’t think I came back.”

“But you did, I saw you. I know you. And if you hadn’t, you couldn’t . . . say the things you say.”

Oran blew out a breath, staring into her eyes as he wrestled to accept what she was saying. And what she wouldn’t say.

In the end, he whispered, “I wish you’d let me take that fight, Cala.”

“There are some things no one can do but me.”

“I hate that that is true.” He sighed sharply, hot breath puffing against her chin, then he nodded. “But I will stand by your side and I won’t let you fall. Because I—”

She pressed a hand to his mouth, suddenly desperate not to hear the words she could not, would not repeat back to him, not until after, if she managed to drag herself out of this hell.

But Oran pulled her fingers from his lips and said, “Because I’m yours. To the end.”

Caledonia rested her head on his chest as she repeated, “To the end,” not really knowing what it would mean for them but feeling certain that the end was much closer than it had ever been before.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Taking over a city was not as straightforward as running a fleet, and the next day passed in a blur of figuring out basic resources like water and food, creating a harbor schedule, and securing the perimeter.