Page 144 of Keldori By Daybreak

The nothingness slowly bled into a dull awareness of uneasy sleep. Panic nudged at the back of my mind, though I couldn’t remember what it was I was panicking about. Still though, my heart raced and anxiety turned me clammy.

“It’s okay,” a voice soothed me from the dark. “You’re safe. Sleep.”

The panic ebbed, and while the voice didn’t say anything else, I still felt its presence swirling at the edges of my mind.

Ciarán.

Hours passed within moments, but I felt time’s weight in the stiffness of my muscles. The fog in my head peeled away, and I slowly became aware of my surroundings.

The ground was uneven beneath my back, but a cloak kept me off the dirt. I could feel its fabric beneath my hands and smell Ciarán’s musk in the folds beneath my face.

I forced my eyes open and blinked in the soft glow of the opalized roots that dipped in and out of the cavern ceiling overhead.

Of course. This was where Ciarán had left me before we’d infiltrated Caitria’s camp. I remembered—

My heart leapt to my throat, and my hand flew to my ribs in search of the stab wound. Instead I found I was no longer in my ripped and bloodied tunic, but my green dress from Willow’s Grave.

And my ribs?

They felt better than they had since before I’d come to Skalterra.

Because I’d healed them, and Ciarán—

Ciarán.

My heart was hammering again, and I struggled to sit, trying to find him in the gloom of the cave.

“Ciarán?” His name grated against my dry throat.

A hand found the space between my shoulders, and Ciarán appeared overhead as he helped me to sit.

“Wren?” His eyes were wide and full of fear, as if bracing for me to disappear into dust again.

My hand traced the edge of his face.

“You’re okay,” I breathed.

“Me? You were the one dying.”

I wove my fingers into the loose hair at the back of his head, and we stared at each other, each waiting to see what the other did first. He was completely out of Skal, and his eyes were just like Liam’s now.

Good, brave Liam. I’d loved him. I felt comfortable admitting that now, but Liam had only been a part of a whole.

That “whole” was messy and conflicted and brooding, but he was just as good and brave as Liam too, and every beat of my heart sent his blood pumping through my arteries and veins.

I was better for it, to have such a vital piece of him sustaining me.

And it hadn’t killed me. Not yet, anyway.

I pulled Ciarán towards me and leaned in to meet him, forgetting about Saergrims and Grimguards and oaths, because in the face of death, none of those things mattered anyway.

All that mattered was him.

His lips were warm against mine. He inhaled in surprise, and then melted into me, wrapping his arms around the small of my back to draw me closer.

I laughed against his lips. We were alive. We were together.

“So you love me?” I grinned against his lips.