Page 65 of The Threads Between

I studied her then, truly studied her, committing every detail to memory: the copper threads in her hair catching firelight, the precise shade of her eyes, the strength that had settled into her bones. The way her jaw set when she made a decision. The way her fingers pressed against my skin—warm and real and chosen.

For months the pendant had crushed every thought of her before it could fully form. I would feel something—warmth, longing, the pull of the thread between us—and it would dissolve into grey nothing before I could name it.

Now there was nothing between my feeling and my knowing.

“I need to say something,” I told her.

She waited.

“I love you.”

The words came unpolished and absolute. No corruption to crush them. No cold to scatter them before they could form. Just the truth, finally spoken aloud, after months of feeling it dissolve every time I tried to hold it.

“I loved you before all of this. I loved you through the corruption, when I was a monster wearing my own face. And I love you now—aware, whole, and kneeling before you—because this is where I choose to stay. Yours.” My voice cracked. “Completely yours.”

Tears slid down her cheeks. But she was smiling now—broken and brilliant and entirely her.

“I love you too.”

I had known. Of course I had known. But hearing it—hearing the words in her voice, watching her mouth shape them—was something else entirely. Something I wanted to live inside.

“You nearly died to save me,” I said.

“I would do it again.”

“I know.” I pressed my forehead to hers. “That knowledge humbles me more than you understand.”

She let out a sound that was almost laughter and almost grief. “We chose each other. That is what makes this different.”

Yes. That was it exactly—not arrangement, not obligation, not the cold mathematics of family alliances and social standing. Just two people who had looked at each other across impossible distances and decided, you.

I kissed her.

Not frantic. Not desperate. A choice made freely and executed with full awareness of what it meant.

Her mouth was soft. Warm. She tasted of salt from tears and the particular alchemy that was simply her. Her hand slid into my hair, and I felt my entire body shudder at the contact, at the reality of being touched by someone who wanted to touch me.

Three months of absence folded into the slow press of it. Every moment I had felt her through the bond and been unable to reach her. Every time I had tried to move, to speak, to fight my way back to the surface. Every fragment of memory I had watched dissolve—our first kiss, her face, the sound of her laugh—while I screamed silently in the dark.

She was here now. I was here now. And the kiss was proof.

When we parted, it was less like release and more like dropping anchor in safe harbor after months at sea.

“May I hold you?” I asked quietly, “before we face what comes next?”

She shifted to make space.

I lay beside her carefully, drawing her against my chest. Her head settled beneath my chin, her hand resting over my heart.

Directly over the pendant.

Cold pulsed beneath the metal. Her palm pressed warm against it, as if she could hold the corruption at bay through touch alone. The contrast should have undone me. Instead, it steadied something that had been shaking for months.

Beneath the corruption, my heart beat steady and alive.

I let myself feel it. The simple miracle of lying beside someone. Of being warm. Of having a body that obeyed me when I asked it to move. Of breathing in rhythm with another person and knowing they chose to be there.

“I used to think love was a weakness,” I said into her hair as my arms tightened around her. “Something that made you vulnerable, that could be used against you. But you walked into a burning building for me. Stepped into the void that was consuming me. Nearly died pulling me back together piece by piece.” I pressed my lips to her temple. “My father made himself a fortress. And he is utterly alone inside it. I would rather be vulnerable with you than alone like him.”