Until now.
I was sitting on the floor again, this time beside the cot. Ezra was stretched across it, a thermal blanket laid over him, and I rejoiced over each slow breath he took.
The warehouse was quiet. As soon as the healing was completed and Ezra was comfortable, Darius had whisked Elisabetta and Miles away—returning them to the guild before anyone, namely the MPD, noticed they’d left. Lucky for all of us, our GM’s lumina magic made stealth operations simple.
Zak had slipped away to scout the area and ensure no one had noticed anything unusual, while I kept my butt parked beside Ezra. I wasn’t leaving him, period.
He’d survived—the ritual, the battle afterward, and his injuries. Joyful relief shivered in my gut, but a layer of utter emotional exhaustion muted the feeling. I was spent. Waiting in a numb stupor, I lost all sense of time.
It wasn’t until Ezra’s fingers tightened around mine that I stirred back to full awareness. I lifted my head.
A warm, weary brown eye gazed at me. The left side of his face was bandaged, exacerbating his usual asymmetry. Elisabetta and Miles had focused on healing Ezra’s worst wounds, leaving the damage to his old scars to be healed later.
I pushed onto my knees. “Ezra?”
He squeezed my fingers. “Am I in one piece?”
“All limbs and digits presently accounted for.” I pressed my hand to his cheek. “How do you feel?”
“Like I took the worst beating of my life.” His forehead scrunched, then smoothed. His eye slid closed, and his expression went alarmingly tranquil. “Hmm …”
“Ezra?” I squeaked.
“I can’t even remember the last time …” As he trailed off, his eye opened and he gingerly turned his head to stare across the room where the ritual circle had been. “He’s gone.”
“Yes. He … he’s dead. We buried him.” I hesitated. “Do you think he …?”
Ezra said nothing, his gaze distant. Was he reliving the final moments of his desperate battle with Eterran, analyzing each moment?
Eventually, he refocused on me. “You’re okay?”
“I’m fine—though if not for that barrier, I would’ve been in there with you. I thought the damn thing was supposed to keep demons in, not people out.”
“Hmm. That’s true of a regular summoning circle, but it sort of makes sense for a demon mage ritual to trap the human too.” A shadow passed over his face. “In case the human host tries to change their mind.”
Had that ever happened? During his time at the cult, had he seen a prospective demon mage try to flee in mid-ritual?
“I’m glad it kept you safe,” he added.
I scrutinized him as though I’d never seen him before. “So, you’re alone in your own head now. How does that feel?”
“It feels … empty.”
“I think that’s normal. You’ll get used to it.” I tilted my head. “And you’re no longer doomed to die. How does that feel?”
He reached up, his arm quivering with the effort, and cupped my cheek. “It feels like I can breathe properly for the first time in a very long time.”
Tears welled in my eyes.
“Tori …” His thumb caressed my cheek. “I want to kiss you without a demon in my head.”
He was still finishing his sentence as I pushed up off the floor. I slid onto the cot beside him, pressed gently against his side, and brought my mouth to his.
We kissed, and my heart swelled in my chest until it threatened to burst from my ribs. My lungs struggled for air through the hot bubble of relief lodged inside me—the respite from the terror and grief and anguish of the past hours, days, weeks, and months.
We’d saved him—his life and his soul. We’d done the impossible. We’d unmade a demon mage.
With reluctance, I drew back from Ezra’s mouth. “You need to rest and recover your strength. We still have to deal with MagiPol and the Court.”
“That,” Ezra murmured with a faint smile, “is Darius’s arena. He’ll already have a plan. He always knows what to do when it comes to the MPD.”
Very true. Darius was our expert tactician for anything and everything involving MagiPol and their laws.
I combed Ezra’s hair away from his face. “You should still rest, though.”
He obediently closed his eyes, a low sigh sliding from his lungs. His breathing slowed again, and I wrapped my hands around his, watching as he drifted into a weary, healing-induced sleep.
Even injured and exhausted, his sleep was more peaceful than I’d ever seen it.
Chapter Nineteen
Ezra pulled on a black t-shirt and tugged it down his torso, careful of the bandages taped over his damaged scars. The five punctures from Eterran’s talons didn’t need to be covered—they’d healed to pink lines—and after ten hours of sleep, the aeromage was looking half alive instead of half dead.
“I cleaned your shoes,” I told him. “You can’t even tell they were drenched in blood.”
“If not, you’d be going barefoot,” Zak added helpfully, his black backpack—containing what I suspected was everything he owned, from which he’d just donated a shirt—hanging from his shoulder.
“I can face any trial or tribulation as long as I have shoes.” Ezra sat on the cot, and I nudged his shoes over to him with my foot. “Are we forgetting anything?”
I glanced around the warehouse. I’d scrubbed all the ritual lines and blood from the floor. The cots we were leaving behind, and Zak had packed the remaining food into his bag. Robin’s gray backpack hung from my shoulders, stuffed with the cult grimoire, the ritual notes, the case of demon blood, Ezra’s combat gloves, Eterran’s wrist bracer, my heavy-duty belt, and orb-Hoshi, still dormant and tucked in the belt’s back pouch.
“We’re good,” I said.
Zak drew the hood of his coat up, though without Lallakai’s magic, the shadows didn’t completely hide his face. “Then let’s go.”
I grabbed Ezra’s hand and led the way to the doors. He was moving stiffly but without a limp. The bandages on the left side of his face, covering his eye, looked starkly white against his bronze
