Page 54 of Scorched Veil
She's quiet for a moment, and I think she's fallen back asleep. Then she squeezes my hand.
"Good."
She doesn't ask what happened. She doesn't need to. She knows who I am and what I do, and she chose me anyway.
I hold her tighter and listen to her breathing slow until she's under again.
It's over.
She's safe, and she's mine.
And I will burn the entire world down before I ever let anyone touch her again.
EPILOGUE
SUMMER
One month later
The scars are healing.
Not gone, they won't be gone for a long time, maybe ever. But the cuts on my arms have closed into thin pink lines, the bruises have faded from purple to yellow to nothing, and the split in my lip is just a faint white mark I can feel with my tongue if I look for it.
I sleep now, not well, not always, but I sleep. Kairo still wakes up before me, still checks the monitors, and still has Andreas run security sweeps twice a day. He thinks I don't notice. I notice everything, I always have. But the panic that used to sit in my chest like a stone has loosened. Some days I don't feel it at all.
The island looks different to me now, or maybe I look at it differently. The humidity doesn't feel like suffocation anymore. It feels like a wall between me and everything that happened out there, and I'm grateful for it.
I swim every morning. I read in the library. I eat dinner with my husband, and sometimes we talk, and sometimes we don't, and both feel easy. He still watches me like I might disappear,still pulls me into his chest in the middle of the night when he thinks I'm asleep, still whispers things into my hair that he'd never say in daylight.
Today I'm nervous, and I don't do nervous well.
I've been planning this for two weeks. I found the tattoo artist through one of the staff, and she made some calls, asked around the village, and came back with a name and a phone number written on the back of a receipt. I called him myself, explained what I wanted, where I wanted it, and how it needed to look. He came to the villa yesterday while Kairo was on a call with Andreas, set up in one of the guest rooms, and I lay face down on the bed and bit the inside of my cheek while he worked.
It's simple black ink, clean lines, just his name.
Kairo.
Low on my back, centered at the base of my spine, right where his hands always settle when he pulls me against him. Right where he'll see it when he's behind me. He tattooed my name on his body five years before I knew he existed, and I'm choosing to put his on mine.
I'm standing in the bathroom, my back to the mirror, craning over my shoulder to check it one more time. The skin is still tender, slightly raised, but the letters are perfect. Bold enough to read, small enough that it's just for him, just for us.
I hear his footsteps in the bedroom.
My heart kicks once, hard, and I pull my shirt down. I'm wearing one of his, it’s black, too big, and hits me mid-thigh. Nothing underneath, I've thought about how to show him. Something clever, something dramatic.
He appears in the doorway, leaning against the frame the way he always does, arms crossed, watching me like I'm the only thing in the room worth looking at. His hair is damp from the pool. Salt, chlorine, and sunscreen.
"Come here," I say.
His eyebrow lifts, he's not used to me giving the orders. But he pushes off the frame and walks toward me, and I can see the exact moment his expression shifts from amused to alert. He reads me too well.
"What are you up to?" He smirks while still being on alert.
"Turn me around."
He stops in front of me, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off his skin. His eyes search my face as he is confused by my request.
"Turn me around, Kairo."
