Work Text:
I.
The forge was running hot—perfectly so. Any hotter and she’d have to replace the upper baffles, and that was a chore she wasn’t in the mood for. But for now, the flames were obedient, the metal malleable, and her hands steady.
Xilonen leaned over the anvil in just her workwear—her gold coat hung neatly over the back of her chair, a clear sign to anyone passing by that she was not to be interrupted. Not unless they were on fire. And even then, she’d expect them to knock first.
By the time the second flame had stabilized and the tension rod stopped hissing, Xilonen knew she wasn’t going to finish this engraving today.
Not for lack of materials, or time, or will—her work ethic was the kind that kept her wrist taut even when her mind wandered. No, the problem was the noise. Too loud. The kind of noise that asked to be listened to.
The forge’s interior was cramped, but pleasantly so. Books with text on Ancient Name-crafting stacked beside half-sharpened chisels. She had a sugary fruit flavoured glass of water going lukewarm near the bellows and three sample blades cooling in sequence. Her coat—sun-gold and lined with the dark fur trim that marked it unmistakably hers—hung over the back of a wooden chair. She wore only her crop top and shorts now, her sandals leaving a faint pattern of dust on the stones. One of her earrings clicked faintly when she tilted her head.
She liked the weight of her jewelry when she worked. A reminder of balance. The softness of metal when made right.
The Children of Echoes had been unusually loud that afternoon—though perhaps not unusually, now that everyone was around more often. Xilonen didn’t usually mind the noise. She’d trained herself to tune out anything that didn’t smell like smoke or ring like copper. But something in the timbre of voices outside caught her attention now.
Familiar tones. A rhythm. A pause.
And there they were.
Little Kachina, flanked by Mualani and Kinich.
That in itself wasn’t rare. The three had been orbiting each other since… well, since the moment Xilonen had met them. But today the angle of it all was different. Xilonen couldn’t explain how she knew. She just did.
Kachina was doing most of the talking—something about a practice fight, likely hers—and Mualani was smiling in that cheery, enduring way of hers, her twin braids swinging as she tilted her head to listen. Kinich, off to the side, nodded once.
A quiet boy. Pragmatic. Efficient. From The Scions of the Canopy, which meant a thousand unspoken things. Xilonen had always considered him a little too sharp-edged, the kind of blade you didn’t carry unless you expected to use it. But he’d never once spoken out of turn in her presence, and she respected that.
Mualani, by contrast, was all sun. That easy laugh. That habit of treating everyone like a friend who just hadn’t introduced themselves yet. Xilonen liked her more than she’d admit aloud, mostly because Mualani never asked more from anyone than they were already willing to give.
So when Kinich reached for something behind Mualani’s ear—a piece of grass, a leaf, Xilonen couldn’t tell—and she tilted her head without flinching, Xilonen noticed.
He didn’t say anything. Just flicked the thing away with two fingers, then let his hand hover a beat too long near her braid. Mualani smiled, not even looking at him.
Not flirtation. Not show.
Familiarity.
Xilonen leaned forward, folding one elbow over the makeshift windowsill. The silver-and-gold zigzag bracelet on her wrist clicked softly against the stone.
They moved around each other like they had already practiced it. No missed steps. No hesitations. Kinich kept half a pace behind Mualani, always watching the ground when they stepped around the cracked stone. When Kachina started gesturing wildly again—something about blocking a blow from above—Mualani reached for her water gourd and found Kinich already holding it out.
Xilonen narrowed her eyes slightly. Practical. She could respect that.
He didn’t make a show of it. He didn’t grin or angle for thanks. He just handed the water over and kept his hand extended for a second longer, fingers brushing hers, until she took it.
They couldn't be lovers. Not the way Granny Citlali would insist them to be. No burning passion, no secret declarations under moonlight. Xilonen didn’t believe in that kind of nonsense anyway. Romance, to her, was a story too vague to be practical.
But that? That was real.
The kind of closeness that came from a hundred unseen exchanges. From a hand steadying another on a cliffside. From carrying silence together and never asking to fill it.
Kinich was looking at Mualani again. Not staring—he wasn’t the type—but watching her like she was a problem he had already solved and was still finding new answers for. Mualani said something—Xilonen couldn’t hear what—but it made the corner of his mouth twitch. A smile, nearly imperceptible. Warm.
That’s when Xilonen knew.
She pulled back from the window, brushing her black and gold nails against the underside of her chin, thoughtful. She reached for her coat and slung it over one shoulder—still sleeveless, still too warm for it, but a signal nonetheless. Time for a break.
She wasn’t about to go out there. That would invite conversation. Speculation. Emotion. Things she didn’t traffic in.
But she had seen something. Something quiet. Intentional.
Like a pressure point in metal—delicate, invisible until it was tested, but vital to the whole shape.
She wouldn’t mention it. Not to Granny Citlali, who would get all romantic like the characters in her light novels. Not to Kachina, who’d probably combust with questions, and then cry because she didn't know the answers. And certainly not to Kinich or Mualani, who clearly hadn’t even said anything aloud even to each other.
Still, as she stepped onto the smooth stone, the gold fringe of her nearly coat catching against the rock, Xilonen allowed herself a small, private smirk.
Of course it would be them. Of course it would happen like this. No fuss. No fire. Just gravity.
II.
The crowd had cheered.
Trumpets blared above the Stadium of the Sacred Flame, confetti spiralled into the air, and her Ancient Name—Uthabiti, the name she had once felt far too small to carry—now felt like it was truly hers.
And still, Kachina couldn’t hear anything over the sound of her own breath. Dry. Too loud in her ears.
She’d won.
And she'd beaten Mualani.
The first time she’d ever taken down someone she looked up to and loved so much. The first time she’d fought without being afraid—really fought, burned all the way through with resolve. And when the final strike landed—when her spear swept beneath Mualani’s feet in a flourish that had drawn gasps from the crowd—Kachina knew, instantly, that she had gone too far.
And there had been a moment—just one—when the cheering dimmed and her own triumph soured into panic. She hadn’t thought of victory. She’d only thought, I hurt her.
Even now, long minutes after the match had ended and she’d been ushered off the arena floor, her hands were still trembling in their gloves.
The infirmary lay just past the main corridor. Kachina pushed her way through the medics and contenders and staffers, head low under the brim of her colorful visor cap. Her orange jacket, tied around her waist, slapped against her legs with every stride. The ruffled underlayer of her tunic stuck to her back with sweat, her boots heavy on the tile. Her bandana, knotted tight at her neck, felt like it was choking her.
She didn’t deserve congratulations.
Not yet.
She just needed to see Mualani and apologize. Make sure she was alright. That she was breathing. That she didn’t hate her.
The infirmary door was open.
Kachina slowed. Her glove-clad hand hovered just over the edge of the frame.
She should’ve knocked.
She didn’t.
The lighting inside was gentle. The crackle of oil-lamps hummed soft in the silence, and the scent of herbs hung faintly in the air—moss balm, honey, gauze ink. She stepped in lightly, boots dull against the tile.
And froze.
Mualani lay on the nearest cot, propped slightly upright against the cushions. Her white-and-blue hair had mostly come undone, spilling over the edge of the bed. Her chest rose and fell evenly now, and her face, though still pale, no longer looked pained. There was a fresh bandage wrapped at her calf—Kachina’s strike had landed hard.
And Kinich was sat beside her.
The hunter’s usual sternness was gone—gone entirely. His shoulders, normally straight as a blade, had curved slightly forward. His green-black hair had come loose, the yellow strand curled faintly where it met his brow. There was no sign of Ajaw, likely having been shooed into timeout after a crude remark or two. Kinich’s gloves lay folded beside him on the floor, forgotten.
And his hand…
His hand was cradling Mualani’s face. Carefully. Reverently. Fingers spread along the curve of her cheekbone, his thumb brushing just below her eye in slow, absent-minded strokes. Again. And again.
Mualani hadn’t woken. But she had leaned toward the warmth.
It was such a small gesture. Unconscious, maybe. But it was real. Her face tilted faintly toward his palm, like her body remembered him even in sleep.
And Kinich…
He was looking at her like she was something ancient and precious. Something he’d been searching for without even realizing. His eyes—normally cool, unreadable—had gone soft around the edges. Unshielded.
“Mualani,” he whispered.
The sound of his voice was quiet, almost inaudible. Nothing in it was grand or poetic. There were no confessions. No declarations. But the way he said her name… as if it were a prayer.
Kachina felt her heart stutter in her chest.
She’d never seen Kinich like this. No one had. He was the sort of person people described in fragments: practical, severe, always calculating. Even when he was kind, it came at an angle. A logic-driven gesture, a reasonable reassurance. But here—
He was gentle.
No commission. No Ajaw. Just a boy, sitting beside a girl, brushing the pad of his thumb beneath her cheekbone like the whole world could be held in that touch.
Kachina’s chest clenched.
She took a step back before her boots could scuff against the floor. Something in her eyes burned—not tears, not quite. Just heat. Pressure. The ache of knowing she’d stepped into something sacred by accident.
She hadn’t knocked.
She hadn’t meant to spy.
But it didn’t matter.
She understood now, in a way she hadn’t before. The way they looked at each other wasn’t like teammates. It wasn’t even like old friends who had survived too much together. It was quieter than all of that. Subtler. But deeper, too.
This wasn’t just loyalty.
It was something deeper, that Kachina didn't even dare to name in fear of being wrong.
Not even confessed, probably. Not even conscious.
But there, undeniable, in every small motion. In the way Kinich watched her breathe. In the way Mualani leaned into his hand even while asleep. In the stillness between them, full of unspoken promises.
Kachina turned and left the hallway behind. Her boots echoed once—too loud—against the tile before she moved softer. Quieter.
She hadn’t asked to see that.
III.
She had no business being here, and she damn well knew it.
Lanterns floated like lazy fireflies over the springs, soft and gold and smug in the way they cast everyone’s faces in the kind of glow that made even the ugliest hearts look poetic. Steam coiled at her ankles as she sat at the edge with her sandals still on, skirt hiked up inelegantly, and a half-empty glass in her hand that definitely didn’t belong to her. Someone behind her was trying to play the panpipes, and they were doing a gods-awful job at it.
And Chasca was nearby, because of course she was.
“Careful,” the peacekeeper said, fighting a grin as she reached out when Citlali swayed a little too far sideways. “The stone’s are wet.”
“I’m not a toddler,” Citlali snapped, pulling her arm back. “I’ve walked on storm clouds twelve times older than you.”
Chasca just made a hum of agreement. The kind that said yes, yes, you’ve told me every time you drink. She didn’t push. She never did. She just sat close, a steady presence with feathers in her hat and some gods-damned sense of balance that made Citlali want to shove her into the water out of spite.
But her eyes drifted past Chasca, across the springs, and that was when she saw them.
Ugh. Of course.
Kinich and Mualani.
It was always Kinich and Mualani these days. They didn’t even try to pretend otherwise anymore.
Mualani was sunk up to her shoulders in the glowing spring, hair slicked back, cheeks pink with warmth and wine and the glow of victory. She leaned back against a moss-covered rock, one arm draped over it, her other hand flicking absent circles in the water. Beside her, Kinich knelt in the shallows, not quite submerged, his posture easy—loose in a way Citlali had never seen him except with her.
And he was doing that thing again.
Stroking Mualani’s cheek with the backs of his fingers, light as mist, like she was something delicate and rare. She tilted her head into it slightly, eyes half-lidded, and said something so quiet Citlali couldn’t hear. Kinich leaned in, lips moving in reply, his voice low and unreadable, the kind of voice that made people feel like he was telling them the truth even if he wasn’t.
Citlali took a long, ungraceful sip. “Vultures,” she muttered.
Chasca chuckled. “They’re not bothering anyone.”
“They’re bothering me.”
“Mm.”
“They always look like that,” Citlali whined, gesturing with her cup. “Like—like no one else exists. Like they’re in some private universe made of banter and fond touches and meaningful silences.”
“They’ve been through a lot together.”
“We all go through things. You don’t see me giving heart eyes in public.”
“Maybe you should.”
Citlali snorted. “You’re hilarious.”
Across the springs, Mualani shifted. She sat up slightly, scooted closer—too close—and whispered something into Kinich’s ear. He didn’t react at first, just blinked, slow and lizardlike, before curling his fingers around her jaw and brushing his thumb along her cheekbone, like he was memorizing her.
Citlali made a gagging sound.
“You’re very spiteful tonight, Granny Itztli,” Chasca observed.
“I’m not spiteful. I’m drunk and surrounded by fools.”
“And touched by beauty?”
“I’ll drown myself.”
But even as she said it, Citlali’s eyes stayed on them. Kinich had drawn some sort of symbol in the condensation between them with his free hand. Mualani laughed and leaned her forehead against his. It wasn’t a kiss. Not quite. But the way their hands tangled together beneath the water said everything else.
“Look at them,” she muttered. “He’s all soft now. She’s ruined him. That boy used to bite people.”
“I don’t think he ever bit anyone. You’re thinking of Ajaw.”
“He looked like he would. And now he’s—moon-eyed. Holding hands. Bathing.”
Chasca smiled into her own drink. “It’s nice, though. Isn’t it?”
“No. It’s insufferable. It’s smug. It’s the kind of love that thinks it invented love. Ajaw should finish the damn job already.”
“Or maybe it’s just real.”
Citlali didn’t answer. Not out loud.
She watched Kinich tilt Mualani’s chin toward him again. His fingers ghosted along the line of her neck. She leaned in without hesitation. They were both laughing at something now—quiet and familiar and entirely within their own atmosphere, the rest of the world uninvited.
Citlali closed her eyes.
“I hate them,” she said, voice softer now, more vulnerable than it had been a moment ago. “I hate how much they remind me of things I can’t have.”
Chasca didn’t speak. She just rested a hand on Citlali’s shoulder.
“Let them have it,” Citlali muttered with a groan. “Let them have each other. But if they start reciting poetry? I’m setting the spring on fire.”
“Good luck with that,” Chasca said, fighting off an amused grin.
IV.
They were laughing again.
Down in the clearing, beneath the shade of tall, wide trees and the sizzle-pop of grilling meat, Kinich and Mualani were laughing—real, out-loud, teeth-baring laughter. She had said something absurd, probably, and he had tried to grunt through it like a stone-faced pillar, only for a snort to betray him in the end.
Ajaw hovered above them like a curse-shaped cloud.
“I hope you choke on your joy,” he muttered, spinning slowly in the air with limbs dangling like an indignant marionette. “May your rice be undercooked. May your next step find a pebble. May your doomed romance die with the tides.”
“Aw,” Mualani chirped, looking up at him with a grin. “He’s sweet when he’s cranky.”
“I am not sweet, you hydrodynamic flowerpot.”
“She thinks you’re funny,” Kinich muttered under his breath, reaching for another skewer of meat without looking up. He was trying, valiantly, to pretend Ajaw did not exist. He had been trying that for years.
“She’s laughing at me. Not with me.” Ajaw twirled violently in place. “I am a primordial being of divine destruction, not a court jester in pixelated drag.”
“You’re kind of both,” Mualani said, perfectly deadpan.
Ajaw gasped.
“You dare. You amphibious delinquent.”
Kinich let out a long, slow sigh through his nose, the kind that probably predated recorded language. “Stop talking to him.”
“He’s adorable, Kinich. He looks like a lemon someone got mad at.”
“I’m a dragonlord,” Ajaw shrieked, vibrating with fury. “I burned entire cities for less than this! I invented pain!”
“You once got stuck inside a pickle jar,” Kinich said without looking up.
“That jar was enchanted! And sealed with five sacred glyphs!”
“That jar was glass, Ajaw.”
“It taunted me.”
Mualani was shaking now, head tilted back, laughter spilling out like a waterfall. “You two are like a comedy duo from the worst play ever written.”
“No, no,” Ajaw sniffed. “This isn’t comedy. This is tragedy. This is the slow, cruel erosion of a once-great soul into sidekickdom.” He turned his face to the sky, as though addressing the divine. “Do you hear me, Shade of Death? Keeper of Final Ends? This mortal is killing me. Emotionally.”
Kinich finally looked up—just long enough to fix Ajaw with the kind of tired, blank stare usually reserved for people who talk too loud at night markets.
“Go float over a fire,” he said.
Ajaw gasped again, this time with hand to forehead. “Abuse! Psychological warfare! Is this how you treat your elders?”
“You’re not even a hundred percent solid.”
“That’s a choice.”
“And yet,” Mualani hummed, “you’re always hanging around us. Must be lonely, being a divine menace with no one else to banter with.”
Ajaw gave her a side-eye from beneath his oversized sunglasses. “Don’t you psychoanalyze me, you beach-born sunfish.”
“I’m just saying,” she said, smiling too wide to be innocent, “you complain like a guy who’s mad no one invited him to the wedding.”
Ajaw flared orange at the cheeks. “Don’t say wedding like that! You’ll give him ideas!” He pointed dramatically at Kinich, who had gone completely still. “He’s thinking about it now, I know he is!”
Kinich had, in fact, stopped chewing.
His ears had gone faintly red.
Mualani laughed again, gentler this time, and nudged him with her shoulder. “Maybe I am too.”
Ajaw screamed into the sky.
A hawk overhead swerved sharply out of his path.
“Oh, to be slain by sentiment,” he moaned, curling into a floating ball. “To perish in a wave of romantic subtext. This is how the old gods fall. Drowned not in blood, but in disgusting flirtation.”
Kinich rubbed at his temple. “Do you ever stop talking?”
“No. Never. Not once.”
But he hovered a little closer now. Drifted just above Kinich’s left shoulder, where the heat of the fire and the warmth of Mualani’s laughter couldn’t quite reach, but came near enough to feel.
Just near enough.
Not because he liked them. That would be absurd.
Just because the sun was going down.
And it was getting cold.
V.
The celebration had long since burned itself out, leaving behind embers in the street—dying torches, half-drunk jars of tej, the ghost of laughter still clinging to the stones.
From the terrace above the Scions of the Canopy, her home, the Pyro Archon sat alone.
The elevation offered her a commanding view of the rope bridges below, though her gaze was not trained on the rooftops or platforms. Instead, her sunset eyes lingered on the two distant figures tucked beneath a rocky overhang, just barely lit by the guttering flames of a festival brazier.
Kinich sat with his back to the stone, legs stretched before him, one arm casually draped over Mualani’s shoulder. The other hand was gently brushing strands of white-blue hair from her face. She leaned into his touch, laughing softly—too softly to be heard at this distance. Her knees were pulled up, arching over his lap, her heels pressed against his thigh like it was the most natural place for them to be.
They weren’t doing anything remarkable. Not dancing, not speaking with grand declarations, not locked in a kiss like the poets adored. And yet, when Mualani reached up to adjust the hem of Kinich’s headband, when he shifted without a word so she could lean more comfortably into him, it was like watching a tide come in—steady, inevitable, not needing to explain itself.
Mavuika, who had witnessed entire battlefronts rise and fall, found it nearly impossible to look away from them, two of the heroes of Natlan.
It wasn’t just affection—it was the quiet, well-worn rhythm of people who had chosen each other a thousand times before, and would choose each other over and over again.
The kind of love that did not need to survive fire because it had already grown from it.
And the kind of joy that, for the first time in a long time, Natlan was finally allowed to feel again.
She tilted her head back against the sun-warmed stone behind her and closed her eyes.
No divine whisper came.
No vision.
No Shade.
Just the faint ache in her chest that pulsed in time with a name she couldn't dare speak aloud anymore.
The Captain, who had stood and fought at her side during the worst hours of the Abyss invasion. Who had never once faltered—not when the tides turned, not when the skies split open, not even when death came to collect him personally. The Captain, who never shared much with her, didn’t owe her anything, but had matched her in battle, challenged her, and almost beat her.
Thrain, who had bartered his soul to Ronova in exchange for a chance—just a chance—that Natlan might prosper.
She swallowed.
Bitterness coiled at the back of her tongue, as it always did. But tonight, for once, it softened into something else.
Pride. Gratitude.
Relief.
The air up here was thin, touched by the scent of smoldering incense and the distant sweetness of fruit pies cooling on windowsills. And down below—laughing, resting, safe—her people had begun to heal.
Mavuika ran her gloved fingers along the gold trim of her collar, where once The Captain had hooked a finger and pulled her into a duel neither of them really wanted to win.
They had never had a moment like this.
They hadn’t needed one, perhaps. But the ache remained anyway.
“This is what we were fighting for,” she said aloud, voice just above a whisper.
A future that asked nothing but presence, that let people laugh by the firelight, or press their heads to a loved one’s shoulder without fear of no tomorrow.
For so long, she’d kept Natlan from crumbling.
Now, it could breathe.
“You’d hate this,” she added with a soft laugh, as though he were just over her shoulder. “Too soft. Too sentimental.”
But she could almost hear him answering.
Then why are you still watching?
A breeze tugged at the leather of her jumpsuit. She stood.
Because I’m glad they made it.
Because they remind me it wasn’t in vain.
There will be meetings tomorrow. Delegations to send. Abyssal pylons still to be destroyed along the Tezcatepetonco Range. Her people needed her. They needed their Archon.
But just before she turned, she gave herself one more look.
At Kinich’s fingers brushing over Mualani’s knuckles.
At Mualani’s laughter, muffled against his shoulder.
At the two of them—whole, and home.
And as she stepped back from the terrace into the quiet dark, Mavuika let herself have a bittersweet smile—just for a breath, just for a moment—knowing that it was worth it.
Even if it hadn’t been for her, it had been for them.
VI.
The stars were low and lazy in the sky, drifting behind the silhouettes of the coastal cliffs like they had nowhere urgent to be. The fire pits had long gone out, and the last of the festival lanterns bobbed out to sea on the tide, their red-orange glow flickering against the dark water.
Kinich sat cross-legged in the sand, quiet in the way the night was quiet—not absent, just still. His boots were off, pants rolled to the knee, and his gloves had been discarded so the salt air could find its way to the scar along his forearm. The wind, gentle and scented with mineral and hibiscus, combed through his hair and stirred the dried salt on his skin. Beside him, Mualani lay on her back with her arms flung out wide like she was trying to hug the night sky.
There was nothing extraordinary about the moment. No grand confessions. No fireworks. Just the hush of surf, the pull of the moon, and the comfortable rhythm of two people who had nothing left to prove.
Mualani sighed, then rolled over toward him, propping her chin on his knee. “You’re thinking again,” she said. “Big, important Kinich thoughts.”
“Just letting the quiet catch up,” he replied.
She smiled at that. “It does catch up, doesn’t it?”
He didn’t answer. But he didn’t pull away, either, when she slipped her hand into his. Her fingers were still faintly sticky with sugar from the fried pastries Kachina had shoved into her palm earlier in the evening. He said nothing about it.
Her thumb traced absent little shapes across his knuckles. “You looked good tonight,” she said, out of nowhere. “I mean—dangerous, obviously. Silent and brooding. But good.”
“I wore the same thing I always wear.”
“Maybe. But you didn’t scowl as much.”
A soft huff left him. Not quite a laugh, but the closest he ever got. “You talk too much.”
“And you like it,” she said, beaming, squeezing his hand just a bit tighter.
He didn’t deny it. He never did, anymore.
It had taken time. Time and storms. Ghosts from the past. Real ones, sometimes. There had been battles neither of them had fully recovered from, bruises buried under muscle and skin. There had been that stretch of silence between them when Kinich had fallen and didn’t wake for two days, and she’d held his jacket like it could hold her together.
But now, here—his pulse was steady beneath her touch. His breath moved in and out like waves. And he was here. Still. Again.
For a while, the waves did all the talking—lapping up the shore, swallowing the edges of the firelit night, then retreating like it never happened. Kinich’s hand stilled in her hair, fingers combing idly through salt-stiffened strands, before he glanced down again.
“I made sure Ajaw’s sealed away,” he said, quietly. “He’d just say something crass and ruin the mood.”
Mualani laughed properly this time, bright and soft, her voice cutting through the hush like a seashell skipping the surface. “You know he’d love it here. All the humidity and dramatic lighting. He’d call it the ‘tide-slick cradle of foolish mortal romance.’”
“That’s… disturbingly close to something he’d actually say,” Kinich admitted.
She looked up at him fully, chin still resting on his thigh. “You always push him away when it’s just us.”
“I push him away,” Kinich said slowly, “because he doesn’t get this.”
Mualani tilted her head. “This?”
He looked down at her, at the way her face looked in the moonlight—soft, open, completely unguarded. His hand moved from her hair to her shoulder, then down her arm, until his fingers rested lightly over her wrist, just barely there. Not claiming. Just… being.
“This quiet,” he said. “This peace. He only sees power. Bargains. Survival. But you—”
Her smile gentled, and she sat up then, shifting so she could face him properly. Knees tucked beneath her, one hand resting on his knee, her gaze never leaving his.
“You don’t have to explain,” she said. “I get it.”
“I know you do,” he said, quietly. “That’s why you’re here.”
Mualani leaned in, resting her forehead against his. “That’s why you’re here, too.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It pulsed, full and rich with everything unsaid.
Kinich’s hand came up to the back of her neck, thumb brushing the fine hairs at her nape. “I didn’t think I’d get this far,” he said. “The work I do… it doesn’t make room for long lifespans. Or… futures.”
She closed her eyes at that, and exhaled slowly. “I remember.”
His brief brush with death was not something they ever really said aloud. But it lived between them still, faint as sea-glass caught in foam. She had wept at the Ode of Resurrection. He had never asked about it, and she had never told him—but he knew. Just as he knew she still watched him, sometimes, like he might vanish again if she looked away too long.
“You’re here,” she said softly. “And you’re allowed to be.”
He let out a breath that almost passed for a laugh. “You always say things like that. Like it’s simple.”
“It is simple,” Mualani replied, leaning forward to press her cheek against his shoulder. “You made it out. You’re still here. And I’m not going anywhere.”
He reached up, brushing her hair aside to press a kiss—not on her lips, but at her temple. Reverent. Like a promise.
The waves came in again. Went out.
“You know,” she said into his shoulder, “if you keep letting me in like this, people are gonna think you’re soft.”
Kinich made a faint, skeptical sound. “Let them.”
She laughed against him, and he felt it through his bones.
They didn’t need to say it. They never had.
But it was in every shared glance, every unspoken breath, every time she kicked off her shoes and every time he made sure the path was safe before she even reached it.
It was in how he folded his body around hers when the wind grew cold, and how she curled her fingers over his wrist like an anchor. In the quiet knowledge that even if the fire died and the tide came in, they would still be here.