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The world is bedlam.
Dragons shriek overhead, blotting out the stars with the churn of their wings. The ground is a roiling nightmare. Smoke, broken stone, bodies. Xaden fights like a man possessed, his blades a blur, his shadows alive at the edges of his vision.
Elliott is just ahead of him, his magic silver arcs of starlit fire curling from his fingertips, wild and furious. He’s gorgeous even like this, streaked with ash and blood, a defiant snarl carved into his beautiful mouth.
But Xaden knows.
Knows it in the marrow of him. Their dragons will be here within minutes, and they’ll be skybound. And there’s no guarantee—none—that he’ll see Elliott again.
Fear cleaves him open. Worse than any sword or blade could render to his flesh. It tears through sinew, through the fragile architecture of hope he built around Elliott. It unleashes something primal and terrifying into the hollow of his chest—a torment so cataclysmic it feels like bleeding out from the inside. Because he can survive a battlefield, he can survive the carnage and death and broken things.
But he cannot survive a world where Elliot is gone.
"Elliott!" he shouts, cutting down a soldier between them in a single brutal sweep.
Elliott turns, eyes wide to see Xaden skidding across the gravel behind him, grabbing him, ferociously yanking him into his body.
The surrounding shadows obey him like breath to lungs. They converge around them — a cocoon of cold and silence, cutting out the world, severing them from the battlefield, sealing them into a space that is only them.
"You're not —" Xaden pants, voice cracking. "You're not leaving without kissing me."
Elliott's answering breath stutters, and without another goddamn second, surges forward slamming himself against Xaden, grabbing his jacket in one hand, fisting it, the other slides into his black hair, tugging him, coaxing him into a kiss that’s nothing short of a collision.
Elliott gasps as the shadows wrap around his body, holding him as real as Xaden’s arms. It’s filthy, devouring, frantic mouths open, their tongues deep diving into the wet heat of each other, sharing breath and the unmistakable taste of blood and battle-soaked adrenaline. Xaden cradles the back of Elliott’s head and consumes him, sucking his lower lip between his teeth, drinking down every shuddering sound Elliott makes his body hot and shaking, fingers scrabbling at Xaden’s heart now trying to feel it beat and burn this into memory.
Xaden growls against his mouth, a sound dragged out from the deepest part of him, and presses Elliott back against the damaged stone wall behind them, caging him there with unrelenting strength.
He needs this. Needs the taste of Elliott’s mouth, the desperate glide of his tongue, the ragged little noises. Needs the way Elliott clutches at him like he’s the only fucking thing keeping him upright. They’re biting at each other now, gasping, hips jerking, grinding up into that place where they wish they could spend more of their time. Why the hell is life so damn cruel?
For one breathtaking moment, a shield of starlight shivers into existence, the starlit particles mixing with shadows in a luminous, half-formed veil that wraps them in silver threads and fluttering starshine. Xaden feels it against his skin, surprisingly warm, where his shadows are cold; Elliott’s magic is warm, bathing them in the gentle side of his gift. He’s sure Elliott doesn’t even realize he’s doing it as they pour every ounce of what’s left of them into the kiss of shadow and starlight and the need not to lose this.
The light acquiesces, pulsing once like a quasar and then evaporates into a thousand gleaming fragments, scattering around them like falling stars. "Promise me," Elliott gasps when they break for air, panting hard, eyes wide and glassy in the dim. “You’re coming back.”
"I will find you," Xaden rasps, foreheads pressed together, their breaths twisting. "I’ll tear the fucking sky apart if I have to."
The horns are blaring now, the call to mount, to take to the air.
The shadows are already thinning. Time is shattering around them.
Elliott's fingers tremble where they brush Xaden’s jaw, his gaze penetrating in the frenetic courage of survival. "I love you."
And Xaden, who has never been good at words, who was always better with blades and fury, kisses him again, brutally soft this time.
"I love you," Xaden breathes against his lips. "Come back to me, Starwielder."
He tears away before he can break completely, shoving Elliott toward his dragon, who has just landed. Their shadows cling to each other even as they separate—dark tendrils refusing to let go.
The world explodes back into noise and fury. Horror. But Xaden only remembers the sound of Elliott's breath in his ear, tastes him on his lips, and feels the ghost of that kiss like a tattoo.
And when he launches into the war-torn sky, he carries that kiss like a shield and the promise that it was to return to the man he loves.