Page 173 of Stars in Aura

Ever the caregiver, she ran her palms over Ki’Remi beneath her, checking for anomalies.

With relief, she noted that his broad chest rose and fell in deep, with steady pulls; his muscles were no longer convulsing, and his body was no longer fraying apart.

He was whole, alive, and freakin’ breathing.

His eyes fluttered open, lucid and aureate as they shone out.

She sucked in a ragged inhale.

Without warning, he moved.

One muscled arm snaked around her neck and pulled her to him as he knifed up to meet her.

His hands gripped her waist, and his lips melded to hers in a raw, desperate, consuming kiss. One that expressed all neither of them could utter at that moment: the terror, the relief, the sheer gravity of what they had just survived.

Her fingers twisted in his locs, her body sinking into his, lost in all of her passion for him.

Above them, a rumbling laughter echoed through the chamber.

Sulfiqar.

The couple tore apart to find the Divine Immortal deity, now restored, gazing upon them with amusement and an emotion close to indulgence.

‘Perhaps,’ he mused, in a deep, resonant timbre, ‘this destiny was all about your love.’

‘What of my father’s fate?’ Issa whispered. ‘Now that you are well?’

‘About that, child of dusk -.’

Sulfiqar waved a lazy hand.

A holo screen flared to life before them, shifting celestial mist solidifying into a vision of a gloomy room, the atmosphere thick with the haze of incense and old magic.

In a bed lay her a familiar figure, shuddering under a thin blanket, body wasting away, sunken eyes closed.

‘Baba.’

A vibration rippled through the air, the walls of the divine palace thrumming in response.

A gem of luminous hue, inset in his upper chest, began to glow without warning.

‘Tis theSirr Sanctum.’

Issa grabbed Ki’Remi’s hand, holding it tight and hard.

First, it flared a deep crimson, then a dazzling gold, its surface splitting like cracked glass as its power unraveled and imploded into nothingness.

Issa’s breath caught in her throat.

The man lying prostrate stirred, and then he slowly sat up.

Once weighed down by the slow, relentless pull of the soul stone curse, he now moved at will.

His broad shoulders squared, his spine straightened, and he inhaled in a ragged heave as if breathing free for the first time in an eternity.

Issa clutched Ki’Remi, a tattered sound escaping her lips. Her father was free.

‘Your turn,’ the deity on the throne murmured.

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