Page 82 of The Midnight Death Match
Somewhere in that silence, I realize I’m shaking. Not from cold or fear, but from the simple effort of still being here. Still standing. Still breathing when Einar isn’t.
Then Harek moves to my side, each step careful, like he’s approaching a wounded animal. He cups my face, and I flinch before I can stop myself—not from fear of him, but from fear of my own reaction. What if his touch breaks whatever fragile control I’m holding onto?
But his fingers are gentle when they brush the ash from my cheek, warm against skin that feels like it might never be warm again.
“Is it over?”
The question hangs in the air between us. Such a simple thing to ask, yet such a complicated question to answer. Is it over? The curse is broken—I can feel the absence of it like a missing tooth, a hollow space where something fundamental used to be. The movement that followed it will crumble without the magic to sustain it. The wolves will learn to be wild again instead of weapons.
But Einar is dead, the sanctuary is in ruins, and Mirendel is wounded. I’m something new and strange and alone, and the world we’ve made will have to be rebuilt from the ground up.
How do you measure the end of something that’s cost so much?
I don’t have an answer to give him. I’m not even sure what to make of the broken curse. Is it really broken? Or just sleeping, waiting for the next hunter or huntress to be born? I shudder at the thought, never wanting to pass this onto my future children.
Instead, I step toward Harek, and he wraps his arms around me like he’s afraid I’ll vanish too. Like I might dissolve into the same light that took the curse, leaving him with nothing but memory and regret.
His embrace is comforting as always, warm with life and hope and all the things I thought I’d lost. It smells like leather and smoke and the particular scent that’s always been purely Harek—oak leaves and steel and something indefinably safe.
For the first time since I knelt beside Einar’s body, I let myself feel small, protected.
“It cost too much,” I whisper against his chest, and the words taste like blood and salt and bitter truth.
“I know.” His voice rumbles through his ribcage, and I feel one of his hands stroke down my hair, careful of the tangles and the debris. “I know it did.”
There’s no platitude in his tone. No attempt to tell me it was worth it, or that Einar would have wanted this, or any of the empty comfort people offer when loss is too big for words. He just knows. Accepts. Grieves with me.
I don’t pull away. Not this time, because this is what Einar died for—not just my freedom from the curse, but my freedom to choose. To stay when I want to stay. To let myself be held when I need holding. To accept that some battles can only be won by accepting help.
“He saved me,” I say, the words muffled against Harek’s vest. “He saved all of us, and I couldn’t save him.”
“You did save him.” Harek’s arms tighten around me, and I feel him press his face into my hair. “You gave him a choice. You let him choose how his story ended. That’s the most sacred thing you can give someone.”
I want to argue with him. Want to rage that choice means nothing when the outcome is death, that freedom is a poor trade for a life. But I’m too tired, and he’s too warm, and somewhere deep in my bones I know he’s right.
Einar didn’t die because of the curse.
He died in spite of it.
And maybe that makes all the difference.
We stand there in the ruins of the sanctuary, surrounded by the debris of an ancient evil and the first fragile promise of something better. The moon sets behind the broken walls, and in the growing light of dawn, I can see smoke rising from distant villages—not the smoke of destruction, but of hearth fires. Of people waking up to the first day of a world remade.
It’s not the ending I wanted. But it’s the ending we earned.
And for now, with Harek’s arms around me and if the curse finally, truly dead, it’s enough. I don’t want to think about the alternative. Not now, maybe not ever.
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
IN THE TEMPLE RUINS
The air issharp with magical aftershock. The hunter’s curse has touched everything, reaching far and wide. Broken and renewed magic clings to the trees like mist—silver strands warping and fraying against the roots of the world, unraveling patterns that have held for thousands of years. Each thread that snaps sends ripples through the fabric of reality itself, and those who know how to look can see the web of power reshaping itself with every passing moment.
The ruins themselves feel like they’re trying to come back together. In the sudden silence of night creatures, who sense a fundamental shift in the order of things, and in the distance, where the old roads have been reclaimed by wilderness and memory, the disturbance is felt most keenly.
Three cloaked figures stand beneath a canopy of withered trees, avoiding the temple. The grove is older than the kingdoms, older than the first settlements, older perhaps than the curse itself. Here, the barrier between worlds has always been thin and easily torn.
