Sepha left the two souled homunculi dancing in the rain and pulled Ruhen into the shrine. Ruhen muttered something, and suddenly the rain seemed to bounce off a roof that wasn’t there. Another muttered word, and the floor of the shrine was dry. The tether unspooled as Ruhen went to his knapsack and yanked out a thick, warm blanket.

They folded themselves onto the ground with their backs to the altar. Without saying a word, they huddled beneath the blanket and hid from the world.

The storm raged and raged, and Ruhen cradled Sepha against him. As if she were a fragile thing, not an alchemancer who’d brutalized a helpless homunculus and banished a dead necromancer’s soul. As if she hadn’t just saved Tirenia from a terrible fate.

As if he knew that, beneath it all, she felt weak and muddled and, more than anything else, exhausted.

The tether was tight, even though it shouldn’t exist anymore. The contract was definitely gone; there was an echoing emptiness beside her heart where it used to be. So why was there still that tether, and that rightness, and that relief?

“How do you feel?” Ruhen murmured against her hair, as they both stared up into the dappled gray-blue of the storm.

Sepha took a deep breath, excavating the many layers of herself, mining for the truest answer. “I feel relieved,” she said at last, “that I’ve gotten rid of Dnias. But we never found out what Isolde was planning, and she and Rivers are both alchemancers, and—”

Ruhen tsked at her. “I’m not concerned about any of that,” he said. “None of them have a hold on you like the necromancer did. Besides,” he said, a bit of pride leaking into his voice, “you’ll be a better alchemancer than they are in no time. And you know what I am. None of them can do a thing to us. They’d have to find us first, anyway, and no one knows where we are. We’re safe.”

Sepha bit her lip. He was right, but …

“It’s too much to hope for, that the Magistrate might have captured Isolde and Rivers, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Ruhen said. “Even outnumbered, Isolde and Rivers could still have escaped.”

Sepha sighed. “If whatever Isolde has been planning comes to war against the Magistrate, they could rip Tirenia apart.” She thought of Destry, who had been deeply protective of her beloved country. She thought of Destry, who was dead. “We have to do something about it.”

The wind blew momentarily fierce inside the shrine, swooping and swirling around them.

“Even though most people in Tirenia would kill us both as soon as blinking?” Ruhen asked, when the wind died down.

“Don’t do it for them,” Sepha said. “Do it because you couldn’t do anything else.”

Ruhen looked down at her and smiled. “Reckless as ever,” he said, dragging his thumb across her lips and sending her blood racing.

“I think I prefer bold. Or impetuous,” she said, and he laughed.

They smiled at each other for a moment, and then the silence went heavy and serious.

Ruhen spoke first. “The tether isn’t gone.”

Sepha shook her head. “I thought it would disappear. I don’t know how it could’ve stayed, if the contract is gone.”

“I told you I didn’t think it was from the contract,” Ruhen said, smiling a little. “It’s too big a magic. The contract only needed physical intimacy. It wouldn’t need so tight a binding.”

“What could it be, then?” Sepha asked, leaning closer to press her forehead against Ruhen. “Neither of us made it happen. Neither of us asked for it.”

“I don’t mind it,” Ruhen said, shifting Sepha so that she sat on the floor between his legs, cradled sideways against him.

“But you didn’t choose it,” Sepha said.

Ruhen grinned. “I didn’t know it was an option.”

Sepha let loose a laugh and snaked her arms around Ruhen’s waist.

Above them, the storm was wild as ever. In the clearing, the homunculi danced. And in the dimness of the shrine, Lael and Amin sat palm to palm, keeping vigilant watch over Sepha and Ruhen.