The sun climbed higher in the sky, its light no longer filtered through the oppressive miasma that had hung over this cursed place for centuries. The air tasted clean for the first time in living memory—sharp with the scent of burned stone and settling ash, but clean nonetheless. Free of the cloying sweetness of the marrow, free of the metallic tang of enforced dominion, free of the weight that had pressed down on the world like an invisible hand for so long.
Selena lay still in Dante's arms, so still that he checked her pulse three times in as many minutes, terrified each time that he would find nothing. But her heart continued its faltering rhythm, stubbornly refusing to quit despite every logical reason it should have stopped. She was unconscious now, her body finally surrendering to the exhaustion and trauma it had endured, but she was alive.
That had to be enough.
