Saving the Immortal

Chapter Thirty-Two: Home

The word reached me before I had even properly dressed for the day — a servant's breathless announcement echoing through the corridors that the royal army had returned, the king and his sons riding through the palace gates that very moment.

I did not wait for propriety.

I did not wait for a proper gown, or for Bess to arrange my hair, or for any of the careful composure I had maintained through every other public moment since arriving at this palace. I simply ran, my feet carrying me down corridors and stairs with a speed I had not known myself capable of, my heart pounding with a hope so fierce it nearly hurt, until I burst into the courtyard where the returning column had begun to dismount.

I saw him immediately.

He stood beside his horse, still in his armor, dust and travel worn into every line of him, but whole. Alive. Standing there in the morning light with an expression that shifted, the moment his eyes found me, from exhaustion into something so full of relief it nearly undid me entirely.

"Ruselon," I called, my voice breaking on his name.

I ran the remaining distance and threw myself against him, my arms wrapping about his armored chest with a force that would have staggered an ordinary man, and he caught me immediately, lifting me half off the ground as his own arms closed around me with equal desperation.

"Ivy," he said, his voice rough, muffled against my hair. "Ivy, I am here."

I could not stop the tears.

They came freely, soaking into the fabric beneath his armor, my whole body shaking with the sheer weight of relief finally allowed to break free after weeks of carefully contained fear. I had told myself, every single day of his absence, that he would return. I had believed it, or told myself I believed it, through every long night spent alone in that great bed. But standing here now, feeling the solid warmth of him beneath my hands, hearing his heart beating steadily against my ear — only now did I understand how much of that belief had been hope rather than certainty.

"You came back," I said, my voice thick with tears. "You truly came back to me."

"I told you I would," he said quietly, his hand cradling the back of my head, holding me against him as though he too needed the reassurance of my presence made solid and real. "I fought for exactly this, Ivy. Every single day."

"I was so afraid," I admitted, pulling back only enough to look properly at his face — dirt-streaked, exhausted, but achingly familiar, his dark eyes carrying that particular blue I had missed more than I had properly understood until this moment. "Every night, I feared word would come that you had not survived. I do not know how I would have—"

"Shh," he said gently, brushing tears from my cheeks with a thumb still gloved in travel-worn leather. "I am here now. Whatever fear you carried, it is finished. I promised you I would fight my way back, and I have kept that promise."

"You are truly unharmed," I said, my hands moving over him now, checking for injury the way he had once checked me, needing the physical confirmation to properly believe what my eyes were telling me.

"A few scrapes, nothing worse," he said. "I was rather more careful than usual, given how fiercely I intended to return to you."

I laughed despite the tears still falling, the sound coming out somewhere between a sob and genuine joy.

"I am so grateful," I said. "I do not know how to properly express how grateful I am, Ruselon, that you are standing here before me, whole and alive."

"You need not express it in words," he said softly, pulling me back against him, holding me there in the middle of that busy courtyard with an intimacy that drew curious glances from the soldiers still dismounting around us, though neither of us cared particularly for their attention. "I feel it plainly enough, Ivy. In the way you ran to me. In the way you hold me now."

We stood there a long while, wrapped around each other amid the chaos of the returning army, and I felt, for the first time since his departure, the particular hollow ache that had settled into my chest finally begin to ease.

"I have so much to tell you," I said eventually, my voice steadier now though I made no move to release him. "So very much has happened while you were away."

"And I intend to hear every word of it," he said, pressing a lingering kiss to my forehead. "But first — let me simply hold you a while longer. I have thought of nothing else, these past weeks, but this exact moment."

I pressed myself closer against him, grateful beyond measure for the solid warmth of his presence, and allowed myself, finally, to simply believe what I could now see plainly before me.

He was home.

He was alive.

And whatever mysteries and fears still awaited us both, I intended to face them exactly as I had promised — together, with him, for as long as we were given.