“Taryn!” she shouts across the knoll. “Dary!” she grips her dress in her hands, trying to make it across without falling again. “Are you alright?”
Before I can answer her, before I can move, Dary rushes across the grass and picks Mira up by the backs of her legs. She swats at his arm, glancing at the large group of people staring at the two of them.
“Dary of Tabistak, I—”
Dary slides her down his body until they’re face to face and presses his lips to hers. Mira doesn’t return the kiss at first, and though I can’t see her cheeks blush from this distance, I know they’re flaming under his attentions.
But soon, she relaxes. And as her body slides down his, her feet reaching the ground, their lips plucking at one another’s as they whisper words I can’t hear, I can’t help but feel . . . hope.
Even amongst the flames.
Even amongst the death.
Niressa comes to stand on the other side of me, her fingers lacing through mine as we watch a new love story unfold before us.
Even amongst the end of an era and the beginning of something new, the beginning of what I hope is a long, long peace between the humans and dragons of Lazoreat, there is love.
And where there is love, I realize, as I glance up at Niressa’s shimmering skin, there is hope.
And hope is what I treasure most in this world. If I could hoard it like the dragons, in a mountain keep, where I can dive into it and come out renewed, I would.
But surrounded like this, by those who love me, by those who I love, watching my two dearest friends kiss in front of my burning home, I realize I have no need to hoard it.
I have plenty.