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I don’t need to turn my head to recognize the male, but I need to make sure I’m not stuck in a nightmare.
Warm brown eyes stare back at me as I sit up to find him in a brown, upholstered brocade chair, one leg crossed over a knee and marred arms folded over his chest. But there is nothing warm in Ephegos’s expression as he flashes his teeth in a mocking smile. “Let’s see how Myron’s ghost will like it when I watch his bride wither away just like he watched my sister fade and die.”
Epilogue
MYRON
A bitter gustof wind caresses my skin like mocking blades calling me back from the beckoning darkness.
All those centuries, all those heartbeats of hope and resentment I imagined that, if the curse was finally broken, I’d feel something. Something other than pain and despair. Those two sensations have been my constant companion anyway. But back then, the pain was dull, an ache easily ignored under the prospect of it lasting a lifetime or longer. But this is new.
The needles in my chest, the razorblades running along my shoulders, my arms, are nothing as gentle as I’d imagined death to be.
My eyes snap open, light assaulting me with a new intensity now that the layer of darkness that used to linger on my vision has been lifted like a veil, and from the gaps between sheep-shaped clouds in the azure skies above, the sun burns me with a vengeance. Leaves and branches rustle in the breeze, and somewhere nearby, a stream cheerfully gurgles by.
With a groan, I ball my hand into a fist, testing my strength before I even consider getting up from the soft ground I’ve been placed on. That, at least, is a small mercy, the cushion of moss carrying my weight. I could have found myself scraped over a set of sharp rocks instead. No idea how my body would have handled that with all my fae senses rushing back in. Where there used to be the moderate perception of a Crow, the sensitivity is increased by a multitude, each sound, each touch, each scent so intense I nearly black out all over again by the force of it. It’s exactly as the older Crows used to describe the ones who were matured before the curse fell upon us. I can’t remember, but my body thrums with heightened instincts the way that of a predator does.
The tang of salt and iron staining the otherwise clean forest air is all I taste.
I faintly remember the sound of a female’s voice as she tells me she loves me, remember the devastation in her beautiful silver-gray eyes as she realized I was healing her instead of healing myself. Remember dying on the floor of my palace in the Seeing Forest. It feels like a lifetime ago, and I am not quite sure how I’ve gotten from the inferno of fire to the summer-scented clearing where I’m sprawled between ferns and little pink blossoms.
Ayna—
My limbs are filled with lead, but I pit my fae strength against the weight as a sense of urgency spreads through me.
“Ayna.” This time, her name spills into the clearing like a prayer as I wait for her face to appear in front of me. But there is nothing but the evergreen branches around me.
“Myron.” My cousin’s voice sounds from the edge of the clearing where ferns are so high I barely see past them in my sitting position. I should be relieved to spot him standing there, but something tells me all of this is wrong. That I am missing details, moments, maybe hours or days. My fae mind should remember everything like it’s been engraved into stone for all eternity, but instead, there is a gap of blackness from the moment Ayna told me she loved me to this torturous moment of waking to the bleak beauty of the Seeing Forest.
“By Shaelak, you’re alive.” Royad rushes to my side, his hands falling around my shoulders as he pulls me into an embrace the way only brothers can—even when he’s only my cousin, he’s the closest person I have in this world.
Except for Ayna, who is my heart—the organ now beating in my chest like a slow and steady drum of dread when I scan the seam of the forest for her delicate, human form.
“What happened?” I barely recognize my voice hoarse with terror as I don’t find my wife among the cover of branches and blossoms. “How am I alive?” I remember dying. I remember the darkness of Hel’s realm as he opened the gates for me to slip through.
Royad’s arms slip away, but he keeps clutching my shoulders as if he can’t believe I’m real unless he feels my warm, living body in his grasp.
The light in Royad’s eyes dims as he looks me over as if expecting I’d remember something. And I do. All of the horrible battles that cost so many their lives to save Ayna—cost my own life.
“Something happened. Ephegos stabbed you, and you lay there on the stone floor in your own blood and the tears of the brides past until your heart had stopped beating. By the time we got you out of the palace, your body was turning cold. You died, Myron. And you came back from the dead. How is that even possible?”
I remember the sensation of Ayna’s touch slipping away, Ayna’s voice. I also remember the slick and cool liquid of the sacred lake soaking into my clothes, into my skin like a kiss of the gods as I hovered above the darkness on Hel’s threshold. Perhaps like an absolution as the curse broke. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters if Ayna isn’t at my side. If I returned from Hel’s realm only to find Ayna went there without me, I won’t care if being alive is a mercy gifted by the gods or a curse all over again. I’ll follow her there in a heartbeat.
“Where is she?”
Royad’s body is shaking, or perhaps it’s me who cannot control himself enough to keep my preternatural fae stillness. In my mind, scenes of blood and fire replay as I watch her kneel beside me, her tears dripping to my burning skin. Agony is a raging beast inside my chest as I hear her words echo in my head.I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.
Because she couldn’t save me from dying… But she did save me from the curse.
“Where is she?” I don’t bother to acknowledge how good it is to see Royad without his wings, beak, or claws. How everything about him is high fae rather than monster. Even his eyes, so clear like the water around the islands our kind used to inhabit. “Where is Wolayna?”
A tear slides down Royad’s cheek, leaving a wet trail along his scar until it meets the corner of his mouth. “I couldn’t save her.” It’s a plea for forgiveness, and my entire being recoils from the meaning of his words.
“What do you mean you couldn’t save her?” My body is shaking for real now, the tendons in my forearms standing out as I try to will my hands to still. I’ve never seen my arms since the curse befell my people when I was still an infant, and I’ve never been able to shift fully into my human form. Under different circumstances, I might have marveled at how exquisite the pale skin that has never been exposed to sunlight truly is, how much stronger the sensation of the elements on it as another brisk breeze rushes through the corridor of trees to ruffle the ferns and stir my hair. But today is not that day. Today is the day I learn that the bride who finally saved us all has paid a steep price—and if Royad won’t tell me soon what exactly that price was, I’m tempted to knock the words out of him because there is nothing kind about me when it comes to Ayna’s safety. When it comes to her, there is no sense or reason. There is only the abyss of emotions enveloping me with unknown force.
I’ve gone out of my way for the past months since she arrived at my palace to make certain none of my people as much as touched her. Again and again, I’ve threatened lives and ripped out feathers to demonstrate just how willing to kill I am when Ayna’s life is in danger.
I don’t know when I stopped giving up on breaking the curse, on freedom or on love, and started caring for her instead, but it must have happened sometime between our very chaste wedding night and her first attempt at escape.
