Fae Champion (Royals of Embermere #2)

Epilogue

~ RUSH ~

Three days crawled past, each one too long, too replete with a wrenching agony I suspected I might never surpass. Despite that small eternity, it still felt like my internal organs were desiccated, shriveled masses rattling around the hollow husk of my former self.

Absolutely everything ached, even my skin, too sensitive to touch. Every little thing bothered me, grated against each of my senses. I couldn’t stand to so much as look at the queen. I’d feigned illness to get away from her for a few days. My excuse wouldn’t hold for long enough, but I hoped I’d find a way to pretend I hadn’t pierced my own heart when I had Elowyn’s.

If Elowyn’s sacrifice was to mean anything, the queen would have to believe I was her willing pawn, and if not that, at least that she’d be able to manipulate me— for the rest of her wretched life —as much as she wanted .

It was the only way what I’d lost would be worth losing.

When I’d stabbed Elowyn, I’d experienced her pain as if it were my own, as if I’d turned that blade on myself instead of marring that gorgeous, smooth, creamy skin that was more perfect than any I’d ever seen.

The queen believed Elowyn dead. She herself had searched for a pulse and found none. When I’d last seen my love, her heart had no longer beat, no longer pumped life through her veins. Her body was already growing cold when I’d pressed a final kiss to her lips, whose feel and taste I’d never forget no matter how long I lived.

But I had a secret.

I’d wagered the most important thing in the entire world on it.

I’d bet Elowyn.

Her heart was very likely to heal … eventually—at least the organ would—though she’d forever carry a scar, physical evidence of what I’d done.

It would be a rough journey, and there were no complete guarantees Elowyn would find her way to the end of it, no assurances I’d hold her in my arms again, that I’d ever get the chance to explain to her why I’d had no better choice than to do what I’d done.

In Amarantos we had medicine wielders and wisdom keepers Embermere didn’t, who accessed an ancient magic the queen appeared to know nothing about. From them I’d heard stories. At the time, they’d seemed more like folklore, perhaps even myths, that had no relevance to my life.

But the queen would have killed Elowyn in a way she could never come back from if I hadn’t at least tried to save her.

I’d risked her when all I’d wanted was to spare her every pain, each torment, to cradle her in my embrace and whisk her away from the court and the cunt of a queen who only ever hurt everyone I cared about.

I trusted the elders of Amarantos and their knowledge of this archaic magic that predated the mirror world, that came from the pure elves of the Golden Forest. But even the elders had never personally known anyone who’d come back from the other side of the death I’d inflicted on Elowyn. They’d only heard stories that it was possible from their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents.

It was the most horrific risk I’d ever taken, one that scarcely allowed my chest to fully inflate with breath, each inhale leaving me feeling emptier than before. Wrong. Cold. As dead as Elowyn had appeared when I’d handed her body over to Xeno and, in front of the queen, told him to leave with Saffron and take her. To bury her far, far away.

My mate .

Elowyn didn’t understand what it meant to be bonded to me, but I sure as shit did.

And I’d stabbed her in the fucking heart.

I’d felt her flesh surrender to the bite of my blade. I’d watched the fire die in her eyes as it abandoned her beautiful body.

With her last breath, she’d believed I’d betrayed her.

She was bright as a star in the night sky. If I’d dimmed that brightness…

I wheezed in a ragged breath, ran a shaky hand through my tangled hair, and plopped to the ground, not bothering to scan where I sat. The grass beneath my ass was sodden. I stretched out my legs while the seat of my pants grew damp. The palace and its many ornate gardens at my back, I gazed out at the road that led away from here, now once more lined with the dragon heads Elowyn so despised.

Somewhere, already far from here, the group I’d been able to hastily pull together in the moments before I’d made my agreement with the queen led Elowyn ever farther away from me.

The queen had been hesitant enough that I’d worried I pushed her too far, but in the end she’d relented, the carrot I dangled too enticing. Whether it was because she truly believed I’d be the best to succeed her to the throne or if she wanted me as a royal merely because she delighted in tormenting me, I didn’t know.

Finnian and Roan were to accompany Xeno as he took Saffron and Elowyn back to Nightguard. There, the queen believed, Elowyn would find her final resting place.

She didn’t yet know that Reed and Pru had left with them, or that I’d covertly instructed Roan to take Elowyn to the Wilds instead of Nightguard.

They’d come for Elowyn in Nightguard once before. If the queen or king ever found out she survived, they’d know right where to find her again. The location of the dragons’ stronghold was no longer secret. No one there—none of the dragons—was truly safe anymore from the reach of the Royals of Embermere.

But the Wilds?

It was teeming with monsters and horrors not even the queen dared interfere with. It was the one place where her influence didn’t reach.

The Wilds was uncivilized, the frayed edges of the mirror world that never coalesced into a full replica of Faerie. Made up of the dregs of King Spiro’s magic, the Wilds was wholly unexplored and untamed. It was where fae went to disappear … or be eaten.

I’d sent my mate to claw her way back from the clutches of death in the most dangerous place in the entire realm. The chances of her survival were slim, and yet … hair, tooth, and nail, I clung to this outcome, the only one I’d ever be able to accept.

She didn’t yet feel the bond as I did or she’d never have doubted me. Could never have. She would have known everything I was doing was to save her, no matter what things looked like from the outside.

Whatever power she had, it was still awakening. That had to be why the bond had only settled into place for me, where it was as much a part of me now as my love for her … and my pain, this deep well of torment that wouldn’t end until I held her in my arms once more. Until I felt her heart beating against mine, their rhythms synced. A perfect pair.

We were destined for each other since the last time our essences passed through the Etherlands.

It was this bond, this most primitive elven magic that pre-dated the creation of the mirror world, which ensured mates could never mortally wound each other.

The bond between us was the most sacred among the fae.

Her death was only temporary?—

So long as the bond locked into place on her end too.

So long as she had the strength to fight the illusion of death that had her in its thrall.

So long as she made it through the Wilds without being killed by all the feral beasts that inhabited its dense, snarling forests, creatures even the powerful, full-blooded elves of Faerie would fear.

She’d never find her way back to me.

I understood that. I’d have to somehow learn to accept the fact.

I’d sent her away forever.

I’d lowered her precious body into the arms of the one man she already considered a friend, whom she trusted, who’d never betrayed her as I had, and who’d made his intentions toward her known long before she’d arrived in Embermere .

A future with her was what I’d had to sacrifice to save her—along with everyone she and I also loved.

As the future king of Embermere, I’d spare the thousands of royal subjects from the cruelty and torment the queen and her father had forced upon them. I’d give them a new life, a safe one, where they might truly thrive after all these centuries of darkness.

I’d offer them the light.

I’d find a way to endure without my mate for however many hundreds of miserable years I lived, but she had to survive. She had to find her way back to her magical life, to smile and laugh again. Her eyes had to once more twinkle with mischief, to take in the world I was jaded by and instead marvel at its wonder.

She had to be free of the queen’s dark and putrid hold.

But when I’d last stared into those gray eyes that seemed to house entire universes with their beauty, I’d registered her shock, her horror at what I’d done.

Her perceived betrayal .

If that prevented the magic of our mate bond from working?

If I’d truly killed the woman I loved more than my own life?

Then I might as well have killed us both.

It would no longer matter what the queen planned to do with me or my body.

This barren shell I was now? It’s all I’d ever be.