Epilogue
Mara glared at the lime green Jeep in front of her.
“Why are there cans?”
“Because noise,” Ethan replied, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind. “It’s traditional.”
“It seems wasteful.” She was not going to argue about the noise. Ethan’s family and friends were in general loud, and for the most part she enjoyed it, in moderation.
“Don’t worry, we’ll recycle them after.”
“Hey!” Javier called from the yard. “You’re not supposed to see each other before the wedding!”
“It’s not a wedding!” Ethan shouted back. “We got married this morning at the courthouse!”
“Tell that to your mom!” Javi yelled.
“Dammit.” Ethan kissed Mara on the cheek. “Seems pretty silly at this point.”
“Your family loves you,” Mara said gently. “And this is important to them.”
“And to you?” Ethan squeezed tighter.
“Yes.”
“Double dammit.” He gave her one last squeeze and stepped away. “Okay. I’ll see you when you walk down the aisle. Thank god it’s a short one.”
“Have I mentioned that you talk too much?” She turned to face him, reluctant to let him leave, even for the moment. This was their day, after all.
He grinned. “Maybe you should shut me up.”
She stepped forward and kissed him. Someone in the yard whooped—possibly Javi, possibly another of Ethan’s friends.
Not that his friends were the only ones in attendance, but hers were quieter…
and less prudish. They would not have blinked if she and her new husband had chosen to consummate the marriage up against the Jeep that very moment.
“Go.” she finally told him, sighing as she walked in the other direction, to the tent set up for the bridal party.
Which was a small one—just Ofelia and Ethan’s sister as her attendants, and of course Ethan’s mother and her own.
If her mother remembered to come to the tent, or to the ceremony.
She was much more interested in Mara’s apiary and the vast garden she’d created to support it.
It was not supposed to be an elaborate wedding. Just a gathering of friends and family in their back yard. Practically a camping trip.
She had underestimated the camping might of a medieval recreation society. They had shown up that morning with tents and banners, tables and benches and even a pair of thrones, and even now they were gathered under a huge pavilion as if awaiting the court of a king and queen.
(“They’re here, too,” Ethan had told her when she’d remarked on it. “I’ll introduce you later.” She was unaware that the United States had adopted a monarchy, but to be fair, she had been gone for five years.)
When she and Ethan had finally returned to the city, they had faced a quandary.
He had a new lease on a small apartment with a tiny back yard, close to the university and, since he had yet to live in it, spotlessly clean.
She had the home she and Tristan had lived in, which was larger inside and out, but also held the weight of their memories together.
It also held five years of accumulated dust.
Neither felt right.
And so they’d compromised, living in Ethan’s apartment during the week and spending the weekends clearing Mara’s home of dust while they searched for a place that was not his or hers but theirs.
They’d found it in an old home out to the west of the city, one that sat on several acres of pristine desert, with a good-sized main building, a small barn, and an overgrowth of prickly pear and cholla that made them both nostalgic.
Well, the cholla slightly less so. Ethan might have had a few choice words when a stem had lodged itself just where his armor wasn’t on their first tour of the property. But Mara had given the cholla a good talking-to, and it had kept its stems to itself the next time.
The barn had started as a gardening shed for Ethan, a place where he could expand on the research that had finally brought him the tenure he’d sought, but shortly after they’d moved in, Mara had been visited by an old friend.
Or the daughter of one, at least. The queen of the hive she had known in the hills to the east had sent her daughter-queen out into the world, and she had needed a safe place for her nascent swarm to settle.
Mara had at first offered the queen a place in the rafters, but when Ethan had pointed out the dangers of falling honeycomb, she had instead made inquiries and ordered a set of “flow hives” that allowed her to collect honey without unduly disturbing the bees.
Not that they minded her visits, of course, but she preferred to be kind.
Now the bees buzzed safely just past the barn and the barn itself had found a new purpose.
She used it to brew mead.
She did not sell it, of course—they did not need the money, and both she and Ethan preferred to drink it themselves, or to share it with their friends. And of course they had only the one colony of bees in her apiary.
So far.
As for the rest of their land, some of it was Mara’s for her spirit, and some Ethan’s for his research—which, of course, was for his spirit. They let it grow largely untended, other than the parts closest to their house.
There was one small patch in front of the barn that they both tended assiduously, just a few desert plants that seemed like any other. Only Mara and Ethan knew its true purpose.
Mara glanced at the clock her new mother-in-law had set on the table with her veil. It was almost time now, but she had a few minutes to spare.
She left the tent and hurried to the small, special garden.
Ethan had insisted they place a bench there—nothing elaborate, just a simple piece of wrought iron. She blessed his thoughtfulness now. She could make a seat of the earth, of course, but she was wearing a dress of white silk, and the ground was still damp from the last watering.
With a sigh, she sat and reached out to the nearest prickly pear, calling for it to bloom.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
The blossom that came forth was white as snow, and she smiled. Of course it was.
“I see you have escaped again.”
Mara smiled, shifting over on the bench to make room for Ofelia. “I did not run far.”
“This time,” Ofelia said with a sniff. But it was a happy sniff, and she laid her arm around Mara’s shoulder. She had Mara’s veil draped over her arm. “Are you saying goodbye, then?”
“No,” Mara said softly. “Though perhaps a little.” She turned to Ofelia, biting her lip. “He would be happy, wouldn’t he? I have believed it, but—”
“That depends,” Ofelia said. “Do you love Ethan?”
“I do,” Mara said decisively. “I love him with everything in me.”
“Then yes”. Ofelia smiled gently. “Tristan would rejoice for you.”
Mara sighed, leaning into her friend’s embrace. “This is his garden,” she said. “It was Ethan’s idea. That I have a place to…remember. To grieve when I need it. I didn’t understand at first.”
“Of course you did not.” Ofelia reached forward, ghosting her hand over the white ruffled flower. “We always think of grief as a thing that comes to an end when we find joy. At least when we are young.”
“You are not so much older than I, my friend.” Mara laughed.
“But,” Ofelia said, “I am far wiser.”
Mara sighed. “I let it be, for the most part,” she said softly. “But sometimes, when I remember, or sometimes when I forget and I realize I have forgotten, I come here.”
“Is this blossom for grief, then?”
“No,” Mara said with surety. “This blossom is for gratitude. Gratitude for the man whose love sustained me for decades, and for the man whose memory brought me to a new love.” She cast Ofelia a sidelong look. “And you thought I was merely being dramatic.”
“You were,” Ofelia said firmly. “But the gods saw fit to bring you a man whose sense of drama matched your own.”
As if to punctuate Ofelia’s words, a braying of trumpets came from the wedding pavilion.
“It is time,” Ofelia said. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Mara said with no hesitation.
She turned and left Tristan’s garden behind. His memory would be there for her when she needed it, but Tristan was her past.
Ethan was her future.
The trumpets had faded by the time she reached the entrance to the tent, replaced by the sweet voices of singers. More friends of Ethan, lending their bardic voices to his nuptials.
Though they were her friends now, too. They had taken to her quickly, welcoming her into their social group as if she had been a missing piece.
Even the woman she had learned was Ethan’s “ex”—who herself seemed quite happy now with a barrel-chested man Ethan said was a blacksmith, when he wasn’t being an engineer.
Ethan had muttered something about iron being “the grayest gray ever to gray” but he’d been laughing, and it seemed whatever pain had accompanied their breakup was long over. Which was well. Mara had no qualms about Ethan’s love, but she was not as generous of spirit as he.
Her friends had stingers, after all.
There, that was the tune she’d been awaiting. She breathed deep and stepped into the pavilion.
She bore no bouquet of flowers. There was no one to give her away.
No petals were scattered before her but the ones that danced of their own accord from her garden, whirling around her as she walked to meet Ethan.
Ofelia walked behind her on her right, silk skirts flowing behind her.
Ethan’s sister was on her left, wearing a dress of the aluminum pop-top chain mail Mara’s mead drinking had contributed to.
The rest of the crowd was a blur, family and friends and perhaps some strangers who had come uninvited.
Mara was not certain if Ethan’s human friends had the faintest idea that she was a fae, or that the fae even existed.
He had told her not to worry, that they were used to “ren faire fantasies” but that her friends should expect to be complimented on their wing craftsmanship.
Which had sent Ofelia into near hysterics of laughter.
She was serious now, though, escorting Mara with her wings furled like a cloak.
Ethan was waiting for her, wearing a more sumptuous version of his red and black armor—no plastic beneath, just yards of linen in alternating black and red, their edges dagged with a fleur-de-lis pattern.
Mara glanced down when she reached the front of the aisle. “I see you have a new codpiece,” she said under her breath.
“This is my dress codpiece,” he murmured back. “And just wait till you see what’s under it.”
The woman—Ethan had called her a herald?—waiting to officiate at the not-legal, just-for-the-party-of-it ceremony rolled her eyes as Mara fell into her husband’s arms, laughing.
“Perhaps,” Ofelia said after a moment, “you should get on with it?”
Ethan’s sister nodded and grinned, catching the best man Javier’s eye. “Get on with it,” they said loudly in unison.
As if on cue—though a poorly rehearsed cue—half of the audience shouted, “Get on with it!”
“Well,” Ethan murmured in Mara’s ear. “Shall we get on with it? After all, we have a wedding night to look forward to.”
“Very well,” Mara said. “But this doesn’t mean you have won.”
“I think we both won,” Ethan said, and there wasn’t much argument to be made to that.
They got on with it.
“And so it is,” cried the herald as they walked hand in hand down the aisle, “that Mara, the Keeper of the Secret Garden of the East, and Sir Ethan, Tenured Professor of the Western City, have pledged their troth before friends and family, fae and man. Let us have three cheers for this newest husband and wife! Hip, hip—”
“Huzzah!” shouted the joyous throng.
And as the cheering continued, Mara and Ethan stopped outside to kiss, surrounded by the flowers of their new home, which had somehow burst into ecstatic bloom without Mara even trying at all.
For a moment—just a moment—Mara was terrified. Which was foolish. They had been living together for months, and the marriage here was all for show. Just an excuse for food and drink and music. Someone had already started to play the drums over in the corner.
“What’s wrong?” Ethan asked, slipping his hand into hers and drawing her away from the hubbub.
“Nothing is wrong,” she said. “It is just… I spent five years alone. And I am not sad that it is over—not at all—but it is sometimes…”
“A bit much?” he said gently, kissing her ear.
“Yes.” She laughed ruefully. “I must confess, I am feeling the urge to run away again.”
He was silent for just a moment, then drew her into his arms. “Where will you run to?”
“I will not run,” she said, a little annoyed. “I just married you.”
“I know.” He pressed a kiss to her throat. “But if you ran, where would you run?”
“I do not know.”
“If you don’t tell me,” he said, “how am I supposed to follow you?”
“You have your satellites,” she said, giggling.
“I do,” he agreed.
“What if I do not want you to follow me?”
“Do you not want me to follow you?”
“No. Yes. I— Why are we even having this conversation?”
“Because,” he said softly. “I want you to know that I would go to the ends of the earth for you. Climb every mountain, swim every... However the song goes.”
“And if I don’t want you to?”
“Then I won’t.” He kissed her earlobe. “But you want me to.”
“At this moment,” she said with mock fierceness, “I am not sure that I do.”
“You do,” he breathed into her hair. “You want me to storm your battlements. Lay siege to your tower, tear down this wall, cross the barricades, swim the moat, fight the alligators—”
“I have no alligators,” she interrupted.
“ —the alligators with laser beams on their heads, battle your army of remote-controlled prairie dogs, and win your heart again.”
“All that for me?”
“If you want me to.”
She let out an irritated sigh. “Well. How am I to enjoy setting up barricades now knowing you’ll just storm them again?”
“The storming is the fun part,” he pointed out.
“Ah. I thought the surrender was the fun part.”
“That, too.”
She turned in the circle of his arms, gazing into his gray-blue eyes. “Do you promise to cry my name out to the uncaring skies?”
“Every night,” he vowed. “Ten times a night, if you ask it of me. Though I may have to call in to work the next day.”
“And when does the battle begin?”
“Tonight.” His eyes fell to her lips. “Or… I do have a counter-proposal…”
“What is that?”
“We go forth and conquer the world together.”
She looked him in the eye, warmed by the love and laughter, the teasing adoration in their blue depths.
“My beloved fool,” she said with a wicked grin, “I accept your terms.”
They sealed it with a kiss.
THE END