Chapter 10
TEN
Dirge
Iwaited on the dais with Brand and Lyrica, fae royalty but also my in-laws, as strange as that was to wrap my head around. The queen had banished everyone else from the court almost the moment Shay had disappeared from sight, and now stood, wringing her hands with worry.
Time passed strangely in faerie, but the more time passed, the more distraught Lyrica looked. “What if she doesn’t come back?” The question was directed to Brand, but I felt it like a punch to the solar plexus.
“What’s in there?” I asked, not caring if I was rudely interrupting. “What is the gauntlet?”
Brand rubbed Lyrica’s back but turned to answer my question, leaving hers hanging painfully in the ether.
“It’s a dark dimension. Where the fae realm is light, it’s the polar opposite.
It’s poorly lit, the air is toxic, and the whole place is overrun by viridbists.
The dark beings are drawn to the light folk, desperate to consume their energy.
But she’s tough, and I think she can make it through all of that.
It’s the end that’s the problem.” He shook his head slowly, and the pain in his eyes… ?
He didn’t think she could make it.
Lyrica broke down in sobs, clutching the front of his fancy court jacket, rumpling the lapels and staining them with her tears. Suddenly, I knew why they’d sent the court away.
They mourned her as if she weren’t coming back. And they didn’t want an audience for their pain.
“What’s at the end?” I asked again, the deadly edge of my voice inappropriate for my mate’s parents, but my wolf didn’t care. If they’d knowingly sent her to her death he’d tear them limb from limb.
But wouldn’t I feel it?
Our mate bond still hummed strong and true in my chest, and I held on to that certainty, even when Brand shook his head sadly in lieu of an answer.
“She’s still alive.” I thumped my chest where our mate bond lay.
Brand nodded, expression grim. “And I pray to the Goddess she stays that way. But even her reach is not boundless.”
After that, we waited in silence, time stretching so long that I truly began to worry, though I could still feel her, my heart, anchored to me in the deepest way possible.
Come back to me, muzic? mea.
The air behind the dais rippled, and my wolf went on high alert. Lyrica gasped, clinging to Brand’s arm as if she might faint.
And then the most beautiful woman in all the realms stepped through the shimmering mirage and threw herself directly into my arms.
“You made it,” I whispered against her hair, tears of joy prickling the corners of my eyes.
“I made it.” She dragged in a shuddery breath. “And that’s not all.” She kissed me on the cheek and then pulled back, holding up the stone shard.
Lying on her palm, it looked like any other fractured gem, not worth setting in jewelry, let alone risking one’s life over. But the fact that she’d retrieved it was huge, and it meant we could go home.
“You’ve more than earned it,” Brand said. We turned his way, and the pride beaming from both him and the queen was impossible to deny.
“You made it through. Does that mean… Did you take your full form?” The queen’s voice wavered, nearly cracking at the end of the question, and I realized that she didn’t give two figs about whether Shay could fly. She wanted to know if she remembered.
I glanced down at my mate, who had taken her bottom lip between her teeth. Shay nodded.
Lyrica covered her mouth with both hands, tears streaming freely now.
With one last glance over her shoulder at me, Shay stepped into an open spot on the dais and closed her eyes. For one heartbeat, nothing happened. But then a burst of light filled the space, near blinding. As I blinked it away, a new shape took form.
Well, not completely new. She was still my love, from the crown of curls on her head to her toes, but large, sweeping, iridescent wings now bloomed from her back.
She was fucking magnificent. My breath escaped me in a whoosh as I stared upon the physical manifestation of all the power bottled up inside her.
“You took your true form. After all these years, you did it.” Lyrica’s voice cracked with relief, a fresh wave of sobs racking her body as she still clung to Brand as if a stiff wind could knock her on her ass.
“I did it,” Shay said, her voice going quiet, smaller.
She glanced my way, and our bond tugged in my chest as she sought comfort.
It was only then that I noticed her bottom lip trembling as she desperately fought for her composure.
“I— I remembered some things. I don’t know if it’s everything, but I got some memories back. ”
Lyrica froze, and I could almost feel her hope welling up to fill the court, painfully immediate and overwhelming. “What do you remember?” she asked, breathless, that expectant expression she wore so similar to Shay’s.
“You tucking me into bed, singing. Both of you cheering me on at some sort of practice field. And when I failed, you told me you were proud of me anyway. I remember… asking you not to send me away, and you telling me it wasn’t safe here for me anymore.
That I would be safer in the human realm, with a wolf pack. ”
A tear trickled down Shay’s cheek, and I was in motion without a conscious thought.
Soothing her was in my blood and bones, as integral to my life as breathing.
I wrapped an arm around her waist, pulled her into my arms, and held her, even as memories kept spilling from her lips in a heartrending deluge.
“I remember loving you,” she finally said, leaning back against my chest as if the words were too heavy to hold alone. “I think I still do, somehow, even after all these years.”
Lyrica and Brand closed the distance between us, arms wide, and Shay went to them. They held her, and they cried together, and they healed.
Not all at once. There was no grand gesture where the past lost its sting, where hurts were magically erased.
But now there was hope where before, there had been none.
There was understanding and common ground as her parents explained to her what her father had told me, how they did what they thought they had to, to protect her, even if it meant living apart.
The moment was something fragile and beautiful, like the first green shoots in springtime after a harsh winter.
And after all that life had thrown at us, it felt like a new beginning.