Epilogue
ELOWIN
Six months later
Winter lay in a thick white blanket over the city of Emberleigh, and the tip of my nose and my fingers were frozen by the time I walked home from the university to the palace.
The palace grounds were expansive, and I entered through one of the side gates, waving at the guard on duty in the gatehouse.
I passed the barracks and the parade ground and stopped a moment to talk with Teon, who was exercising Rainsilver in the snow. Both of them breathed out steam.
Then I followed the path through the bare winter trees to the cottage that was tucked away at the back of the palace grounds. Light shone from the windows and smoke rose from the chimney.
Delight at being home again quickened my pace, and I pushed open the front door and stepped into the warmth of my little home.
I hung up my scarf and coat, took my boots off, and detoured briefly into the sitting room to leave my bag of books there.
Then I followed the smell of fresh baking bread through to the kitchen.
The faint sound of a lute floated in from outside, although what the tune was I couldn’t say.
The player possessed far more enthusiasm than skill.
I opened the door to the back garden.
Sparrow was sitting on the small patch of grass in the middle of the flourishing garden beds, wearing only a loose pair of pants.
He had his back to me as he strummed his lute and hummed tunelessly, and an array of gleaming silver-and-gold bird tattoos fluttered their wings against his skin in the sunlight.
I could feel the faint heat of his magic from where I stood at the back door, and as I moved closer to him, it grew as balmy as a summer’s day.
My skin tingled as it warmed. I picked a snow pea as I passed and popped it into my mouth.
Sparrow heard me coming and shuffled around to face me with a smile, setting the lute aside.
“I love your hair,” I said.
He beamed, turning his head from side to side so that I could see the shaved halves of his head were different colors.
Bright green on one side and bright pink on the other.
He had a short mane of hair down the middle still, in his natural brown, and he wore it so that it stood up in soft spikes.
His ears were lined with silver rings that matched the ones in his nipples.
Since coming to Emberleigh, Sparrow had embraced the idea of self-expression in whatever forms took his fancy, and I certainly wasn’t complaining about it.
“I think I’ll try purple and blue tomorrow,” he said.
He had exchanged a box of fresh lettuce for a charm that changed the color of his hair whenever he felt like it.
The rate he was going, the charm’s magic would run out in a week, but he was having fun with it, and it wasn’t as though he couldn’t do another swap soon.
The bed full of lettuce was looking fantastic.
He made to get up, but I waved him back down. I sat beside him, wiggling my toes in the sweet-smelling grass.
“How was your day?” he asked, leaning into me as I put an arm around him.
“Cold,” I said. “Very cold.”
“I know!” he exclaimed. “I went to visit Teon earlier, to take them some blueberries, and I shivered the whole way.”
“I hope you kept some blueberries for us.”
“Of course.” He pressed a kiss to my cheek, and I felt the tickle of magic before a bright blue butterfly appeared. It fluttered in front of us for a few seconds and then dissolved into glitter. The glitter hung in the air briefly before the breeze stole it away.
Sparrow’s magic had grown stronger since he’d come to live with me at the cottage.
He could keep the entire garden warm now, instead of just a tiny patch of it.
Our shared sympathetic magic was stronger too.
Last night as we’d cuddled in bed, instead of butterflies, a tiny green finch had appeared on the curtain rail and hopped up and down for a few minutes before disappearing again.
Then afterward, we’d both ignored the cute little mouse in the corner because we’d assumed we’d conjured it, and this morning there was a corner missing from the block of cheese in the kitchen.
It was a particularly fine cheese too—Sparrow was a far better cheesemaker than his mother had ever been.
Tonight I’d have to remember to set a trap and release the mouse into the garden when I caught it.
It wasn’t as though it would suffer because it was winter.
In Sparrow’s garden, it was summer all year round.
Sparrow let out a long sigh. “I suppose we should move.”
“Must we?” I asked, still luxuriating in the warmth of his magic.
“Yes!” He laughed. “You know that Rowan and Aran and Finhad are coming for dinner tonight, and so are Teon and Aldian. They will all be expecting a table full of fresh summer vegetables, and that won’t happen unless I pick them.”
“Is that why you’re baking bread? I smelled it from the front door.”
Sparrow turned his wide gaze toward me. “You didn’t eat it, did you?”
“No.” It was my turn to laugh. “I was tempted, though.”
“If you help me pick the beans and pull up the beets, I’ll let you have the end piece of the loaf,” he said.
“Hmmm. I’m not sure if that’s enough to make me move,” I said, running a thumb over his left nipple piercing. He shivered despite the warmth of the garden, and I smiled to myself.
“But we have to,” he said, his eyes wide, even though he now sounded as unwilling as I did.
“Well, if you must be such a social butterfly,” I told him with a sigh, and his face grew pink as he laughed.
When Sparrow had first moved to Emberleigh, he’d been afraid he would have no friends.
Now he knew more elves than I did. Of course my friends and family were his as well, but he’d made plenty more friends for himself in his explorations of the city and by selling his garden produce at the markets.
His natural curiosity about others combined with his open and earnest nature meant that he made friends easily, and kept them too.
He had spent a lot of years in Hillstowe with only the birds for company, and he was making up for it now.
Not that he didn’t still love birds. And they, of course, loved him.
Especially in winter, when his garden was warm and full of life.
We rose to our feet, and I fetched the basket from beside the kitchen door.
Barefoot, we wandered up and down the rows of garden beds, picking whatever we needed for dinner.
Before long the basket was overflowing with green beans and ripe red tomatoes and plump purple beets, along with a handful of fresh herbs.
Sparrow wiped his hands on his pants. “I must change before our guests arrive.”
“That’s a pity,” I said and meant it.
It was always a shame to cover his tattoos with a tunic, but it wasn’t like I wouldn’t get to explore them later tonight—and I was almost certain I’d spotted a new bird hidden near his left hip. Sparrow took great delight in adding to his collection and waiting for me to discover his new artwork.
So did I.
He laughed. “No, I really must.”
I set the basket down and caught him by the wrist as he made to move toward the cottage.
“What?” he asked, wrinkling his nose as he looked up at me.
I stood behind him and put my arms around him, resting my chin on his shoulder. “Nothing. Just that I love you, and I’d like to stand here a little longer in the warmth with you.”
“I love you too,” Sparrow said and held his hands over mine where they were clasped around his waist.
And so we stood there in the garden, Sparrow and I, basking in the warmth of his sunlight.