Epilogue
Hannalinde
Eighteen months later
The climbing roses had swallowed the south wall, cascading over it in an irrepressible profusion.
Hannalinde stood in the garden with a cup of tea and watched the moonlight silver the blossoms, pink and cream and a deep arterial red.
Though they wilted and eventually dripped their pretty petals all over the garden paths, they constantly renewed themselves.
When one bloom faded, another took its place, and another, the vines growing higher and producing even more flowers with each successive month.
It felt much like watching her child grow ever taller, ever more beautiful.
Her sweet Rosalore sat in the grass at her feet, pulling petals from a fallen rose with her father’s seriousness. Her father by name. Her father in every way that counted.
She was walking now, careening about like a small, determined boulder.
Her wings, folded against her back, were the size of a crow’s, translucent and fine-veined, and they fluttered when she was excited, which was often, though they would never carry her weight.
Aalis had confirmed it: the wings were decorative, a gargoyle inheritance expressed in miniature.
She would walk where others flew, also like her father.
Rikard insisted on keeping his restored flight abilities secret, claiming it was to avoid the dreaded sky balls. But on occasional thrilling nights when Rose House was asleep, he carried Hanna in his arms up above the clouds.
“Darling, don’t eat the flowers.”
Rosalore looked up, a petal stuck to her chin, and grinned with the dozen or so teeth she’d recently acquired. Then she ate the petal anyway.
From a blanket spread beneath the old pear tree, Carlijn laughed.
She was propped against a bank of cushions with her own baby in her lap, a fat, rosy half-gargoyle boy named Theodor who had his mother’s ringlets and his father’s horns, tiny curved nubs that had appeared at three months and made Carlijn weep for two days before declaring them the most handsome horns in Solvantis.
Theodor was currently asleep, which he did with the same commitment Rosalore brought to sleeping during the day.
Between them, the two children conspired so their mothers rarely slept at the same time.
A gargoyle landed on the eastern wall where the moonflowers grew.
Hannalinde glanced up, expecting Cléa, who visited most evenings.
Instead, Bastien dropped down into the garden, his enormous wings compressed against his sides, his long hair tied back.
He wore his palace harness, polished to a gleam.
Rosalore spotted him and shrieked, “Bad!” This was her greeting for Bastien specifically, a sound of such piercing delight that it sent the moths scattering.
She abandoned her botanical research, hauled herself upright on the bench, and tottered toward him with her arms outstretched and her small wings buzzing.
Bastien caught her and swung her around. The massive hands that guarded the human palace cradled the baby against his chest with a tenderness incongruous with his size. Rosalore grabbed his large, pointed ear.
“Wuv Bad,” Rosalore announced happily, yanking on his ear. Bastien endured it with the stoic fortitude of a gargoyle who had survived the goblin wars.
“Love Rosalore,” he replied, adjusting her grip from his ear to his harness strap, a negotiation he’d perfected over months of such treatment, and shot Hannalinde an apologetic smile. “Sorry to arrive unannounced.”
“We’re always glad to see you. Rikard won’t be home for a few hours, but please, sit down. There’s tea.” Hanna motioned with her own cup to the tea service set out on the wide, stone bench nearby.
“I’ve actually come to see you, on palace business.” He set Rosalore down gently on the petaled path again, producing a folded letter. He handed it to Hanna. It was sealed with green wax. “The queen asks for an immediate reply.”
She opened it. Written in the queen’s hand, it was an embroidery commission. She requested a nameday gown for the royal child, embroidered with stars and ivy leaves, the king and queen’s personal marks, to be delivered before the autumn equinox.
Hanna looked up from the parchment. “She’s with child?” she mouthed, so the moths wouldn’t hear.
“She is,” Bastien confirmed. “It is a secret for now, but it will be announced at the midsummer court. She asks for your discretion.”
“Of course.” She folded the letter and pressed it to her heart. “Tell her I’ll begin immediately. It will be the most beautiful gown in Solvantis.”
“She will be grateful, I’m sure.” Bastien bowed and left as abruptly as he’d arrived.
Later, after Carlijn had retired with a still-sleeping Theodor and a new novel, Rikard returned from the Nadir’s office. Hannalinde sat on the edge of the bed and told him about the queen’s commission while he played with their daughter, lifting her in the air and flying her about the room.
“The royal family must be so happy to have a little prince or princess on the way,” she remarked, her love for her husband swelling as she watched him with Rosalore. He was such a kind and patient parent.
Rikard nodded. “They have long hoped for a child. I hope they find the joy of parenthood that we have.” The bond carried the sincerity of the statement in a warm, steady current, but it cut off abruptly when Rosalore yanked his ear.
“Gentle, Honeybee,” he begged her, trying to pull her off.
She clung even tighter to it. “Wuv Faf!” That was her word for father.
“At least she learned my name,” Rikard joked, wincing as her tiny claws scraped his skin. Gingerly, he extracted his abused ear and put Rosalore in her crib. “The moths were beginning to talk that Bastien was her father and not me.”
Hanna chuckled. It seemed their family would always feature in the Tower gossip.
“He’s so good with Rosa. He’d make a wonderful father.
” She’d tried to encourage a relationship between Bastien and Carlijn, but Carlijn found him too steady.
Well, her word had been “boring.” Frankly, dull was what Carlijn needed, but she hadn’t yet learned that lesson.
“I told him as much.” Rikard gave the baby a set of wooden horses to play with and crossed to the bed to sit beside Hanna.
She unbuckled the bindings on his wings and he sighed with relief, stretching them out.
“I suggested it was time he found a mate, now that his position at the palace is secure.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he was quite occupied serving the queen and had no need of one.”
“Did you tell him the many benefits of the mate bond?” Hanna grinned at the pulse of desire that her question elicited.
“Maybe I should have described them in more detail.”
“Mmm,” Hanna agreed, leaning to place a kiss on her husband’s chest and then a few more when that one proved welcome. “How much time before dawn?”
“Not enough,” he grumbled theatrically as he pulled her into his lap and wrapped his wings around them both, cocooning them inside. “The sun rises earlier and earlier every day. There’s no point in summoning a nanny if it only buys us a few minutes.”
Hannalinde leaned against him, enjoying the feeling of being encircled by his arms and wings, like they existed in their own little bubble.
“Did I tell you that this is the third day in a row that Rosalore hasn’t asked for milk?
I think she’s officially weaned,” she said casually, running her finger over the laces on the front of his breeches.
It took a few seconds for her words to sink in, and then Rikard leapt into action, practically flinging her back onto the bed. She giggled as he left her there and swept up Rosalore, rushing off to the nursery to find some poor drowsy nanny while Hanna waited for him to return.
He returned empty-armed, with a raw, hungry look on his face. “Did I understand you right, wife, that you want me to put a hatchling in you before dawn?”
She bit her lip, a little thrill of anticipation running through her as he stalked toward the bed. “I think you understood me very well.”
He was on her in an instant, untying her dressing gown and stripping her shift off over her head. At the same time, she nimbly unlaced his breeches and drew him out. There was not time for kisses and compliments, only for joining together in the most efficient way possible.
He laughed breathlessly when she pushed him off her into the pillows.
“Lie back,” she commanded.
“Yes, my lady.” He obeyed, and she climbed on top of him, her thighs settling on either side of his hips in the position that had become their favorite: her above, him below, and the bond wide open between them so that every sensation was doubled, his and hers, hers and his, a story with the same ending in two directions.
She sank onto him. The stretch was familiar now, a sensation she welcomed rather than feared. He filled her, warm and thick and alive. Her husband, awake and breathing. Her mate, who visited her mind in dreams. The father of her children. Her protector.
She moved, and he moved with her, his hips rising to meet hers, his hands tightening on her waist, his purr building in his chest until it vibrated through them both and the bond amplified it into something seismic.
The rhythm was theirs, one they knew. One they’d built with months of patience… patience they did not have now.
No, this was messy and heated, a desperate sprint.
He groaned beneath her, the base of his cock thickening, and she felt his fear.
This was when he’d normally ensure her pleasure and pull out.
But this time, he’d let his knot swell in her channel.
Let it bind them together while his seed took root.
And something about that frightened him.
“What is it?” she panted, still riding him.
He shook his head, smiling up at her. “Nothing, nothing. Don’t stop.”
But the fear was there, worming through the bond. His hesitance.
She stopped and grabbed his horns so he had to look at her. “What is it?” she asked more insistently.
He reached up to cup one side of her face, his smile twisting into something bittersweet. He stroked her cheekbone with his thumb. “I don’t want to hurt you. It will be different this time. Larger. I’m just…worried.”
She raised her brows, skeptical. “Larger than an infant’s skull? Because I managed that all right.”
“Well, no,” he admitted sheepishly. “Not so large as that.”
“Then I think I’ll be fine. What you should be worried about is turning to stone while your knot is still firm. Then we’ll be stuck together all day.”
His mouth made a circle of alarm. He circled her waist with his arm and flipped them both over, pushing her legs up so he could thrust into her fast and deep.
“My beautiful wife,” he groaned, almost like he was talking to himself. “So soft and ready for me. So sweet and ripe. You will always be mine.”
Every stroke sent her soaring closer and closer to a burning sun.
But it was he who came first, spilling into her as his knot swelled, stretching her beyond comprehension and locking them together so he couldn’t move.
But his pleasure swamped any pain she might have felt, and then her release cascaded over his in a rush, her body milking his for every last drop.
The dual climax left them gasping in the wreckage, tangled together in the bedlinens with the sky outside beginning to lighten at the edges.
This beauty would never dim or tarnish. It would only grow and grow into something even more beautiful.