Epilogue #2
I didn’t feel like a queen, but Araz…he felt like a king even when he wasn’t trying. I had a while to go before I felt royal. And maybe it was best not to. Because no singular person should be given all the power.
The formation of a council would ensure that power was divided. A voting system would allow the people to have a say on matters that concerned them. Rebuilding had taken up most of the past four years, but it was time to formalize the structure.
We’d need representatives of all races, and tonight would be a good time to speak to them. Rakshasa, pari, Asura, Danava, djinn, drohi, and humans were coming together as one to celebrate our new world.
Shahee Kshetra was now open to the land dwellers. Vortexes operated regularly to transport people back and forth. Our world was at peace. But every society needed rules, and it was time to focus on those. Fair rules and equal rights.
There was so much to be done.
But not tonight.
Tonight was for celebration.
I just wished that Ravi and Kalani could have seen this time of peace. But they were gone, swallowed by the unraveling when it took the Red Mountain. The area was still healing, and so was my heart.
Araz emerged from the walk-in closet dressed in a gold and cream kurta. He’d pulled back his hair into a knot, his high cheekbones on show, eyes like fire ringed in kohl.
I wanted him inside me right now.
A low vibration shook his chest. “Leela, if you keep looking at me like that, we will most definitely be late for the festivities. Very late.”
I swallowed past the dryness in my mouth. “I guess I’m insatiable.”
He crossed the room toward me. Slow. Deliberate. My pulse kicked up. I reached to graze his jaw with my fingertips, resolve wavering. Fashionably late was still a thing, right? “Araz…”
He nudged my nose with his, breath warm and inviting against my lips. “Leela…”
Yep, I was wavering. But what kind of queen would I be if I put my sexual needs before my monarch duties? A satisfied one? No. Stop it.
I pushed away the greedy thoughts and took a step back, shaking my head and smiling. “You’re bad…”
“I am not,” he said, matching my smile. “I’m good. So very fucking good.”
I lightly slapped his chest. “Gah! Stop it.”
He snagged me around the waist and pulled me close. “Are you sure?”
Heat flashed through me.
“Mama?”
Araz and I both turned to the door, to the small sleepy-eyed boy clutching a blue blanket.
My sweet Arman.
My heart immediately tugged toward my son.
The rebuild and unification of the races, freedom of the drohi, all of it had taken time, and it wasn’t until I’d started to show that the fact that I hadn’t had a period in a while had hit me.
Arman had been born not long after that.
Too quick for a human child, but then, neither Araz nor I was human, and the timing didn’t matter.
Unease skated up my spine at the thought as it always did because if I tracked it properly, if I ran the numbers, then—
“I had a bad dream,” Arman said.
Araz released me and crossed the room to scoop him up. “Bad dreams can’t hurt you, Arman. You know that.”
Arman nestled against Araz’s shoulder, his golden eyes, so like his father’s, fixing on me. “There’s something wrong with Pippy. She won’t wake up.”
Araz and I exchanged glances, and my heart sank.
We’d found Pippy, a Loribird, in the palace gardens when Arman was two years old. She’d had a broken wing. Arman had been smitten by her, gently helping to care for her, and when her wing healed, she’d stayed. Always close to Arman, most often perched on his shoulder.
I stroked his hair. “Let’s go check on her together.”
The worry on Araz’s face spoke to the disquiet in my belly. Arman loved Pippy, but Loribirds didn’t have long lifespans.
We stepped out of our chamber and down the corridor to our left, and the double doors to the royal quarters opened, admitting Dhoona. He strode toward us, the tips of his metallic wings catching the lamplight, his expression etched with anxiety.
It had taken time to get used to seeing him with an actual face. The death of Asura Rajni had broken whatever curse had been placed on the brothers. Their stone faces had melted away, and their wings had grown back, slow and painfully. But they were finally whole now.
“Your majesties, Pashim has reported movement in the mountain,” Dhoona said.
My heart stuttered. The mountain. The throne.
My mind went back to the moment after Mizikiel’s death. How the world had shaken. How the spiral had ground to a halt. The doorway had bloomed in front of us, and I’d run for it, exiting just in time to avoid being trapped there. The doorway had vanished, leaving the throne. Stone. Inert.
But now there was movement?
“Alliana and the revenant troops have been summoned just in case,” Dhoona informed us.
Dhoona and Yudh’s curse may have been lifted, but the curse that had created the revenants had not. Although they retained their beastly form, they had reclaimed their intellect and capacity to communicate, and I’d given them a home in the royal guard.
I was glad they were here now.
Araz passed Arman to me. “I’ll be back soon.”
I nodded, heart in my mouth, the thud of panic easing when Arman curled against me, wrapping his arms around my neck.
He was small for his age. Delicate and sweet-natured. My heart expanded with love as it always did for my son, leaving no room for fear. Movement around the mountain could mean a host of things.
Mizikiel was dead.
He was gone.
It was over.
My stomach clenched.
Araz left with Dhoona, and I turned my focus to Arman and his friend Pippy.
We crossed the hall together, entering his nursery, then cutting through the playroom to his bedchamber filled with soft moonlight.
Pippy’s tiny tree home sat by the window, the branches’ dark shadows reaching for the moon. Pippy, however, lay on the soft earth beneath it.
Her body was still. No rise and fall of breath.
“Mama?” Arman looked up at me with questions in his eyes. “She was breathing before…now she isn’t.”
How did I tell my four-year-old his friend was gone? This was his first experience of death. I had to choose my words carefully.
He reached out to touch her with gentle fingers, a soft frown settling between his eyebrows.
Then he carefully scooped her up in his hands and held her, simply looking down at her.
“Arman…Pippy is…she’s gone. Her body stopped working, and her soul left it. It’s called death and—”
“She’s gone,” he said softly. “But she’ll be back.”
“What? Honey. Pippy is dead. She’s not coming back.”
“No, Mama. She will come back. But…she won’t be Pippy. She’ll be something new. Something…else.” He looked up at me, and my breath snagged in my throat because his eyes…His eyes were dark and filled with galaxies.
I’d seen eyes like that before.
Every living thing has an end so a new beginning can take root and bloom…It’s inside you now…
No, the possibility I’d refused to consider hit me like a slug to the chest now. The connections I’d deliberately avoided making clicked together like the pieces of a particularly sick puzzle so that Mizikiel’s final words left no doubt. Not any longer.
The time frame between my intimate moment with Araz in the devouring force camp while Mizikiel was in the driver seat and Arman’s birth could no longer be ignored.
“Mama, why are you crying?” Arman asked, the stars in his eyes brightening. “You’re not going to die. Not for a long time. I promise.”
My throat pinched, vision blurring as I looked down at my son. Mine and Araz’s child, but also his.
The throne was waking…
I exhaled as Priti’s voice filled my mind. Your love is your greatest weapon, Leela…Allow it to guide you, and the balance will not waver.
“Mama?” Arman frowned up at me, his eyes now golden like Araz’s. “Please can I come to the celebration with you?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and smiled. “Yes, my heart. You can.” I gently took Pippy from his hands and set her down, then pulled him into my arms. “I love you, Arman. So very much.”
And that would have to be enough.
Loved Labyrinth of Gods then check out the Dark Academia Romantasy Wicked Onyx. And if you’ve a hankering for Space Romantasy then grab The Darkest Stars.