Epilogue I
Asta and Kaid walked up the beach, entering the castle from the terrace, where Linnea greeted them with a hug.
“It’s only been two days, Lin,” Asta laughed.
“I know, but I’ll always be happy to see you two walking up that beach.” Linnea stepped back and grabbed Halsten’s hand while his other held him steady with a cane.
Asta and Kaid had been traveling back and forth between Naltania and Orntali every few days while they prepared for Kaid’s coronation.
Queen Arielle was more than ready to retire from the role since Kaid had returned.
After being separated from King Aerik for so long, Kaid’s parents could not wait to live a life of few responsibilities together.
Dyri came barreling down the hall, barking and panting, his hind end extra springy due to only having one rear limb now.
Asta could never thank the medical staff enough for saving his life, even if it meant removing his mangled leg in order to do so.
She knelt down and squeezed him tightly while Kaid patted his head.
“How is she?” Asta asked Linnea.
Her cousin smiled softly. “Go see for yourself.”
Asta made her way to the infirmary, sucking in a deep breath before entering. Two dark-haired twins sat on the crisp, flat sheets, laughing and speaking in hushed tones.
“Tova?”
The twin with longer hair turned around, her bright smile the same one Asta remembered from before the thoughtrus incident.
Kaid excused himself to spend time with Halsten while Asta stayed with the twins.
Tova explained that she had not meant to resist the thoughtrus; she only wanted to repress any thoughts of Liva in case the situation escalated.
She would never do anything to endanger her sister, and Asta understood completely.
Now that Tova was better, she would join her sea dragon twin in their joint position of emissaries between the Ventarin territories and Orntali.
The finfolk and siren kingdoms were no longer at war. Actually, it was quite the opposite. After the fall of Yrsa, Maren stepped into the role of queen of the finfolk. She had been working with the sirens to help the finfolk adjust to the new feeding arrangement they had made.
Understandably, once there was a merfolk war both underwater and on land, it was difficult to hide the existence of the species from the villagers of Orntali. And so, finfolk and sirens were Orntali’s little secret. The humans knowing about the species made life easier for everyone.
The finfolk were required to help the fishermen meet their quota, guiding whichever fish species was overpopulated at that time into their nets. In exchange for their help, the humans had volunteered to let the finfolk sustainably feed from them.
This was where the sirens had to step in to help—training the finfolk when to stop feeding so they did not take a human’s life. No finfolk was allowed to feed unless a siren spectator was with them.
Maren was working diligently to civilize the finfolk species, including putting an end to abandoning their children on the shore.
During battle, the new finfolk queen had revealed that she turned on her mother for love, but Asta learned what she truly meant a few weeks after the war ended.
Maren had lied—a lot—in order to accomplish everything she had. Her end goal, however, was protecting Asta and living a life of blissful peace with her wife, Svanhild.
Queen Yrsa had been so wrapped up in a strategic merspecies marriage that she had never noticed that her daughter had fallen in love with her lady-in-waiting. The moment Maren understood what her mother’s extensive plan was, she began undermining it.
Maren had left Asta the extra iron key in the forest on purpose.
She had led Asta’s friends to reunite the comb and mirror by placing Queen Else’s informative journal out in the open of the archives.
She had pushed Asta away so she would not get involved in a war she knew nothing about—though that did not work out.
The night that Kaid and Asta hid in the cave, Maren and Svanhild held off the search by swearing up and down that they had seen them continue running down the beach.
Maren had even convinced her mother to send the most feral warriors to the shore to attack Asta’s friends and family, knowing that they would likely be able to out-smart them.
Everything Maren had done had been driven by her love for Svanhild and Asta. She even explained that though she did not live with Queen Else—Asta’s mother—for long, she knew that Else loved her more than her birth mother ever would, so she did this for her as well. And their father.
Out of everyone, Maren deserved a happy ending the most.
Asta returned to her suite to find a letter from Gyrial, updating her on his latest patrol.
The fae male had returned to the Spellid Mountains after the council lifted his banishment.
Once Sabella had helped reveal the truth about Gyrial’s parents—how his father had murdered his mother and that was the reason he attacked his father—the council issued a formal apology and offered Gyrial an officer position in their army.
Before he left, the fae male explained that he was leaving because even though he valued the friendships he had made in Orntali, it was time for him to find his happy ending, too. Asta could not argue with that.
She folded up the letter and placed it on her vanity before looking out the window and watching a herd of wild, dapple gray horses galloping and bucking down the beach.
The kelpies made regular appearances now, traveling freely between the ocean kingdoms and Orntali.
Though the villagers didn’t exactly know the truth regarding them, they understood enough to give the horses their space.
However, they left troughs of freshly killed hare out each night and were pleased to discover the rabbits were gone each morning.
“Niklas is in heaven,” Kaid said as he entered the bedroom, wrapping his arms around Asta from behind.
She stared at herself in the mirror, observing the streak of black hair that remained from Yrsa’s attack.
“Allowing him to open the archives to the public was the best thing you could have done for him.”
After learning about all of the historical pieces that had been shoved down into the archives to collect dust, Asta knew that giving that knowledge back to her people was the best way to ensure history would not repeat itself.
The legends needed to live on. It was also the best way for her to confirm with her villagers that their suspicions regarding preternatural beings' existence were real without outright saying so.
“So, when can we tell your father?” Kaid kissed Asta’s neck playfully.
She laughed. “Let’s not spring this on him when he’s planning my coronation. We have two major ceremonies coming up. We don’t need to inform him that we may have skipped over a third and took the easy way out.”
“You think fighting a war, managing two kingdoms, finding peace between merspecies, and revealing the existence of magical beings to an entire village was the easy way out?”
“Well, it was easier than planning a wedding, I would bet,” Asta grinned.
“Asta Blomvin Enrathi Andreassan, you really are the most infuriatingly intriguing female I have ever met.”
Their secret wedding had taken place in front of their cave—their only witnesses being the priest, Linnea, and Halsten.
The sunlight had filtered through the cave’s tree root ceiling, illuminating the spot they had both realized what they meant to each other.
The gulls squawked from above. The scent of briny water and fragrant evergreens engulfed them.
It was perfect. So perfect that Halsten had asked Linnea to marry him in that exact spot, and she excitedly said yes.
Kaid kissed her deeply, and they fell into bed, and Asta did not need to comb her hair, or crack her knuckles, or tap her doorway, or swing her sword in order to fall asleep. At least, not tonight.