32. Delphine
The war was over.
The war was won.
It was not a curse that brought me to Avarath, after all.
It was fate.
But it was against fate that I returned to her again.
My body was so broken after the encounter with Deimos and Mordrigal that the moment the glamour flooded back through the gap in the realms, it nearly finished the job that I’d started. It nearly tore me apart, too.
I came out of the womb colored like starlight, and I nearly went to the grave as blackened as the night sky in which they shone.
I was born blessed with a fae mark, and for that I would be forever, eternally, grateful.
A huge chasm spread out before us, deep and dark, a jagged hole that looked down into the kind of blackness I’d only ever seen in that void between the realms. I’d no idea where it led now, with the Afterworld disintegrated alongside its keeper. Perhaps it had become a new void. Perhaps it led to the same one I’d been rescued from. It didn’t matter.
Caldamir’s kingdom was rent in two, cracked from one side of the mountains to the other. It was his scream that rent it, tore the mountains from the earth so deep that it reached into a new realm—just to find me. Just to save me.
It was his voice that broke the spell the darkness had over me, drawing me back from the edge.
“Delphine, the others are waiting.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him, standing in the doorway of the now ruined throne room. Much of the Mountain Court had collapsed during the rending. The sky now peeked down at us here, in the heart of the mountains, from far above. Caldamir had used his powers to clear away much of the debris, to repair the mountain as best as he could, but there was nothing to be done about the chasm.
It, like me, was here now to stay.
Something glimmered deep inside of me at the thought, as I looked up at Caldamir waiting for me, his short golden-brown locks neatly trimmed, and that same golden brown of his eyes shining brighter than ever. His arms were folded across his chest, and though his brow furrowed as if he was annoyed, I saw the way his face softened as his eyes met mine.
Caldamir was the fae who first came into my life and changed everything. It was fitting that he’d be the one now, the one who came and fetched me back to the one place in faerie where it all began.
But first, I’d asked to see where it all ended.
The past months I’d spent recovering in Alderia, my body so broken it was all I could do to issue commands from my bed. It had taken that long for me to recover, and in the meantime, the other princes had spent their time regaining the trust and control of their kingdoms.
There were no high kings left in faerie. There was, however, one high king left. Aurra, the blood heir of Mordrigal lived, still, though she’d returned to Luxia and the courts she called her own. She could return, one day, to claim her throne if she wished, but for now it looked as if she had another birthright to secure. Her existence meant the glamour of Avarath remained intact. She may not know her own importance yet, but soon she inevitably would. Perhaps that knowledge would turn her into a tyrant like Mordrigal, perhaps not.
I had some faith in her. She’d saved me, in a way. She was as much to thank for saving the realms from the grip of those two high kings as I was.
Faith was one thing, however. Only time would tell what kind of threat Aurra might one day grow to be.
Sol did not inherit the Starlight crown, nor did I regain it when I emerged from the dredges of that realm once called The Afterworld, a place that had steadily turned into an empty void of its own since Caldamir rent it from end to end. With its keeper destroyed, there was no magic left to hold it together.
We’d broken the world, broken the realms, but we’d saved them too. For now.
For now, we had peace.
In a world like ours, it was all we could ask for. We’d found a peace unlike any offered in the past five hundred faerie years. Avarath and the realms were free of enslavement, free of Mordrigal. We’d yet to learn the consequences of being free of Deimos, but I was sure we’d learn that soon enough.
Caldamir’s surprisingly gentle touch brought me back to reality. His finger hooked under my chin and drew my face upward to look into his own as he crouched down before where I knelt. His golden eyes were framed by worried brows as they skimmed my face in concern.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, gaze flickering to the jagged dark hole at my back. The golden color of his eyes darkened for a second, as if that void sucked some of the light from them.
I shook my head, but my own gaze followed his to peer once more into that blackness.
“Sometimes, I just wonder what it is we’ve done,” I admitted. “Did we really save Avarath, or did we simply rid it of one evil only to replace it with another?”
Though I was looking into the void, it was not the void—not even Deimos’ destruction—that I was thinking about. It was another fae. Another evil. One wrapped in a darkness so unlike my own shadows, that I had every reason to feel the fear that welled up at the memory of him.
Caldamir didn’t answer me, though I knew his mind went to the same dark place as mine.
His hand stiffened again, tilting my chin up to meet his gaze once more.
“There will always be another battle to fight. When you live as long as we do, that one thing is certain,” he said. His gaze softened again as he looked at me, his hand shifting to cup the side of my face, instead. “But for now, let’s celebrate what we’d done. What we’ve won.”
His hand slid up to brush a strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers lingered there until something in my spine gave in, and I melted into his touch.
He was right, of course.
I’d spent so long fighting I didn’t know how to stop.
But we were here. We were done.
And the others, as he said, were waiting.
I’d kept them waiting too long, already.
Before we left, I turned back once, my face peering down into the darkness. I saw nothing, but just for a brief second, I thought I heard the slightest of sounds, the shallowest of noises. It was like music, but not quite.
It brought the tug of a smile to the outer corner of my lips. The gods had been silent for months now. From what I’d come to learn of them, that meant they were pleased. Together, we’d crossed fate. A new fate now was destined to be written.
The scentof dirt and damp hung like a veil beneath the trees of the Woodland Court. It had been a long time since I stepped foot in the kingdom that had once belonged to Nyx. It was the first place that Caldamir brought me to in faerie, my thighs strapped to the back of his horse to keep me from slipping from the saddle. Now, we didn’t ride into the court, we rose out of the Pool of Indecision and strode into it on foot, the last of the summer heat drying my hair into soft waves that the vines picked at, trying to knot it into small braids every time we passed too close beneath a low branch.
I’d never felt the glamour so alive as I did in the Woodland Court.
It was no wonder I’d still been able to feel it when I first came, when the glamour had been leaving all the other courts for so long, it had lingered here the longest.
The very air seemed to glitter with it, now.
The summer heat had nearly dried my hair by the time the Woodland Fae beset us, ushering Caldamir towards the cathedral-like great hall where the revelry would begin, and me towards one of the rooms built from the trees. It was not the small captive’s quarters where I was brought the first time, but there was something familiar waiting for me when I arrived.
Waylan stood in the midst of the prince’s rooms, large and lavish and alive with the bright energy of the forest. He stood in his own form, his head bowed slightly when I stepped inside, a glint in his eye that only brightened when I recognized him.
Without a second thought, I crossed the room and threw my arms around the creature. It was a gesture that at first made him stiffen, but he softened soon enough to wrap one of his own spindly arms around me to pat me on the back. I let go of him before the torture became too great, but tears were starting to gather at the inner corner of my eyes when I pulled away all the same.
“I wasn’t sure you’d be glad to see me, after I didn’t answer your call.”
Waylan’s words stopped the tears from flowing, at least, as I shook my head to clear it.
“Everything happened just as it was supposed to,” I said. Of course, it would have been more convenient to have the demon’s special kind of magic, but I’d not needed it in the end. I reached out to take his hands, but stopped when I saw him stiffen again. I let my own drop out of respect. “You’ve come to my aid more than you were expected to, before.”
“It was your deal with the dark fae,” he said, his voice blunt. “We demons will have nothing to do with his dealings. It’s a shame you had to involve him in your own.”
He stopped for a moment, his head tilting up as he looked down at me with an unreadable expression. “I hope you don’t come to regret your decision.”
I hoped I didn’t, too.
For a second, his eyes flickered beyond me, and together we took a moment to look around at Nyx’s old quarters. The rooms were magnificent, brightly lit by the soon to be setting sun, patches of the sky and forest visible between the intricately twisted branches that made up the walls. They pulsed with energy, much like the oasis the old Woodland Prince had recreated in the Sand Court the last night we’d been together.
When my eyes found their way back to Waylan’s, that spark was there again.
“One journey ended, soon, I think, another begins.”
Where there might have been fear or exhaustion in his statement, I felt, instead, hope.
Hope.
For the first time, I let that feeling not just take root, but start to grow.
He was right, of course. There were many things uncertain in this life I still somehow held, however precariously, in my hands. Icarus. Avarath. The Afterworld. My brother. My lost princes. This new role of the old gods, now reawakened and re-involved in the lives of all those who inhabited the realms. Who knew what adventure, good or bad, would befall us next. All I knew was that fate had been proven able to be defeated, so whatever it was, I could face that too.
I was not alone, after all.
The sound of music swelled from outside, and with it, voices rose. The melodies mixed together, wrapped around me, sank into me.
“I’m glad to be able to call you my friend, Waylan, even if we cannot be allies.”
That glint in his eye brightened. “Who knows,” he said. “Forever is a very long time. Perhaps we’ll be allies again, one day.”
Those tears, forgotten for a moment, spilled over.
They were nearly enough to blur out the sight of the demon’s gift. At the snap of one of his fingers, a fine gown, clearly made by the Woodland Court, appeared in his hand.
“A gift, from a friend, to make your Midsommar celebration complete. I think, last time, there was too much darkness clouding this world for you to enjoy it. I hope, tonight, you get to feel what it is to be fully fae—just as you have allowed me to feel, once again, what it is to be fully my own self.”
This time, when I threw my arms around him, he matched my embrace. It didn’t matter how bony he was, how tightly stretched his skin was over so little muscle and sinew, all I felt in his arms was softness.
Waylan was gone the moment the embrace ended, but soon so was I.
I had no reason to linger in Nyx’s old rooms. That prince might no longer be here, in Avarath, but there were others waiting for me.