33. Delphine
The scentof sweet faerie wine overwhelmed the natural musk of the forest as I approached the great hall of the Woodland Court once more. Voices swelled. Music trilled. The excitement was visceral in the air, this Midsommar not just a farce, not the final clinging to an age past, but to one that was here to stay. At least for now. For a people who lived forever, nothing was ever truly forever. I was coming to understand that now.
I had one moment when I first stepped into that great hall to admire Midsommar in all its glory. It was not just the Woodland Fae here. Many fae from the Mountain Court were here as well, glad to be away from the stench of Mordrigal’s hold that still lingered in their own halls, but there were fae from all the other courts, too. Sand Fae, Sea Fae, Starlight Fae, even. The revelry spilled out into the streets and the forest beyond, tables and chairs springing up from the eagerly waiting grass as I watched.
The glass panes of the great hall stretched overhead like a cathedral of light, each of the panes turned just so that it caught the sun and scattered the light into millions of tiny shards as it lowered across the sky. Those fractals of light danced across tables laden with meats and bread and fruit, pies and pastries, dishes brought from every corner and court of Avarath. It overflowed almost as steadily as the faerie wine.
The faces of the fae were flushed, a feat not easily accomplished, their laughs loud and their lips more prone to turn up in smiles than I’d ever seen. Not just the Woodland Fae, either. I thought I spotted Itris smiling, even, when I caught sight of her for a second, before her tall silver-haired frame was hidden by another fae getting up to dance on the table, his feet somehow nimble enough to avoid stepping into any of the intricate platters of food, even in his drunken state.
It was nearly as great a feat as any I’d accomplished in ending the last war.
As I scanned the crowd, I found many familiar faces.
Tallulah.
Evie and Alder.
Tarrack.
Avinthe.
Even Ayre, the ladies’ maid from the Starlight Court, flitted between the tables as a guest, her arms full of bowls of fruit. At the far end of the great hall, I thought I spotted Moon slinking between two tables, eyes hungrily stalking scraps of meat from unwitting participants in her hunt.
But as happy as I was to see them, they were not who I was looking for amongst the crowd.
They were.
There they were, seated at the head table as they once had been when I first came to faerie. A few stark differences remained, however.
Because a few of them were missing.
Not only was Nyx’s throne noticeably empty, but a new fae sat in the seat once occupied by Tethys.
In the absence of the fae still bound for several hundred years to the sea god, Seren sat there now, his silver hair flowing over shoulders pulled back a little too rigidly compared to the rest of the fae in the tableau. Beside him, Caldamir and Armene sat as well, their eyes scanning the merriment without any of their own. They’d hardly spent the last month resting, as I had. Armene had been back in the Sand Court, taking back the throne his advisors had tried to steal from him. Caldamir had been repairing his own court, and not just in a physical sense. Mordrigal’s influence had devastated them. The Mountain Fae that I saw here, at the festivities, had a pall that still hung over them. They’d not been under the high king’s influence long, but still, they moved as if they walked in shallow water, their feet dragging slightly behind the others.
Seren had helped me rule Alderia as I first recovered, but all the while, I knew he was thinking about his own court, his own realm that he’d once ruled. I’d taken that crown from him, and when I crossed into the Afterworld, I’d lost it. For both of us. Elysia was once again a realm without a high king, and I knew Seren especially suffered for it.
I’d bid him go, in the last weeks of my recovery, to start his own.He’d been reluctant at first, but had eventually given in to my insistence.
Those last weeks without him had been more than lonely. Even though Moon reappeared for a while to keep me company, it wasn’t the same. No one dared so much as come close to me with the Catsuga by my side. In my solitude, I’d split my time between trying to secure word of my brother and securing the human kingdom for my coming absence. Because one way or another, it was going to be a long time before I set foot in Alderia.
A darkness had fallen over the land of Luxia through which even Tarrack’s gifts couldn’t reach, but I felt it in my soul that Sol was, at least, alive. Even Icarus magic, however corrupt, couldn’t completely blind the glamour. I’d have known if he was dead.
Soon, one way or another, I’d know for sure. If that meant I had to wage war again, I would.
I just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Not yet.
Too much was at stake to go in blind and broken. I’d already lost enough in my own war; I’d not lose the three fae I had left in another court’s fight. When I came for Sol—and I would come—I’d make sure I was prepared this time. I’d make sure I didn’t lose another life. I refused to trade one life for another. Not again.
I was lucky, as it was, to have them, still. The three of them.
Seren.
Caldamir.
Armene.
They alone had made it through the war alive, if not unscathed, and as much as the loss of the other two had left me feeling hollow, the others were here with me now. Maybe, if fate or our defiance of it willed, the other two would find their way back to me, too.
With time.
They were not lost forever. Not yet.
I knew the moment the three of them spotted me, too.
It was Armene, at first. His gaze fell on me, and the moment it did, everything else in faerie disappeared. Everything but them. Caldamir and Seren followed next, their chairs breaking at the suddenness of their shifted weight as they stood, everything else forgotten completely the moment our worlds collided once again.
We’d not been apart long, nothing more than a few months, but those months felt like a lifetime stretching between us.
There was no great hall, no fae, no food, no drinks, no music—only us.
For the first time since the moment Caldamir appeared in Lord Otto’s study, there was nothing between us. No war. No sacrifice. No poisoned glamour.
Just us.
I didn’t know when I started running toward them, only that the next moment, three sets of arms were wrapping around me, three warm bodies were pressing into mine, three heartbeats pounding into my ears.
I looked up into their faces, into their eyes—at Seren, at Caldamir, at Armene—and I knew their thoughts echoed mine.
It should have felt complete.
Ishould have felt complete.
And I did, a moment later, when the veil that hung between us and the rest of the world was rent. Not by a single voice, but by silence.
It fell all at once, loud as the blast of trumpets. With it came the stillness, every fae turning into a statue, their heads turning in unison towards the far end of the great hall.
The moment my own gaze followed, I knew exactly why.
A vision had appeared before us, a mirage, some new trick of the fae, surely—for standing there, at the end of the hall, lit by the golden rays of the setting sun, was a fae who looked altogether too much like Nyx. But it couldn’t be Nyx.
Nyx was gone.
Except, maybe he wasn’t.
As the moment dragged on and I watched as the fae’s gaze swept the frozen scene before him, I began to wonder if maybe I was wrong. Maybe my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me. The moment this creature appeared, the very ground began to hum, the air shimmering and quaking at the sight of him. The Woodland Court, already alive in a way I’d never seen it before, somehow seemed to awaken even more in his presence. Every blade of grass, every leaf turned to face him. Every insect paused in flight to wonder. Every vine and branch started to reach towards him.
This figure stood before the gathered crown like a messiah, hands lazily stretched out to either side, palms facing outward, dripping with honey, as his head tilted up. Gone was the wooden hand that had marred his perfection before, replaced once more with one made up of his own flesh and bone. Red curls spilled over his shoulders, refusing to tangle as a crown—an intricate thing woven from flowers that bloomed and died and rebloomed again in an endless cycle—was passed along these branches until, with the aid of several dozen butterflies, it was laid to rest upon the brow of this fae’s head.
Even then, with his crown returned to him, it wasn’t until his gaze came, at last, to rest on me that I believed it.
I felt it in my soul the moment our eyes locked. This was no mirage. No trick.
It was really him. Really Nyx.
Any further doubts I might have had, any lingering thoughts that the fae I saw before me was nothing more than some trick, were dispelled the moment he took my hands in his and pulled me forward to stand before him. I felt the heat of his skin, the stickiness of that honey, smelled the earthy floral musk that was his natural perfume, and knew it was him.
He was here.
Nyx was really here, again.
And somehow, more surprising, still—he’d not come alone.
I felt him before I saw him. We all did.
No sooner had Nyx’s wild Woodland magic washed over us, than a second wave crashed into its place. The power of it, the scent of it, the feel of it wrestling with the shadows and starlight in my own veins, was unmistakable.
Tethys stepped up in all his dark glory, the scent of the sea stronger on him than ever.
His hair had grown significantly longer, and in his eyes was a darkness that hadn’t been there before. That bright gold that had once matched the rings on his fingers and the ornaments of his hair had turned more of a bronze color. His mannerisms had changed slightly, too. He moved with less swagger, his crooked smile no longer played constant at the corner of his mouth, and his tongue no longer wagged at every ample opportunity Nyx provided. He looked older, seemed older, like he’d lived a hundred years in the last months alone.
Such was the toll it took to serve the god of the sea, I suppose.
Despite all that, he was Tethys, still.
Here they were, my two lost fae princes, standing right before me. It was too perfect to be real. My mind refused to believe it.
I hesitated to reach out and touch Tethys, to see if he was as corporeal as the fae that still held my hands, because it would mean letting go of Nyx. I was afraid if I did, he’d flicker out of existence once more.
“It’s really us, Delphie,” Tethys said, his face softening at the look apparently too obvious on my own. “We’re back.”
We’re back.
The words sat on the surface of me, unable to sink in.
Back? What did he mean, back?
Back from the dead? Back for now? Back for good?
Any one of those answers still seemed too good to be true. I’d been sure, the last time we were all together, that it would be many, many years before we ever had the chance to even come close to that again. Tethys was supposed to be bound to the sea god for a half a millennium, and given the state of the magic rolling off of him, he still was. He was still not just Tethys, Prince of the Sea, he was so much more. He was a shadow, a wielder of the old god’s magic. Perhaps he was a gift of theirs, a thanks to me, for following through on their wishes and ridding this realm and the next from the grip of the high kings.
That included myself.
But Nyx, Nyx was another matter.
I looked away from Tethys, as much as I longed to be caught up in his arms, and back at the Woodland Prince—for that he clearly still was—who held my hands now. I let go with one, making sure to hold even tighter with the other, and reached up to brush the flowers ringing Nyx’s ruddy curls. The petals of the flower crown shrank back from my unworthy touch, the vines knotting tighter, as if closing in on itself.
My eyes dropped to meet Nyx’s again.
“How?”
Something like sunshine blossomed in Nyx’s cheeks when he answered.
“There’s only one master of the Woodland Court. One prince.”
Caldamir let out a short growl over my shoulder. “It’s only ever been him. Only ever will be.”
“The bastard,” Armene said, with a grin, as he stepped up, too.
I looked between all of them.
“Nyx here is the eldest of all the fae, once made alongside Mordrigal and Deimos.” Seren was the first to bow his head, his voice far more reverent than the rest. “Mordrigal might have been the connection of the glamour into Avarath, but Nyx has always been Avarath. He is the forest, the trees, the roots, the dirt, the rocks. He’s more than the forest.”
“See?” Nyx said, drawing my attention back to him, a slight desperation in his voice that I didn’t miss. “I’ve always been more than just a pretty face.”
A slight laugh bubbled up out of me, a sound so foreign to me in the last weeks, that I’d almost forgotten the sound of it.
“That you are, Nyx,” I said. “That you are.”
“Speaking of pretty faces…”
All of a sudden, that sober look that had taken over Tethys’ features transformed. For a second, all the pirate roguishness returned, and in that moment, he pushed past Nyx and swept me up into his arms, instead, cooling my reluctant struggle with a kiss that made my entire body freeze.
I remained paralyzed only as long as it took for my body to melt into his, any resistance washing away with the wave of passion his lips on mine dragged from the innermost part of my being. It consumed me so completely that it left me breathless and gasping when he finally broke away, my lips trembling and my knees weak long after.
Tethys smiled down at me with his eyes, that golden color flashing deep beneath the bronze for a moment.
“I’ve missed you, Delphie.”
In Tethys’ arms, I felt my feet grow unsteady. He held me tight as his body rocked back and forth, as if caught up forever in some unseen tide.
I blinked up at him like he was a vision, still, my fingers digging into him so tightly, it hurt the beds of my own nails.
“Are you here to stay, or…”
“For now,” Tethys answered. “I can’t answer for Nyx, but who knows if the old gods will call on me again, or when. But for now, I’m back in Avarath. I have Nereus to deal with, but soon all will be right in the last of the lost courts.”
A small sigh whistled between my lips.
He was here. He was back.
All of them were.
Tethys had been wrong about one thing, however.
There was still yet one lost court. One throne that remained empty.
As much as I wished to remain locked in Tethys’ embrace for an eternity, I forced my hands to let go so I was free once more to turn back to Seren.
I saw on his face that he was thinking the same as I.
It wasn’t often that I saw the once king of the Starlight Court soften, but now, as our eyes met, he did.
“The age of the old high kings is over, Delphine,” he said. “A new age is upon us, and I, for one, look forward to what the future holds. I’ve played my part in these realms. Now, I think, it’s time for something new.”
I opened my mouth to speak, concern starting to knit my brows together, but he silenced me with a hand resting on my shoulder. “I’m more than a king. Perhaps, once, I’d have been lost without my crown, but that was when all I had was that crown. I have so much more, now, than I ever had before. How can I feel as if I’ve lost, when thanks to you, I’ve gained the entire world.”
His hand slid up to cup the side of my face, his thumb tracing an arc across the soft swell of my cheek. Our bodies shifted closer together, his mere touch making my body race with something more than electricity between us. It was as if starlight itself, that glamour that we shared, lit every place where our skin collided.
Seren bowed his head slightly, that curtain of his hair falling over one shoulder, shielding us slightly from the rest of the world. “I don’t need a crown, Delphine, not when I have you.”
Some deep part of me still ached for his loss, far more than for my own. More than that, however, my heart swelled. I knew he meant it, because I felt it too. All of us did.
“Delphine.”
Tethys’ eyes twinkled brighter than ever, for a moment, when I looked back up to him. My heart began to race the moment our eyes met, somehow knowing from the tone of his voice what was to come next.
“We have one more gift for you.”
My heart had begun to race so quickly, my body couldn’t keep up. The edges of my vision swam and my knees weakened, even before I saw the third figure step out of the shadows of the trees.
It was not the young golden-haired boy I once left in Alderia that stood before me.
It was a young man, changed in ways I was yet to understand, but I knew him, still.
“What is it sister, aren’t you glad to see me?”
I threw my arms around my brother, arms that no longer pulled his head to my stomach, but rather drew my own to his chest. I bore my weight onto him and he held me still, his own head lowering to rest upon the top of mine as I dissolved into sobs that wracked the very core of my body.
Sol was here.
Sol was safe.
Sol had come back to me, at last.
I didn’t know how long I sank into those sobs, sank into arms now strong enough to hold me. I didn’t want to let him go, but I had to, eventually. And when I did, his wasn’t the only face looking down at me with a determined look. I found my fae princes standing close, the same resolve on their faces that I saw in his.
This, this feeling, this was what we’d fought for. This was what we went to war for. This was what we risked everything, everything for.
For the first time, it truly sank in.
We’d won.
We’d won.
Not just the war, but us.
Me, Seren, Caldamir, Armene, Tethys, Nyx.
Sol.
We had won.
There was no telling what the next age would bring us, but one thing was certain.
I was wrong.
In this world, this new life, nothing was forever—except for them.
They were forever.
We were forever. In all the ages that might pass us by, all the wars, the peace, the famines, fiends, friends…one thing was sure. One thing would remain the same.
I’d spent all my human life wishing for a home, but I’d finally found it. In them.
And that was never going to change.
I’d tried to protect my brother from the fae, and I’d failed—but now I was glad of it, as selfish as that might be.
Because now he was one of us. And like the others, now he was here to stay for good. I wouldn’t have to look on as he aged and passed as a human, his life a mere blink of an eye compared to the one that now stretched before me.
Not so long ago, I was nothing more than a fae-marked girl, damned to a life of torment at the hands of humans who hated me for nothing more than the color of my hair and the darkness of my eyes. The fae were little more than creatures of fairytale, stories told to keep wayward boys’ and girls’ feet from wandering too far. I’d once thought I was cursed, hoped even, that I was.
I was resigned to my fate.
Now, I accepted it—not because fate was on my side, but because I’d learned how to challenge it. I’d overcome the impossible, rewritten the story that had been penned for me from the beginning of time itself.
It wasn’t perfect, this ending. Caldamir’s court was in ruins. Armene was bound to his crown never to touch me again. Tethys would one day be called back to the sea. Trouble brewed in the form of a dark fae with even darker power. A look in Sol’s eyes told me he’d yet to face all his own demons.
But somehow, none of that seemed like enough to scare me, anymore. Not when all those that I loved had finally, at long last, been brought back to me. Not when, at last, everyone I loved was safe.
Even if it was just for now, it didn’t matter, because I was no longer just that fae-marked girl.
I was so much more than that.
And this was only the beginning.