Epilogue
Time in Faerie is a living entity.
I am convinced of it.
Last week walking home from classes it took only twenty human minutes.
Today? Today I’ve been walking for what feels like hours and somehow I ended up back here. At the Academy in the basement. Again.
I haven’t been down here since the night I woke the old gods and healing Fae. And once again I’m staring at that damn door.
The guys aren’t worried. The bond alone tells them I’m fine.
But also, why am I staring at this door?
“Okay!” I toss my arms up and spin in a circle. “I’m here where you want me to be. Now what?”
The door creeks open.
“If I were on Earth, this is how I die.” But I’m immortal and I walk through the damn door. Right into… “What the fuck is this?”
Open space just like when Aengus grabbed me to finish the Trial of Survival.
“Chaos,” a voice rolls to me one I know very well. And one I haven’t heard in a very, very long time.
“Uncle Allen?” I see him. Walking toward me. Weathered but full of a power I always remember him having.
“Did you think I’d forget about the armory?” He pauses before me, looking exactly like he did the day he died.
“Wait.” It dawns on me. Uncle Allen created pockets where he hid armories for each of us. Just in case we ever needed them. But I never got an armory. So, “Yeah, I figured you forgot.”
“Never.” He chuckles. “But see, you have a very special job.”
Nope, “I am on vacation.”
He continues like I said nothing. “They’re here, Ash.”
“What?” I spin but see nothing until I face him again. Then doors rise up all around me.
“I had to hide them somewhere.” He winks. “Faerie.”
“The armories, you hid them here?”
“And now you,” he hands me a skeleton key, “are their guardian.”
“I don’t get an armory, do I?”
“You get all of them.”
I cross my arms and look around again, laughing at how he worded it. But when I come back around he’s gone.
Yeah, I did get all of them.
What the fuck am I going to do with a collection of armories?