Epilogue
Hope kept wrangling the grill and kept bumping into someone.
“Edric, if you don’t get out of my way, I am going to grab those ears and make a wish.”
He chuckled. “Try it, I dare you.”
She settled everything, turned, popped her wings, and flitted over him, landing with her knees on his shoulders, and she grabbed his ears.
He looked up at her. “What did you wish for?”
She blinked. “I didn’t get that far.”
He laughed. “You do realize that for me it is the equivalent of you just grabbing my cock?”
She let go so fast she fell backward, and her wings hummed and pulled her upright. He grabbed her ankle and pulled her down against him. He kissed her quickly. “It is a nice outfit.”
“Thank you. It is a lot more comfortable than the dresses.”
She was wearing boots, leggings, and a long tunic that had a split down the back that sealed with magnets when the wings receded.
The pixies were there with their mates, and they had been forthcoming on the whole obscuring spell.
They had also told her about her grandfather, based on her wing form.
There had only been one butterfly-winged pixie, and he had been soft and sweet and waiting for the right woman.
He had apparently found her, but she died before their daughter was old enough to survive on her own.
Their daughter was her mother. Her mother had left her in the hospital, and she had never seen her again.
Hope had sought and found her mother when she turned eighteen. Dead of a heart defect created when she gave birth to baby Hope. Her mother had never left the hospital.
Hope shook her head and kept her eye on the grill. She started taking burgers up and putting them on the tray. She finished them, held up her hand, and a bun snapped into her fist. “Thank you, house.”
She put the last burger on the bun and turned the grill off with one hand. She ate the burger with a smile and watched the tray float into the house. Now that she accepted that she was family, the house offered her everything she needed. It certainly made making breakfast easier.
Edric wrapped an arm around her waist and said, “Can I try it?”
She sighed and held it out, letting him take a bite.
The cheese rushed out, and he bit swiftly.
She snickered and retrieved the rest of the burger.
She kept eating, and when he finished, he looked toward her.
“Get your own. Let me enjoy the fruits of my labour. Of course, it’s better with Rowan’s barbeque sauce. I will put that on my second.”
He grinned. “Show me the ways of these burgers.”
She finished her first and walked inside with him. “I am pretty sure you were here at the last event.”
“Yes, but this is my first time with this as my home. I am appreciating things with a new outlook.”
“Stop staring at my butt, Edric.”
He laughed.
She headed to the table and walked him through the different burgers and the different sauces. He stayed behind her with one arm wrapped around her waist, talking about when she would start at the daycare. He rubbed his chin on her head.
“Here. Put this in your mouth.” She held up a plate with two burgers.
He laughed and took the plate and waited until she had another one fixed the way she liked it, and then they sat next to each other, and she relaxed, looking at the people around her who were just happy to have a day to be themselves with some that they had heard about in myth and legend and some of the ladies who had appeared on scrolls in the middle of the imperial hall.
Mik had created the spell that made the scrolls, and she was unrepentant about that. She had managed to make the most out of the time slip between their dimensions. Hence the arrival of the mages from across the empire.
It took mail-order brides and twisted them into male-order mages.
Hope got up and got another burger. Dealing with a djinn took a lot of nerve, and she was going to have to keep her strength up.
It was a good thing that she now had a seat at a very generous table.
Edric looked like contact with him would burn a lot of calories.
She smirked as she made up her third burger. Relationship goals had never been so much fun.