Epilogue
MESSER
The wind isn’t ideal.
I stretch my wings as I teeter on the windowsill, and pain radiates through my chest. But I can’t wait any longer.
I heard the mother talking to her husband about the prince and his Match leaving for Maile today.
People are gathering below, lining the streets to send them off in part in farewell and victory celebration for the end of the war.
Lindy’s voice sounds on the stairs, and I know I’m on borrowed time.
The young boy has taken it upon himself to nurse me back to health, much to his mother’s chagrin.
I owe him my life. I wouldn’t have survived after being left in the freezing cold.
He found me in the alley and brought me inside where he kept me snug by the fire, fed me his leftovers and gave me warm milk.
But the kid thinks I’m his new pet. Plans on training me to hunt mice. Which is admirable, but I have people who I know miss me. At least, they better miss me. I hope they’re beside themselves in their grief and heartache. I’m talking real tears and everything.
“… check on Goblin,” Lindy yells down to his mother.
The kid named me fucking Goblin.
Here goes nothing.
I leap from the open window and a cry leaves my beak. Searing pain lances throughout my entire body as I flap my wings, furiously trying to catch the wind. I hear Lindy’s shouts from behind me, but I can’t give him my honest gratitude as I struggle to not plummet to my death for a second time.
I ascend, only to get battered by cross winds. Dropping lower, I find a decent draft and expand my wings. My right doesn’t fully extend. The joint near my shoulder is still a mess, not fully healed. But it works well enough to let me steer on an updraft. I follow the cheers to the southern gate.
The streets become less congested as I near and then I see why. Three carriages parade out of the city’s gate, one behind the other. If I would have chosen to shift into any other bird before I was wounded, I would be able to sense her, but hawks have a stupidly limited sense of smell.
I bend my wings just enough to dive toward them, but the air gives and I’m fumbling toward the last carriage’s roof.
I hit the surface, tumbling over the surface.
I’m able to stop myself from going over the side and getting run over by the wheels by using my talons, the nails scraping across the roof.
“What the fuck was that?” asks a male’s voice I don’t recognize.
Then I hear her, the familiar cadence of B’s voice in the very first carriage.
I wobble into a stance and gauge the distance to the middle carriage.
The driver of this one, however, looks over his shoulder and sees me.
He makes a shooing noise, flapping his hand at me, and I jump onto his arm.
He screams, throwing me forward and sending the horses into a tizzy.
It’s not a graceful maneuver by any means, but I land on the carriage with stumbling legs.
Pain? Agonizing.
But a success is a success.
The door to the front carriage opens, Acker’s head whipping in my direction.
He must have felt the familiarity of my blood and I use the last bit of strength I have to launch myself through the opening, tucking in my wings.
I land on the cushioned bench in a blunder.
I’m wing over tail over head over talons as I come to stop on my back.
B gasps.
When I turn my head to look at her, my heart sinks. I take back everything I thought earlier about being upset over me being missing. I can see the pain in her face as tears immediately well in her eyes, spilling onto her cheeks as she stares at me in shock.
I haven’t tempted to shift since being shot down from the sky with a hearthstone-tipped arrow, and probably shouldn’t after my harrowing flight here, but I can’t subject myself to just watching B cry as a hawk.
Shifting isn’t painless at any given time, but this one is worse than my very first. As my bones and blood and muscle shift into human form, a new, excruciating pain ignites in my right shoulder, and a scream erupts from my throat the moment it’s in place.
But immediately after, the pain dulls to an insistent ache, and I’m able to manage a smile through short breaths. “Hey B.”
Her cries turn into full-blown sobs as she throws herself onto my chest. I grunt from the weight, patting her on the back with my good arm. My eyes catching Acker’s from across the carriage. Which, albeit isn’t far. We’re packed in here like sardines.
“You know, if you were anyone else, you’d be looking down the sharp end of my blade,” he says.
He shoulders out of his coat, throwing it over my exposed cock. But even as he gives me a droll look, there’s no disguising the delight in his eyes.
“Just admit you’re happy to see me,” I tell him.
All he does is grin.
Eventually, B sits up and looks at me, hands feeling the mangled skin of my chest. “How—what? Where?”
I laugh at her nonsensical rambling, face snotty. “It took a while to heal,” I say, smile dimming. “I’m sorry I missed all the fun.”
She shakes her head, wiping her face with the back of her hands. “You need a healer.”
“Gods, that’d be great,” I say.
Finally, Jovie smiles. Her joy turning into laughter as she wipes away her tears.
I’m careful to keep myself covered as I sit up. “Where’s Kai?”
Acker sits forward, interest piqued. “Why?”
I remember how Aurora found me injured in the snow. She was frantic as she snapped the arrow and yanked it out, which hurt like a bitch, but it’s all she could manage before Kai called for her.
Leave him.
His command was to leave me to die.
The hurt has since passed. I had plenty of time to let the realization set in as I slowly healed behind a street bin.
Now, all I feel is rage, because there’s one thing I know to be true.
Without a shadow of a doubt, Aurora would have never allowed for that to happen.
She would never leave me to bleed out in the freezing cold as if I was no one to her.
The only plausible explanation is … Kai was influencing her.
Looking at Acker, I say, “He’s got my girl.”