Epilogue
In a manor house just outside the village where Lucy and Sebastian were celebrating, a young woman dressed in sooty rags ran her fingers gently over an array of glass vials.
Her so-called step-mother and step-sisters were asleep and the Shadow Man wasn’t due to visit for a few more days.
This was the perfect time to brew another healing potion.
She’d gotten news today of a little girl who was suffering from the chilling lung disease.
Elodie couldn’t break the disease’s hold on the child completely…
not without the ingredients she was missing.
Ingredients she couldn’t get without alerting her captors.
But, with her Starkind-infused magic, she could slow its progress.
Elodie smiled at the thought before returning to the task at hand.
She murmured a spell under her breath and a brilliant flash of silver light filled the cottage.
The vials of potion in front of her bubbled cheerfully as she let her magic seep into them.
Then, as quickly as it had started, the glow died down, leaving the gleaming liquid as the only light in the dim kitchen.
Elodie picked it up and gave it a little swirl. This elixir was ready, she decided.
A noise above her startled her. She glanced up fearfully, before tucking her ingredients into one of her hidey holes. She couldn’t risk making another potion that night. Perhaps tomorrow…tomorrow, she’d make more.
Elodie sighed as she left the darkened kitchen. She was so tired of hiding and pretending. She desperately yearned for her freedom, freedom to make her potions, to help people who needed it, to keep her own magic. She—
“What are you doing down here so late, Elodie?” She almost screamed at the sound of the Shadow Man’s voice before she caught herself.
“My…my lord. I wasn’t expecting you this evening,” she murmured.
“I know.” She could hear the malice in his voice. “Come, it’s time for another draining.”
Elodie’s eyes widened. “Now?”
“Now.” The Shadow Man’s tone brooked no room for argument.
As she followed him up the stairs, out of the well-maintained part of the manor and into the crumbling attic, she looked back.
One day, she told herself, she’d be free.
She didn’t know how, but she would be. If only she could keep that promise…
Want to see whether Oliver and this mysterious healer can save Joanna’s life? Read Oliver’s story in Starcrossed: The Scarred Duke and the Starkind.