Epilogue Two
Rowan
The first thing I noticed when I became human again was the silence. Where my senses used to stretch for miles, I find myself feeling so…small in my skin. When the pulse of magic disappeared, all it left was the steady rhythm of my heartbeat in my ribcage.
It was unsettling at first, that quiet. I still haven’t quite decided if I love it or hate it.
When we settled in the North, I complained endlessly about how the cold made my human nose run and how the melting snow in my boots made my toes feel numb.
Kaius and Adelasia would tease me for it, but a truth I never told them was that the cold ached deeply in my bones where my wings used to be.
There’s only scars there now, but I swear I can still feel the memory of the muscles there, and worse, the pain when they were ripped from me.
But the cold keeps the lungs sharp and forces us into bed for just a little longer to share warmth, so how could I really ask for anything else?
Our home has no marble halls, no blood slaves, no servants. Just snow, salt, and the three of us trying to forget about a part of our lives that lingers like a ghost that hasn’t been properly put to rest.
Some nights, I still wake agitated and restless, ready to unfurl my wings and take to the skies, only to remember they’re gone.
I used the think being grounded would kill me, but then I look across the bed, and I see them.
Adelasia curls under the blankets, breathing evenly through her slightly red nose. Kaius is on the other side of her from me, with his arm firmly wrapped around her waist with a palm on her bare chest.
He still feels for her heartbeat, even to this day. He told me once that witnessing her die was the worst pain he ever experienced, and that fear of her heart stopping never left him, not even now.
And when I look at the two of them, I crawl back under the covers and realize I would rather live the rest of my life with my feet on the ground, if it meant that I always had this love.
For the first time in centuries, maybe even the first time in my life, I’m not chasing something lost to the past that lies just out of my reach.
I have it all.
That’s what makes the silence bearable.
Because Kaius and Adelasia fill it with more freedom than wings ever could.