Epilogue
THREE MONTHS LATER
BEN
I sat eating a mince pie and watching my boyfriend get battered to death.
“You’ve outdone yourself, Glenys,” I told her as she whisked past, on a mission to deliver more sausage rolls to the Gruffydd family representatives. It seemed she would sooner die than have other families suspect the Bedwyrs didn’t know how to entertain.
“There’s a plate with Dominic’s name on it, once he’s finished rolling around on the floor,” she told me.
It still startled me sometimes, how much lighter Dragon’s Ending felt now.
Glenys calling both Rhodri and Dominic by their first names was just one of the changes there’d been.
Apparently, she’d been minding her own business in the kitchen one day and turned around to find Rhodri trying to make himself a cup of tea.
Her horror at his being in the one room in the house he’d never before ventured into had been forgotten as she stopped him rooting around in the tinned goods cupboard—honestly, men—and brandished the tea caddy at him.
And then, tea made, he’d sat down at the kitchen table and asked her if there was anything she needed for the house.
“So I got a brand new vacuum and a Thermomix,” she’d declared. “It’s not like I even needed the Thermomix, as I told Rhodri, but it’ll make my life easier.”
Dominic seemed, finally, to have died. His death throes had been suitably prolonged and dramatic, but the horde of small dragon children had at last stopped beating him with their plastic swords.
Teddy had claimed Dominic’s foil-covered cardboard shield as a prize and was now parading round with it.
“Who wants to play Musical Dragons?” Rae asked, and a huge cheer went up.
We’d invited the Gruffydd dragonets for a Christmas party.
The great hall had been decorated with paper chains and an enormous tree, and mistletoe.
Lots of mistletoe, which Dominic appeared to have hung in all sorts of unexpected places, judging by the fact it was impossible for me to get more than ten feet across the hall without getting snogged within an inch of my life.
Apparently the tree was tradition, but the rest of it? Brand new, and all Dominic’s doing. The Gruffydd invitation was very new, and Rhodri and Dominic had talked about it for some time before agreeing.
“Come on, St George,” I said, wandering over and toeing Dominic’s theatrically collapsed body. “I think the dragons won this one.”
He sat up and grinned at me, and one of these days he was going to break my heart with how beautiful he was. With how happy he was now.
Around us, the hall was descending steadily further into chaos. Someone had put Christmas music on, Laura was attempting to enforce the rules of Musical Dragons with the grim determination of a tiny dictator, and Teddy had apparently decided to wear Dominic’s shield on his head.
Near the front door, Dafydd and Rhys were engaged in a deeply serious conversation about rugby training cones.
That was another of Dominic’s ideas. Rhodri hadn’t balked at his suggestion of turning the flat area by the lower field into a rugby pitch.
“You can do whatever you want there,” he’d said to Dominic.
Then, presumably, he’d remembered who he was talking to. “Within reason.”
“There goes my idea for a medieval jousting stadium that blasts Swedish death metal whenever someone falls off their horse,” Dominic had grumbled.
Now, every Saturday morning, the place was full of young Bedwyrs, many of whom travelled in from further-flung parts of the family to be there.
Dafydd and Rhys coached them with all the intensity of an international final.
Meanwhile, Dominic stood on the freezing, muddy sidelines, yelling enthusiastic encouragement along with tactical advice.
Which might have been helpful had he understood more than about fourteen percent of the rules.
And then, on Sundays, the pitch was open to adult dragons and humans from local villages to play.
Rhodri had been very clear that humans’ access to the pitch was only permitted on a Sunday.
At all other times, the estate remained closed.
Dragons were still dragons, after all, and nobody wanted an accidental territorial incident.
Across the hall, I caught sight of Rhodri standing in the open doorway of his study, a whisky glass loose in one hand as he watched the mayhem unfolding in front of him.
He wasn’t smiling exactly. But he looked more relaxed than I’d ever seen him before, as though he was finally beginning to understand that allowing joy into Dragon’s Ending didn’t mean everything would unravel.
Dominic kissed me. “Mistletoe,” he said, pointing upwards at an entirely bare patch of ceiling. “Come on, we need to get you ready for your star turn.”
Yet another of Dominic’s ideas, and I let him tow me through the crowded hall. It was hard to resist Dominic when he got going, and honestly? I couldn’t see why I’d ever want to.
DOMINIC
I was in the middle of explaining to Dylan and Edna why dragon polo would be an objectively superior sport to rugby when somebody hammered dramatically on the front door.
Every dragonet in the hall froze.
The door burst open, and Father Christmas staggered in with an enormous sack slung over one broad shoulder. A blast of icy winter air swept through the hall behind him.
“Well,” Ben boomed, in a voice I would absolutely be mocking him for later. And then asking him to repeat. In bed. “I seem to have found some dragons.”
And then the screaming started. The dragonets descended on him before he’d made it more than three feet into the hall.
“Father Christmas!”
“That’s not the real Father Christmas,” Laura informed everyone sternly. “The real one has reindeer.”
“I do have reindeer,” Ben said, sounding scandalised. “They’re on the roof.”
“Where are your elves?” Teddy demanded.
“Looking after the reindeer,” Ben told him promptly.
Apparently satisfied by this explanation, Teddy seized a corner of the sack while three other dragonets attached themselves to various parts of Ben’s legs.
I leaned against the wall beside Dylan, watching with helpless affection as Ben attempted to move through the hall while keeping the presents safe, maintaining Father Christmas dignity, and fending off increasingly detailed questions about reindeer poo.
Honestly, he looked absurdly good in the outfit. He’d originally suggested borrowing the Father Christmas costume his family used every year, but it had occurred to me that we’d need our own. Because I hoped, very much, that Ben was going to wear it each Christmas for the rest of our lives.
Eventually, Rae bullied everyone into enough order for Ben to install himself safely in the enormous carved chair near the fireplace.
By that time, the very youngest dragonets who’d accidentally shifted in their excitement had returned to human form.
Then Rae and Catrin Gruffydd selected and handed him the appropriate present for each child as they came up to him.
But he didn’t just dole out presents. He talked to each child in turn, asking questions and answering them.
And he mentioned the nice list more than once, but the words ‘naughty list’ never passed his fluffy-white-bearded lips.
Because as he’d said to me, some of the more sensitive children might worry about it in future years. God, I loved that man.
And watching him command a room full of sugar-fuelled dragonets with absolute confidence was one of the hottest things I’d ever seen.
Especially when I compared this Ben to the one I’d first met.
He’d been certain of himself, sure, but always on the edges, never really part of things.
He hadn’t known how to relax and have fun.
All presents doled out, and all children safely occupied with their new acquisitions, I parked myself in Father Christmas’s lap.
“So where’s my present?” I asked. And did not bat my lashes, however tempting.
Ben glanced around to ensure no children were close enough to hear his answer before he replied. And I could feel in every cell of him the effort he had to make not to mention the naughty list.
“Oh, I think you know exactly where your present is,” he said, and shifted his hips just enough to underline that.
“Father Christmas,” I said, scandalised. “In front of the children?”
He snorted, shoved me firmly off his lap, and stood up.
“Merry Christmas one and all!” he boomed, retreating rapidly towards the door.
I weaved my way through the crowd, heading for the kitchen.
“Behave yourself,” Megan told me as I passed.
“At Christmas?” I said. “Really?”
Then I noticed quite how close she was standing to one of the Gruffydd dragons who’d accompanied the dragonets, and quirked an eyebrow at her. Her elbow met my ribs with more force than warranted, and I took the hint.
Ben wasn’t in the kitchen, so I headed up the back stairs. Whereas I’d have ripped the costume off the instant I could, he’d undoubtedly have weighed up the risks of a dragonet straying into the kitchen and seeing him, and gone upstairs to change.
I was right. He pulled his beard and hat off as I closed our bedroom door behind me.
“You realise,” I said, leaning back against the door to look at him properly, “that half the dragonets in this family are now convinced Father Christmas has a personal vendetta towards me.”
“Your fault,” Ben pointed out as he unbuttoned the red coat.
“Most things are.”
I crossed the room towards him and helped work the ridiculous coat off his shoulders before pulling him close. He was warm from the crowded hall below and smelled faintly of cinnamon and orange.
“Mm,” he said approvingly after I kissed him. “Much better.”
I backed him slowly towards the bed, hands sliding beneath his shirt almost without thought. I loved touching him. Loved the little sounds he made when I kissed the corner of his mouth, the way his hands settled automatically on my hips to pull me closer.
“You know,” I murmured against his neck, “I’m beginning to suspect Father Christmas outfits might become a personal interest of mine.”
Ben laughed softly, breath catching a little as I kissed him again.
And then his phone buzzed loudly on the bedside table where he’d left it during his performance.
We both froze.
“No,” I said immediately.
Ben was already laughing as he twisted to look past me. “It might be important.”
“If it’s not an actual emergency, I’m setting fire to the phone.”
He reached for it one-handed, still trapped between me and the bed. His brow creased slightly as he read.
“It’s Evelyn,” he said. “About those markings on the castle wall.”
It’s not that I wasn’t interested, but I had Ben plastered against me, I was half-hard already, and honestly? History was not my priority right now, shocking though that would be to my historian.
“They’ve waited centuries. I think they can manage half an hour more,” I told him.
Too late. He was still reading. “Oh, of course,” he said. “You know Evelyn and I both recognised those marks?”
“Mmmm,” I said, kissing his neck, and he shivered.
“That’s because,” he managed, “they’re in an illustration in a medieval manuscript we have—God, Dominic. It shows…”
His voice quavered as I licked the spot under his ear that always did it for him.
“Bedivere—fuck—putting Arthur in the boat to Avalon when he’s dying.”
“Go on,” I murmured as I nipped at his jaw. Not because I had any great interest in this illustration, but because it was fun watching Ben try to hold on to his historian brain when his body was thrumming with need.
“The marks are—are carved into the prow.”
He made a different little sound then, and something about it made me pull back to look at him properly.
Ben was staring at me like the world had just tilted beneath his feet.
“Dominic,” he said breathlessly. “You’re descended from Bedivere, who was entrusted with Arthur’s body. Your family’s lived here forever. The name of the bloody house. Do you think—is it possible?”
“Possibly,” I said helpfully. “What, exactly?”
“Do you think that older structure was built to mark Arthur’s resting place?”
It took me a moment to follow his reasoning.
“Bloody hell,” I said, as what he was saying finally penetrated. “You mean—that’s where King Arthur is buried? Not Glastonbury, or any of those other places, but under our castle?”
“I mean, maybe?” His eyes were shining.
God, I loved seeing him like this, his face lit with excitement and joy.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” I asked.
He took me seriously. “This opens up so many possibilities, so many new angles from which to interrogate the myths—”
“It means,” I interrupted, stopping his words with a kiss, “that we had sex on King Arthur’s grave.”
Ben stared at me in utter horror. And then I started laughing.
“Oh my God,” he said. “Dominic—”
Twisting around, he pushed me back onto the bed and collapsed on top of me, helpless with laughter.
“If you ever tell Evelyn,” he threatened.
“As if I’d survive that.”
He was still laughing as he leaned down to kiss me, one hand sliding into my hair.
From somewhere below us came the distant sound of Christmas music and dragonets shrieking happily. But what I cared most about was here. Ben, warm in my arms, laughing against my mouth.