In marrying Kai, I will erase three generations of social stigma. I like the idea that I’m rehabilitating my family’s reputation by embracing all of myself. The darkness. The light. All our shadows and all our hopes for the future.
But it’s the proud, proprietary gleam in Kai’s eye that makes my stomach flutter and relief unfurl in my heart. Come what may, we will face it together. He is my home. He always has been. Wherever he may be.
Epilogue
THREE YEARS LATER
Winter comes annuallyto Montrace nowadays. I have learned to love the changing of the seasons. No amount of cold can deter me from enjoying the brisk joy of a fresh snowfall, or a warming fire after being out on a bright, clear, winter day.
I watch Kai guide our son, Etan around the iced-over moat. It’s frozen solid with no danger of crashing through. Hundreds of people glide across the smooth surface. Down the hillside, the boys and a few intrepid girls are having an energetic snowball fight.
The baby in my arms squeals. I bounce little Ingrid on my knee to silence her.
“I’ll take her,” offers Nana. “Go ahead. Put your skates on. I see the way you want to join in, Highness.”
She winks.
I pass my daughter to her great-grandmother, who resigned from her kitchen duties to help with the children when I became pregnant. The Dowager Queen of Montrace was forced to compromise on her expectations for a lavish wedding. Apparently, her definition of a hasty wedding still required several months to plan. She managed it within two.
I would have married Kai the next day.
Learning to navigate life as a queen has been a challenge, but it’s been more interesting than I anticipated. The theoretical concepts I learned from Kai’s books when we were children aren’t so abstract anymore. Things like taxes and trade, negotiation strategies, and lawmaking, are all fascinating in their own way. I am not expected to be conversant in every detail, but I make it my business to learn as much as possible so I can be a sounding board and advisor to Kai. He has all the noble councilors a king could possibly want, but Nana and I can offer the perspectives of lower-class peasants.
I believe it’s to our credit that he has become such an admired king.
Defeating the fae witch was enough to earn him the respect he’d lost while under her spell. Marrying me, in a strange way, bolstered people’s admiration for him. The story is a little more complicated for me—Lady Ashburn has ensured that the worst rumors about me continue to circulate—but mostly, people think I’m living a fairy tale.
They’re right.
Waking up each day beside Kai is better than I ever dared to dream. Bearing his children has filled the hole in my heart from when my mother left and my father all but abandoned me in his grief. Being able to care for Nana in her old age and finally breaking the cycle of striving for things we can’t have feels like a monumental achievement.
A snowflake drifts down and lands on the tip of my nose without melting. I brush it aside and blink, startled by the sharp sting.
“You’re bleeding.” Kai’s brows knit as he carefully propels Etan toward me. My husband has become an avid skater, keen to instruct our two-year-old son on the art of gliding across the ice.
“It’s nothing.” I tug my mitten off and touch the wound, trying to hide my sharp pang of dismay at the tiny streak of red on my fingertips. “A piece of ice, is all.”
He kisses my nose, then lifts Etan up so he can do the same. I take our little boy and push off, avoiding other bodies as we swoop and swirl in the cold. After a few minutes, he wiggles down and tries to toddle off on his own, but falls on his well-padded bottom with a giggle. He gives up on skating and crawls across the frozen moat to his Nana.
Kai scrapes to a halt beside me and throws his arm around my shoulder. I hook mine around his waist. We watch our child clamber over the wall onto the exterior bank and plop down beside his sister.
“Do you think it’s time for another one?”
I peer up at him. “Already?”
“I take that as a no,” he says with exaggerated disappointment. If it were up to Kai, he would keep me pregnant all the time. He loves making heirs.
“How about in spring? Let’s give Ingrid a few more months to grow before we add another baby to the mix.” I hug him tight. “That would make number three a winter baby.”
A movement beneath my feet snares my attention. I react so quickly that my skates go veering off in different directions. I fall painfully to my knees.
A shape glides beneath the solid ice. My breath catches. “Did you see that?”
“See what?” Kai bends to inspect the frozen river.
“Under the ice. There was something moving beneath the ice.” Fear pitches my voice high. On my knees, I cast around, searching for whatever caused that startling movement. It couldn’t have been a fish.
“That’s impossible, Gwen. The moat is only eight feet deep and it’s been frozen solid for a week.”
