“You remember that?”
“I remember everything about you.”
The words cut deeper than I expected. I didn’t respond right away. My fingers brushed over a thorned vine — it didn’t bite. Not me.
“How did you… survive losing him?” I asked finally. “My father.”
The Queen exhaled slowly, as if breathing through centuries of grief.
“I didn’t. Not really.”
I was about to ask more — about how love could survive damnation, betrayal, kingdoms, lifetimes — when something shifted in my chest.
My mark burned. Aflare, so sudden, soalive, I gasped.
She felt it too. Her eyes widened.
“Do you feel that?”
I nodded.
And then we both turned.
At the edge of the garden, where the dusk met starlight, a portal shimmered — silver and gold, celestial and dark, twined like lovers.
And stepping through it...
Was him.
Golden hair tousled like sunlight after war. Armor tarnished by time and stardust. Eyes that held galaxies.
My father.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to.
I ran to him.
My feet barely touched the ground as I crossed the garden, and when I crashed into his chest, sobbing, he held me like he’d been waitingcenturies.
“My little light,” he whispered against my hair. “Forgive me for not being there.”
I wept harder, clinging to him.
“You’re here now.”
Behind us, I heard the soft gasp — a sound so full of broken hope it made the flowers bow their heads.
My mother. She fell to her knees. And the former Archangel — now Fallen Celestial — turned to her.
“Elira,” he breathed, her name like prayer and sin.
She raised her trembling gaze to him.
“Elarion…”
He crossed the distance in a heartbeat.
And I stepped back — my heart both bursting and breaking — as he knelt beside her, cupping her face.
