My home is not a place, it is a person. When I look into his eyes, I am home. We are not kept by lands, or bloodlines, or any vow but the one we made to each other.
“When?” It’s the only thing I can think to ask.
“Tomorrow.”
“So soon?”
“Unless you have a reason to stay?” He smirks slightly, already knowing the answer. We both walk a little faster and readily leave the burdens we had assumed by default behind.
When I had fantasizedabout the mark we could leave on the lykin, I had thought of Evander ruling. Of me helping with the aid of the spirits to forest the plains once more and usher in a new age for a new people. I had thought of a king and a queen, united and equal.
But change is not made with commands. With new leadership that simply filled the same shoes as the old, walking the same paths. That was the cycle that had chained the lykin for centuries. It had disrupted the natural order of their packs and transformed them into something they were not. A never-ending struggle in which there could only beonevictor, rather than the many that had roamed the plains as free as the wind that now pulls back my hair.
Evander is under me, running as fast as he can. Faster than we have ever run before. There is nothing holding us back now. No thread that binds us to the past. We leave it all behind, racing toward the breathtaking promise of the horizon, as a new dawn rises over the land of the lykin.
Those same rays will strike a shattered crown, fangs scattered among the silvery leaves of Den.
EPILOGUE
Evander’s kissesare frantic and breathy.
His mouth is as hot as our bodies—as our need. My lips part for him, as do my legs. He slides against my inner thighs, moving into a position we know all too well. We move like desperation, then relaxing into each other.
His eyes are no longer haunted. No…they are full of promise. Of intent. Of all the possibilities that we rise to meet each morning with.
I hold that gaze with my own as he pushes forward. Stretching. Filling all the way until there is no more for either of us to give. I feel him, not just in body, but mind and soul. It is everything, and yet somehow not enough. His lips move off mine, down my throat, biting my shoulder as he leans back and pulls me into his lap.
We move slower, like this. But every stroke is more accented. My flesh is aflame as his mouth encircles my breast. As he gives me teeth and claws at the same time as warmth and tenderness.
It should be forbidden to feel this good. The rogue thought is one I’ve had many, many times over the past few weeks as we have made our journey across Midscape. Every day of travel punctuated by nights, and sometimes mornings of passion.
I had never known it was possible to want so much, so freely and easily. To have completely, without fear of loss or rejection. The sweet serenity of a love that is as unflinching as steel, as eternal as the forces of nature.
This is where I belong. Right here. Right now, in these throes of breathless bliss. There is nowhere else for me. No past or future.
He reaches his climax before me, but ensures I am not long after. My mate has always made it a point to see that I never leave our bedroll unsatisfied.
I trail my hand through the hair that lines his chest, watching its rise and fall slow as Evander catches his breath. His arm drapes around me, pulling me closer, my head half on his shoulder as he presses his lips to my forehead.
“Are you ready?” he finally asks.
“I didn’t come all this way to turn back at the last minute.” I sit and begin to dress. The canvas of the tent is burnt orange with the sunset. Moonrise is soon.
Evander does the same, following me out of the tent and onto a sandy beach of pure white. Behind us is a maze of sandbars and islands. A barren and blinding land that was only easy to navigate because I had spirits to call upon for help. Though I tried to do it as little as possible. I still don’t like troubling my primordial friends, whenever I can avoid it.
Ahead of us, on a distant shore, is a tree so massive that I have to crane my neck—even from here—to see the tops of its branches poking between the clouds. Evander told me of the myths of this place on our journey. The fantastical stories that shroud the very edge of siren territory in mysteries befitting of the edge of the world itself. Because, if the tales were to be believed, the Veil that separated our world from the Beyond is just over the edge of the sea. That proximity is what allows thisdistant, primal corner of the world to be the only place where one can hold court with the old gods.
The legends Evander told me spoke of pilgrimages to that distant tree across a sandbar, a temporary bridge to connect land with sea. But there is nothing but darkening blue barring our progress. Whitecaps dot the waves like quiet threats.This is the land of the siren and the old gods, they seem to say;all others are unwelcome.
“Are you sure the sirens won’t resent us for this?” I ask as I walk to the water’s edge, leaving our campsite behind and starting for where the land tapers to a natural point in the direction of the Lifetree. If there was to be a land bridge, I would bet it would be here.
“It’s unclear if the tides sweeping away the land bridge were intentional or not,” Evander says optimistically. I appreciate his confidence. “If they are upset, they can put it back when we’re gone. But, as you said, we’ve come too far to turn back now.”
I stare out at the distant tree as the stars bloom across the watercolor sky. The idea to travel here came to me on the first night after we left Den. I bring a hand to my chest, pressing it against my heart, where the weight of Aurora’s magic still lives. I made her a promise that I would take her to the land of the siren. And while it might be too little, too late, I cannot think of any other way that I would rather have one final honoring of her memory.
Sucking in a breath, I reach into my magic, speaking with the ancient tongue of the spirits. “Gruvun of the tides, Volst of water, Brundil of earth, I call to you.”
Gruvun is the churn of a vortex just offshore, two stationary white eyes in its center. Volst is a wave that lingers, rising to take a vaguely human shape. Brundil is a golem of sand that is perpetually rising and falling at my side.
