Fly.
I pull myself away from the others, swing around to find my best friend hurtling toward me. He almost knocks me over, flinging his arms around my torso and lifting me high into the air.
“Cupcake!” he says. “What the hell was that? All that magic, all that light. Where the fuck did it come from?”
“I don’t know,” I laugh. “Ask the people it came from.” I peer into his face. “You?”
He rolls his eyes. “If I had light-wielding abilities, Cupcake, I think we’d know about it by now.”
“Who, then?” I say.
“Damien,” he tells me. “Esme’s girlfriend, Mark, Janette, and Piers. So many people.”
“But how did it happen?”
“Cornelius said that this is what the Empress always feared,” Fox says. “That a lumomancer would come and be the spark tolight the revolution. The beacon that would awaken the others. That’s you, sweetheart.”
And that’s when the emotion hits me all at once – like a train. I laugh, I sob, I erupt into a mess of hiccups. Tears race down my cheeks but I’m grinning my head off and my heart is over spilling with joy and elation, and over-brimming with hurt and devastation too.
We did it. We brought down the Empress. Most of her closest allies were killed in this battle too, buried beneath the rubble of that tower or killed in the battle. This is it – a chance for a new beginning. A new way. A better one.
But it’s come at a cost – such a high cost. So many people killed, slaughtered, lost before their time – Clare, Professor Cornelius, the Titan twins, Dray’s brother. My sister.
I close my eyes and imagine her voice in my ear. I don’t know if I really do hear it or in my messed-up state I imagine it, but I swear I hear her whisper, that voice that still makes me feel safe and warm, a voice that breaks my heart every time. She whispers how proud she is of me. How much she loves me. How much she wants me to be happy. She tells me it’s time to bury the dead and the past, to look to the future.
Time to let her go.
I screw my eyes shut. My head is light, I’m overwhelmed by exhaustion and everything that’s happened.
But then I’m once again enveloped in the arms of my fated mate and all that fades away.
Anything is possible now. Especially with these four men by my side.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Beaufort
I don’t know if one person suggests it or if it happens by instinct, but once the dead have been gathered up and the injured healed, those of us that remain drift toward the Great Hall, gathering inside its strong stone walls.
The hall itself is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s no longer gray, dingy, and foreboding. Its walls, its vaulted ceiling, the stone floor, everything shines in a bright, iridescent white. And people have already begun to decorate it. Hanging the flags of their Quarters. Stringing strands of homemade, cobbled-together bunting. Those with their newfound light-wielding skills send streams of it up into the air, exploding in fireworks above our heads.
There’s laughter. There are tears. Someone has raided the canteen, brought through dishes and dishes of food, and others have brought out alcohol they’ve had stored all along in their rooms. It’s a makeshift party. Music is blaring. Someone’s singing. People are already dancing.
“Do you want to dance, sweetheart?” I ask Briony, offering my hand.
She shakes her head, smiling at me. “I’m far too exhausted,” she says. “I just want to sit here with the four of you.”
I smile back at her, pushing the hair that’s fallen into her face and tucking it behind her ear. I kiss her forehead.
I still can’t believe we did it.Shedid it.Thiswoman. If you look at her now, you’d probably find it impossible to believe. She’s so small, so tiny, so fragile. And yet, if you look closer, in a way I failed to do the first time I met her, you can see it shining in her eyes, in the tilt of her defiant chin. There’s strength flowing through every single cell of her body and her being.
Fate was right to choose her. It could only have been her.
Pride swells in my heart and desire stirs in my belly. Perhaps it was always this stubborn, determined streak of hers that turned me on so much.
I’m about to offer her my hand again and suggest we embark on our own private party back in our tower when there’s a commotion, people pushing through the crowd, and I’m up on my feet immediately.
Most of my mother’s allies are dead. I don’t suspect any immediate danger, but who knows? These are unprecedented times we’re entering now. No Empress and no one to lead us.
