I made an unconvinced noise in my throat, because I still didn’t believe she could be okay. She’d been dead in my arms. I wouldn’t take a single heartbeat for granted ever again.
Zier grumbled out a relieved noise. “Good, because we’re going to talk about your methods, after I spank some good sense into you.” He moved toward her, running his knuckles over her cheek gently, like he wasn’t sure she’d let him touch her. “I hated…” He trailed off, clearing his throat. “Was it real?” The last words were whispered, and I knew I wasn’t meant to hear them, so I looked down at my hands like they were real interesting, pretending I didn’t have above-average hearing.
“It was real. I’m sorry that I had to do that, but on the off chance I’d die…”
I swallowed the growl that rose up in my throat at the very concept.
“I wanted to know what it was like to be held by you just once.”
Ugh.She was so fucking sweet, and the urge to gather her up in my arms and kiss her was difficult to resist. I stared down at my nails. I needed to shower for a long time. Maybe soak in a tub for half a day. There was still blood crusted in the cuticles.
Zier swallowed. “That’s good. If it is okay with you, I’d like to court you in the ways of the Eighth Line. I don’t think I could just give you up now. Seeing you there, on the ground in that cavern—” He shook his head. “I can’t run from the feelings in my chest, and if I have to share you with the other three, then that’s something we can work on.”
Dropping the pretense that I wasn’t eavesdropping intently, I winked at him. “Welcome to the pack, Daddy Zier.”
Avalon slapped my arm, pushing herself up a little. “Where’s Lierick?”
Vox leaned forward and kissed her reverently. It would take us all a little while to heal from the emotional wounds of the last few months. “I sent him a message when you woke. I can’t imagine he’s far away.”
As if he was drawn by Avalon’s question, the door slammed open, and a wild-eyed Lierick appeared. “You’re awake,” he breathed. A second later, he was there, diving across my body toward Avalon. “It’s my fault.”
Avie’s face screwed up adorably. “You don’t look like a megalomaniac who was stealing the country’s magic.” She glanced at Vox, but his face was impassive. “So how could any of it be your fault?”
“I read the last reset. I couldn’t resist the pull of the magic. You almost died. I keep failing you over and over, in every lifetime.” Lierick’s voice was rough. I knew he’d been beating himself up about it. Every time he’d come in here while she was sleeping, he’d stared at her with such self-loathing, like it was his fault that he’d been corrupted by something so abhorrent to the very foundations of magic, it would have been nearly impossible to resist.
Unless you were Avie.
She pushed him back. “We were all doing what we had to do. It was all part of the plan. Don’t beat yourself up for the machinations of the Goddess, Lierick.” She lifted up and brushed her lips across his. “We restored the balance, and our job here is done. You can spend the rest of forever making it up to me, okay?”
Lierick nodded, kissing her back fiercely. “For as long as you’ll let me, I’m yours.”
We all were.
Epilogue
Avalon
Twelve Months Later
“My fellow Barons and members of the Conclave, may I present the new Baroness of the First Line, Shay Vylan.”
I stood in the back of the room with Vox, both watching this moment with easy confidence, as if it had been that simple to raise Shay up as the new Baroness of the First Line. It hadn’t.
It had been months of fighting and cajoling, of tracking down dissidents and people Feodore Vylan had colluded with to obtain more power.
It had been Vox finding his mother dead in her bed, a vial of some kind of poison still clutched in her hand.
It had been finding the worst of the worst of the upper echelons of the First Line and putting them in dungeon cells for their crimes—or executions, if they had been especially heinous.
It had been Vox and Shay on the streets of Fortaare, with the downtrodden members of their Line, promising things would be better, would be different.
The first step? It had been removing Feodore Vylan’s direct Line from the position of Baron. Although we’d all tried to show that Vox was different, there’d always been the fear that the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.
But Shay was already different, an option that would have been abhorrent to the Barons of the past. Surprisingly—or perhaps not so surprisingly, if you’d met her—Shay had settled into the role easily. It helped that she had a girlfriend from the Twelfth Line. She was smart, compassionate, and strong. Everything you’d want in a leader, if you’d been oppressed by those in power for the past century.
I reached out and threaded my fingers in Vox’s. He gave me a soft smile, no regret in his eyes. He’d never wanted the position, nor the power that came with it.
The Conclave looked a lot different than it had when I started Boellium. Younger, definitely. Kian had taken over from our father, who’d succumbed to his liver disease in his bed one night, and Neho Ingmire—who’d definitely murdered his own—was now Baron. Ivo Tarrin had kept his position as Baron of the Eighth, along with his twin Kyler, and Zier had given it to them without a fight.
