There’s a sarcastic, devastating woman with night-dark hair and pool-blue eyes. There’s a tall, gruff duke with ram’s horns whose exterior is as hard as his interior is soft; it’s very obvious that Granny Maggie was in love with him. And there’s a handsome knight with hair the color of autumn leaves who offered her protection in one of the courts. His description cramps my chest so fiercely that I have to pause to catch my breath.
The ending is the strangest part of all. No matter how many times I read the words, I cannot make sense of them.
I stole it for you, though I haven’t even met you yet. The seer showed me how terribly the Otherworld’s story would end if I hadn’t. How terriblyyourstory might end. Oh my dear Charlotte, you are in for anadventure.
I fall back, blowing out a long, slow breath.
A branch scrapes the window and I nearly fly out of my chair. The candles are nothing but sad, lumpen faces of wax and the room has grown terribly cold. I’ve been so engrossed, I haven’t even lit a fire.
I rise to correct the oversight, and something taps on the door. Another branch, surely. I pull a blanket around my shoulders, ignoring it.
But it sounds again. So faint, I could almost convince myself I’m hearing things.
Almost.
I gather my courage, then fling open the door before I can second-guess myself.
Sitting on the stoop, glinting in the moonlight, is a small, silver box.
There’s not a soul to be found in the dark night, no movement save a few leaves dancing across the dirt lane.
I bend down to pick up the box, which is unnaturally warm given the chill in the air. I close the door, turning the box over to find an etching on the bottom; one of those strange, beautiful moths fromThe Knight Departs.
Hushed whispers overtake my mind, a susurrous of voices. Some are so close they prickle the hairs on my neck, while others seem to shout from miles away.
Inside the box is a simple, silver band, also heated. I pull it out; there’s an engraving on the inside.
One of the voices crystallizes in my mind. A low, lush voice that sounds like the answer to every question I’ve ever asked, the blessing of every prayer I’ve ever sent to an indifferent god.
The voice says my name as the clock strikes midnight, and I read the engraving.
For My Favourite.
I slip the ring onto my finger and open the door.
Epilogue
LACHLAN
The moon was high and the stars were bright on the night you came back to the Otherworld.
As if the gods were offering a celestial backdrop as celebratory as my mood.
Well, celebratory the instant you pushed open the door of the Macán family tomb, anyway. Before that, I’d been a wreck of shattered nerves and nauseous panic.
What if it hadn’t worked? What if all my traveling back and forth to Farlock’s Edge had all been for naught? Queen Aowen had sent me there almost immediately after her coronation with enough coin to found my own small nation. Or to pay the excessive fees charged by the sorcerers who toil in our most ancient magics.
I felt a bit guilty about the expense, but when Wen assured me that the money had come from the LaBeaumont coffers—part of the wealth redistribution program she and Sabre hadundertaken to right that family’s many,manywrongs—well, after hearing that, I didn’t feel so bad.
Besides, there is no amount I wouldn’t have paid, nothing I would not have given, to bring you back to me.
Fortunately, we still had the ring. And the novillum seed. Thanks to you.
A masterful sorcerer, an older woman whose knobby fingers moved faster and with more precision than I’d ever seen, was able to extract a small wisp of the novillum’s power—enough to offer you its benefits without delegitimizing Aowen’s crown—and forge it back into the ring. She also gave it a new engraving. I’m sure it didn’t mean much to you when you read it, but I hoped someday you might appreciate the nod to our origins.
Even with the sorcerer’s skill, it took months of careful spellwork to complete. Months I spent so anxious and desperate that even wearing myself out every day assisting the reconstruction in Campan’s Vale couldn’t help me sleep at night. Garred was worried about me. As were my new people.
Have I forgotten to mention my new title? Aowen has dubbed me Duke of House Smythe, the new sovereign House of the Vale. Co-duke, actually. Garred is much more enamored of our rank than I am.
