My heart shrinks to a shriveled lump in my chest.
I burrow my head in Sariah’s seared locks, not even her jasmine scent appeasing my miserable anguish.
They’re gone.
They’re really gone.
Tendrils of faint, translucent umbras slip free from the chasm, hovering above the surface in a swirling motion. Two shimmering silhouettes like unraveling moonbeams stop before us, a sense of peace and love blanketing my mind.
Echoes of their former selves, Killian and Aimee smile unburdened, finally free.
No pain left. No fear.
Only a quiet release.
I blink the fresh wave of tears threatening to blur my vision.
“I vow to be worthy of your sacrifice,” I whisper, kneeling on the edge of the cavernous pit.
“You were always worthy,”the layered voices respond before the wispy apparitions drift upward in a spiraling embrace. My gaze follows the quiet procession of their souls rising into something brighter than light itself.
As they start dissolving at the edges like mist kissed by the first morning rays, their delicate shapes alter to a different couple.
The makings of a legend that bled for Imiryion over and over again.
Akaori and Aeon.
EPILOGUE I
Blaise —50 years later–
“Daddy,willyoutellme the tale of Uncle Killian and Aunt Aimee?”
“Akaoree, again?” I chuckle, ruffling the tuft of pale golden curls on top of my daughter’s head. “Haven’t you heard it a million times over?”
She wrinkles her cute button nose, her baby-blue eyes pleading.
“But it’s my favorite story, Daddy. Please.”
She looks so much like her mother, although the blood running through her veins is not our own.
“Tell me how they defeated the evil bitch, errr, witch.”
“Akaoree Mortenghail, that’s no way for a seven years old to speak,” I say in feigned indignation, and the tips of her pointed ears turn bright pink. She reminds me of Aimee sometimes, with her streak of stubbornness and occasional slip of the tongue.
“Sorry, Daddy,” she says with an impish smile. “But that mean lady really deserves the B-word.”
I can’t argue with that. Or the fact that she gets a lot of her attitude from me.
“Your aunt and uncle loved each other very much. Across hardship, across lifetimes, even in other bodies, their souls yearned for each other and found each other.”
“Other bodies? Like Akaori and Aeon?” she asks, her golden eyebrows scrunching in concentration as she recalls the story. She doesn’t quite understand yet the concept of reincarnation, always asking how her uncle was male, yet also female before that.
“Yes, little princess. Their love was the strongest in the entire realm, and it lived on for many, many years. Waiting for them to reunite.”
“But the mean lady who I can’t call the B-word because it’s not nice, she wanted to break them apart?”
Her little foot kicks a pebble that goes careening into the depression before us. We’re at the edge of the former castle, a steep slope covered in snow, the only remaining sign of the destiny-shaping battle that occurred here.
