Page 79 of Heartflame

The grief was still there, a stone lodged somewhere behind my ribs that I doubted would ever fully dissolve. But Quill was there too. Warm and solid and alive against me. He was proof that even after everything, something good had survived this catastrophe. I closed my eyes, and for the first time since the nightmare began, I let myself drift toward sleep, holding onto that single certainty like a lifeline.

Whatever came next, we’d face it together.

Epilogue: Quill

One Month Later

The Purity Front was dead.

Not officially, not in any court of law or Elder Council decree, but in every way that mattered. Its leadership had rotted into the ground along with Morgana and Thaddeus. Its army of undead had been reduced to soil and mushroom spores scattered across the ruined foyer of the Pyre estate. And the remaining witches who’d worn that mask of righteous purity had scattered to the wind the moment their leaders fell, most of them turning themselves in before the Elder Council even had to send anyone looking.

I sat at the kitchen counter of our new home, nursing a cup of tea while I read through the morning paper. They’d run another story about the reconstruction efforts at Widdershins, complete with a photo of Wild standing in front of the half-rebuilt west wing looking entirely too pleased with himself for someone who was supposed to be helping oversee a magical catastrophe. Besides him was Professor Blackwood, looking like she was getting just a little tired of putting up with him.

“They gave him a hard hat,” I said, turning the paper around so Aeron could see it from where he stood by the window, still shirtless from his shower, his damp scales glistening in the light. “A hard hat. On a fae. As if that’s necessary at all.”

“He probably asked for it,” Aeron said, not even glancing over. His attention was fixed on something outside, that faraway look he got sometimes when his mind wandered back to the estate, to his grandfather, to all the things we still hadn’t fully talked through even a month later.

I set the paper down and came to stand beside him, slipping my arm around his waist. “Hey. What’re you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” he said, but his hand came up to cover mine anyway, lacing our fingers together. “Just about the hearing next week, I guess.”

The Elder Council hearing. The one where they’d formally address what had happened, where they’d decide what to do about the empty seat Thaddeus had left behind, where they’d ask Aeron and I to testify about everything he’d witnessed in that foyer. I’d been trying not to think about it too hard myself, but it clearly hadn’t been far from either of our minds these past few days.

“You don’t have to go through it alone,” I reminded him, echoing words I’d said more times than I could count over the past month. “I’ll be right there.”

“I know.” He turned, finally, wrapping both arms around me and resting his chin on top of my head. “I just keep thinking about what they’re going to ask. Whether they’ll want the full truth about the succession, about who inherits the Pyre seat now that he’s gone.”

That was the part that scared him most, I’d come to realize. Not the grief, though that still ambushed him some nights, in the middle of the night when anxiety crept in. It was the responsibility waiting on the other side of it, an entire legacy and a council seat and centuries of expectation, all of it funneling down onto shoulders that had barely finished mourning the man who’d built that legacy on lies.

“You’ll figure it out,” I said, echoing his own words back at him from that first horrible night. “Whatever they decide, whatever comes next, you won’t be doing it alone.”

He huffed out something that might have been a laugh, might have been relief, and pressed a kiss to the crown of my head. “I’ve already made my decision, actually. I’m going to turn it down. I just hope they’ll accept that.”

I pulled back just enough to look up at him, searching his face for any trace of doubt. There wasn’t any. Just that quiet certainty he’d been carrying around lately, the kind that made him seem older than the carefree cocky dragon I’d fallen for at Widdershins.

“You’re sure?” I asked anyway, because it felt like the kind of decision that deserved to be questioned at least once. “That’s a lot of power to walk away from.”

“That’s exactly why I’m walking away from it,” he said. “Power like that, it’s what turned him into what he became. I watched it happen. I don’t want to spend the next few centuries wondering if I’m slowly becoming the same thing.”

I thought about arguing, about telling him he wasn’t his grandfather, that he wouldn’t allow his grief to turn him into a monster. But I’d said all of that already, more than once, in the weeks since it all happened. He knew it. He believed it, mostly. I had to trust he knew what was best for himself.

“Okay,” I said instead, reaching up to brush my thumb along his jaw the way I always did. “Then we tell the Council together. Let them find someone else to run the world.”

He smiled at that, small and tired but real, and some of the tension in his shoulders eased. “Wild’s going to have a field day when he finds out. He’s been taking bets with Elias on whether I’d cave to family obligation.”

“Please tell me you’re not actually going to give him the satisfaction of winning that bet.”

“Oh, I fully intend to make him lose spectacularly.” He kissed my forehead, then the tip of my nose, working his way down until I was laughing and swatting half-heartedly at his chest. “But we’ll worry about that later. Right now, I think I want something else.”

“It’s been barely two hours since the last time,” I said.

“And your point is what?”

I let him pull me toward the living room, tea forgotten on the counter, the newspaper with its ridiculous photo of Wild in a hard hat left open on the table. A surge of lust pushed through the bond between us and I let myself give into it. After all, I was still a guy in his early twenties. It wasn’t like I could resist such a thing from the hottest dragon I’d ever met.

The couch caught the back of my knees before I even realized he’d steered us there, and then I was falling, pulling him down with me, his weight settling between my thighs like it was the most natural thing in the world. Which, I supposed, it was now.

“You’re doing that thing,” I said, breathless already, “where you decide something’s happening before you actually ask me.”