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“I can do that,” I said, running my fingers over his scalp, eliciting another moan from him. “But only if you close your eyes.”

“Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear,” he added, before shutting his lids. “I want to hearyourtruth.”

He’d asked me this question before, and my answer had been a lie. What do you want from the new world? How could I have answered that, knowing I didn’t plan to stay around and enjoy it.

But this was different.

So different.

I took a deep breath, moving my fingers from his scalp to the side of his face. Before I began, I offered him another kiss, something soft. He puckered into me, longing to keep the kiss going, even as I pulled back.

Then I answered, pulling my truth from the inside of my soul. “I want to return home, with you and Duncan beside me. Not to Icethorn, a castle full of empty memories. But to Grove, back in the house I grew up in with my father. I want to spend days locked inside, living in my truth, with the two men who helped me find it. I want to see humans and fey as one, no longer separated by the past. I’m a bad king, Erix. I never wanted it, never asked for it. I tried to play pretend, but that path was never meant for me. And do you know something? I never truly believed in a home.

I spent my youth wondering after my mother, chasing after her ghost, believing I’d find the place I belonged when I finally reached her. Along the way, as I finally got everything I thought I wanted… I found out that I was wrong. Because it wasn’t the destination my soul craved, but the people I found along the way. You, Erix. Duncan too. Those were not split pathways to the end of my story, but a single one that broke off but found its way coming back together. Because the crux of what I want for my tomorrow, is allowing myself to accept that I deserve one. And I deserve you. I deserve Duncan. And I believe that you deserve me, just as Duncan does. That is what I want.” I paused, gathering my breath for the last part of my truth. “I want the home I believed I was searching for, but realised that I found it, long before I truly understood it.”

By the time I’d finished, Erix’s breathing had evened out. A smile was painted across cherry-red lips. His grasp of my hip eased enough for me to pull away without resistance. As much as I longed to sleep alongside him, to enjoy his touch and the gentle brush of his breath against my skin, I couldn’t.

I leaned in, bringing my lips to the smooth skin of his forehead. “I love you, Erix. So much. I always did. It’s my pleasure to chase tomorrows with you. Always.”

The final kiss was light. I expected Erix to wake, but he didn’t. He was far too exhausted. I sat myself beside the burning hearth, feeling the heat radiate off the warmed pot.

I thought of everyone I met along the way, those lost and found, who helped write this story. Those whose lives facilitated this very moment being possible. And, as I stared into the dancing flames, I silently thanked them. Allies and enemies. Because the path may have been treacherous, but we’d made it this far. And I planned to make it to the very fucking end.

For Duncan. For Erix. And, most importantly, a truth I finally recognised and accepted, I’d do it, forme.

CHAPTER 29

Peace never lasted long. One day it would, but for now, it was an impossibility. We could pretend for a few minutes, hours at most. But reality always came knocking. And it came in the form of Erix’s gryvern kin.

I felt sick to my core. I clutched at my stomach, unable to stand still, as the news continued to repeat in my head.

“Cassial knows exactly what he is doing,” I shouted as we burst out the farm’s doors, Erix and a cohort of his gryvern warriors following behind.

They’d arrived hours after Erix had fallen asleep, just as the pot of broth cooled, forgotten. I hadn’t had time to ladle it into bowls when I heard them arrive – bringing news from the frontlines.

“It is insurance to him,” Erix called after me, still visibly tired, but such details no longer mattered. “He is using innocent lives as a shield against the fey. It isn’t just about using the fey to further his campaign, that was never enough. But pitting them against the powerless humans, that is Cassial’s way of cementing his future. He will turn the fey into the monsters he needs them to be.”

I spun on one of the gryvern, the only one dressed in armour. “Are you confident this information is correct? We cannot afford to move on this unless you are sure.”

The gryvern bowed their head toward me. “I wouldn’t have brought this information to you unless I was completely sure, Your Majesty. We’ve checked through every dwelling as requested, attempting to move the humans away from the fight, using fear. But everywhere the gryvern have been is empty. I have personally got close enough to the Nephilim encampment to see the humans we searched for – men, women and children… hundreds if not thousands of them…”

Children. I couldn’t fathom it. Blindly led by the Creator’s promised warriors, but then used as a shield before them. That was where all these people had gone. I imagined the family this farm belonged to. How they left their home to stand between the Nephilim and the fey, not knowing the death that awaited them.

Cassial had put the people he was supposed to protect on the front line, a band of flesh and bone to separate them from our army lingering beyond Wychwood.

“He’s amonster. This is what Cassial has done with them all,” I snapped, wondering if the owner of this farm was also an unsuspecting victim of Cassial’s plans. Did the angels show up at their door, promising them salvation from the fey-monsters, offering the promise of the Creator as their protector?

Deep down, I knew the answer already.

“Have they been given weapons?” I asked, voice trembling. “Tell me they are at least prepared for the fight that Cassial is hoping for?”

“No.” The gryvern couldn’t look me in the eyes. “They haven’t. The humans are a shield, that is all. If the fey attack, the humans will die.”

“It would strengthen Cassial’s plans to ruin any hope of relations in the future,” Erix added, equally as distraught. “We will be the bloody killers, Cassial will continue pressing his agenda of being this Saviour.”

I snapped my attention to Erix and the other gryvern who flanked him. The rest, unlike the warrior I conversed with, were like mindless hounds, monstrous forms too far gone in their transformation to find humanity. Yes, Erix had control of them, but that still didn’t stop my heart from skipping whenever we caught eyes.

These creatures had killed my mother. The family I never met. They were Doran Oakstorm’s pets – twisted creations of his seed.