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Raphael reaches me, all smiles. “Happy birthday. Is it lavender cake?”

“One lavender,” I say, “and one dandelion. That’s my father's favorite, and I guess after waiting fifteen hundred years, he gets to make some of the decisions. How is Camelot?”

He grimaces. “Messy. Some of the Pendra?—”

I flare my eyes at him in a silent signal. “Some of the Pendragonspiritsare haunting the place, I’m sure, after we killed themall?”

Raphael catches on easily. “Exactly. It’s hard to sleep, what with all the ghosts.”

I lead them back into the banquet hall, where the Fey nobility have started to stream inside. Glittering with jewels, they mill around the gardens, the ring stones, and the banquet table. Aeden plucks a flute of mead off a servant’s tray. The music starts to play, a beautiful melody twanging with a hypnotic beat, and some of the Fey start dancing.

Aisling hurries over and shoves a glass of mead into my hand, then hands one to Raphael. “We don’t judge here,” she mumbles. “Even your kind is welcome.”

I lift my glass and catch the eyes of Raphael, Darius, Tana, and Nivene.

Raphael’s silver eyes gleam. “To Viviane and Serana, who should be here with us, but who gave their lives for peace.”

I blink away the mist in my eyes and take a sip of the mead.

A murmur falls over the hall, and I turn to see Talan prowling inside with an unhurried gait, a glass of mead in his hand. A lock of his dark hair falls to his cheekbone. Always, at the sight of him, my heart does a leap, and I can’t believe he’s real.

As my gaze sweeps around the hall, I notice everyone is staring at him, smiling and blushing. He’s no longer a king, no longer a threat, but he draws their gaze all the same.

Perhaps it was never his power that drew them all along, but his beauty. And who could blame them?

Mordred stands at the front of the hall and raises his glass. “Tonight, we dedicate this victory feast to Queen Morgan!”

Dawn is rising.We spent the night eating, drinking, and dancing, and now Talan and I lie by Avalon’s shoreline,our limbs entwined. Tarasque sleeps serenely nearby, nestled between the apple trees. Talan’s chest warms me, and he holds me wrapped in his arms. I listen to his heartbeat.

Dew dapples the grasses, and Talan’s fingers wind into my hair.

“Do you like it here?” I ask quietly. “Do you miss Brocéliande?”

“I don’t need the throne,” he murmurs, running his hand down my spine. “Just you and Tarasque.”

I’ve been rootless my whole life, drifting through apartments, houses, countries, species, allegiances.

But here? Here, I’m finally given the gift of stillness.

A place where time holds its breath.

I want the crystal glasses to stay out, the banquet set, a world caught in a perfect pause. The dawn-kissed, dreamlike, unchanging world of Avalon.

Here, among the ruins and trees, time forgets to move.

A perfection encased in amber.

And with Talan…

That’s exactly how I want it to stay.