Page 221 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
“I did not think life with you would be particularly peaceful anyway,” Caer admitted. “And we will have time for peace and quiet later.”
And they would. Time for peace and quiet, for travelling, for adventures and revels and sparring and sunsets. Time foreverything.
The only one who did not have time was Cerridwen, but she did not seem keen to extend it—only to use the days she did have as much as possible. In the two weeks that she’d granted herself, she taught Beau a few sword moves he was ‘desperately lacking’, gave Aislinn a few lessons she was all too willing to learn from, and taught Juliana all the songs she couldn’t quite remember. She recounted their three years together in as much detail as she could, told her stories of her life in the mortal world, and even imparted the specifics of her courtship with her father.
“I understand that he did not lead an honourable life after I died,” she said, “but all the years he was honourable—and the ones where he loved you—those count for something, too.”
Juliana said nothing to that, though her eyes lined with silver.
“I wish we had more time,” Aislinn told her.
Cerridwen patted her head, looking, for a moment, like the older, silver-haired grandmas of mortal tales. “No one ever has enough of that,” she said. “Though you might, with your Caer, and Juliana with her Hawthorn. What grandmother could ask for more?”
On the final day, everyone gathered in the bowels of the great Faerie palace, in the great vine-filled crypt where the bodies of the kings and queens lay beneath the earth. A small, quiet party, just the family, Luna, Albert and Mabel.
“You don’t have to do this,” Luna sniffed. “We can wait a little longer.”
Cerridwen smiled. “Dillon has waited long enough,” she said. “And Albert does not have forever. Every day I spend here robs him of another day with his son.”
“But you deserve so many more with your daughter… she can’t be happy about this.”
“There may have been some sobbing, promises of violence, adamant declarations of using someone else, but… this is the right thing. She knows it too. I know I look young, but I’m old, for a mortal. And what I desire above all else I can never have again.”
“What’s that?”
“To see my daughter grow up. Maybe, if I’m lucky, and I exist amongst the vines after my demise, I’ll get to see my grandchildren and great grandchildren instead.”
“It won’t be the same.”
“Nothing is.”
Luna sniffed. “I’m naming my firstborn Cerridwen.”
Cerridwen smiled. “I think Dillon would approve of that.”
She lay down in the vines, and Mabel and Hawthorn conducted the spell. Juliana held her mother’s hands, whispering words too soft to hear. Caer clutched Aislinn’s hand throughout.
Afterwards, he would tell her that he’d had no idea that death could be peaceful, and that he’d be blessed indeed if he met an end like that one.
“Not for a long while yet,” Aislinn told him.
With her family around her, Cerridwen slipped away, and although there was no way to be sure she was there, the vines seemed to murmur when she joined them.
Dillon woke a few minutes later, whole and healthy andglowing.
“Luna?” he said, blinking rapidly. “Father?”
Juliana explained everything as Albert wept bitterly in his son’s neck.
“I can feel you,” Dillon whispered, as if, in this world of magic and wonder, it was touch that he found the most surreal, the most incredible. “I can feel you.”
Aislinn clutched Caer’s hand still, awaiting her turn in a long line of people waiting to hold Dillon, and smiled as the tears dripped down her cheeks. “Welcome home.”
Aeronflewthroughtheicy winds, black wings sailing out behind him, carrying the Mirror in his claws. It had taken far, far too long to sneak out of Avalinth, disguised as one of Owen’s soldiers. Glamours didn’t work on dwarves, butshapeshiftingdid, and it had been easy enough to take on the guise of one of the wounded. That idiot fae prince had healed him himself.
He’d survived leaping off the palace balcony, quickly transforming one of the other bodies to resemble himself and scurrying into the bushes to pull on his own disguise, all the while trying not to bleed out. It had not been easy. It had been too close.
Luckily, he’d already had a copy of the Mirror made long before the battle, constructed based on records and finalised quickly once the Mirror was in his possession. He’d always known he’d be taking it out of Avalinth, and Venus, for all her faults and her willingness to sacrifice the mortal prince, wanted to keep her word in that regard. She knew the Mirror was too powerful to leave.
