Page 49 of Queen of the Wicked
We all still carry the weight of what we went through, but we carry it together, and that makes the burden so much lighter to bear.
The theater smells faintly of beeswax candles and chalk. My satin slippers whisper across the stage, only making sound when I land a leap between the melody of the orchestra below. These are the moments I used to dream of, the moments I used to crave more than anything. The moments I begged for when dark magic tore through the softest pieces of me.
I spin, I stretch, I leap, and every moment is measured and perfect, coming to me as easy as breathing.
The audience is silent, and the room is dark save for the single spotlight on me. Yet, somehow through the pounding of adrenaline in my ears, I know they’re watching me.
Kaius and Rowan sit in the front row. The former with a straight back and folded hands, wearing soft black finery I chose for him. He’s allowed his dark hair to grow out, and his piercing green eyes touch every inch of my skin. I can almost feel his quiet, reverent smile drape across me when I turn in his direction.
Beside him, Rowan lounges in his seat dressed in deep, navy blue with his hair falling into his deep brown eyes. In the fleeting moments where the light catches his body, I see his fingers tapping with the rhythm of the music as if he’s trying to remember every move of my body, and his gaze follows every motion with the same intensity he’s never bothered to hide from me.
Two halves of my soul sit side by side, no longer tethered by fate, but by our own choices, and that makes our vows to each other so much deeper than magic.
When the final note of the orchestra dissolves into silence, I hold my position for a breath, my ears blocking out the roar of the crowd. The applause breaks like a wave across the stage, but after I rise from my bow, the only place my eyes go is to them. Always them.
Later, when the crowd has filtered out and I step outside, I find them waiting for me. Rowan leans against the stone wall, arms crossed, mouth curled into a faint smirk. Kaius, beside him, stands tall and regal, waiting with an extra coat in his arm because he knows I still get cold despite them walking home on either side of me. His expression is that of awe, just like the first time he watched me dance in his obsidian halls.
“You didn’t trip once,” Rowan says as he helps Kaius put my coat over my arms. “Disappointing.” I give him a breathless laugh as he pulls me into his chest, kisses my temple and whispers: “You were beautiful.”
“You were perfect,” Kaius adds as he pulls me out of Rowan’s embrace to kiss my cheek. I lean into him, letting the warmth from his breath fan over my head before we begin to walk. His arm is firmly on my back while Rowan tangles his fingers with my free hand.
For a moment, as we walk home, there’s nothing but the soft snow under our boots. No magic, no rot, no curses. Just the three of us, walking through a quiet village to our quiet home to live our quiet human lives.
We don’t try to erase the scars of what we went through, but we learned how to live in spite of them. We learned how to build something steady and beautiful from the wreckage of Eternity’s rot.
No one knows it but us. We purged the world of a great evil, and nearly lost ourselves in the process, but we did it without the desire to be hailed as heroes.
We did it for each other.
We did it for our small piece of forever.
Epilogue Two
Rowan
The first thing I noticed when I became human again was the silence. Where my senses used to stretch for miles, I find myself feeling so…small in my skin. When the pulse of magic disappeared, all it left was the steady rhythm of my heartbeat in my ribcage.
It was unsettling at first, that quiet. I still haven’t quite decided if I love it or hate it.
When we settled in the North, I complained endlessly about how the cold made my human nose run and how the melting snow in my boots made my toes feel numb. Kaius and Adelasia would tease me for it, but a truth I never told them was that the cold ached deeply in my bones where my wings used to be. There’s only scars there now, but I swear I can still feel the memory of the muscles there, and worse, the pain when they were ripped from me.
But the cold keeps the lungs sharp and forces us into bed for just a little longer to share warmth, so how could I really ask for anything else?
Our home has no marble halls, no blood slaves, no servants. Just snow, salt, and the three of us trying to forget about a part ofour lives that lingers like a ghost that hasn’t been properly put to rest.
Some nights, I still wake agitated and restless, ready to unfurl my wings and take to the skies, only to remember they’re gone.
I used the think being grounded would kill me, but then I look across the bed, and I see them.
Adelasia curls under the blankets, breathing evenly through her slightly red nose. Kaius is on the other side of her from me, with his arm firmly wrapped around her waist with a palm on her bare chest.
He still feels for her heartbeat, even to this day. He told me once that witnessing her die was the worst pain he ever experienced, and that fear of her heart stopping never left him, not even now.
And when I look at the two of them, I crawl back under the covers and realize I would rather live the rest of my life with my feet on the ground, if it meant that I always had this love.
For the first time in centuries, maybe even the first time in my life, I’m not chasing something lost to the past that lies just out of my reach.
I have it all.
