Page 104 of A Petal in the Crown

She collapsed back down at Thomas’s side, shaking his shoulder. "Come back! Where are you? Please, come back," she sobbed, shaking him again. A vial rolled from his pocket, clinking against a twig and settling into the mud.

With trembling hands, she picked it up, noticing a thin roll of parchment inside. Had it been there when she’d taken the potion? She wasn’t sure. Hadn’t had time to look inside after she’d swallowed it down. Emma uncorked the vial and shook the note free, taking a deep breath as she unrolled it. A sob burst from her throat as she read the words scratched out in black ink.

You will not find him again, nor any others. It is better this way. No one deserves to carry a burden so heavy as yours...

Hewill wait for you.

—Eudora.

Emma squeezed the letter in her fist, throwing herself on top of Thomas as a raw sob tore from her throat. His body was growing cooler by the minute, another reminder that he was really and truly gone, but she couldn’t pull herself away.

As her grief crashed over her, threatening to consume her entirely, the sky grew brighter, the sun slowly sliding from behind the moon and toward the horizon, illuminating the bloody battlefield around them in a wash of red—all the men she and Thomas had killed. Bile rose in her throat. There were so many... so much death. But the potion—was that why she hadn’t seen them? She read the letter again, her body shaking as she read and reread the words.

Never again would she see the dead.

"Emma?" Erik's voice broke through her haze of grief. She sniffled but didn’t look up.

"He’s gone," Emma whispered, the words burning as they passed through her throat. Someone choked back a sob behind her, but still, she couldn’t look away from Thomas’s face.

"He loved you," Lea said, her voice shaking with tears.

"I know," she said, squeezing Thomas tighter, rocking back and forth. They didn’t rush her. Didn’t beg her to stand, to come with them. They simply stayed there with her in her sorrow, allowing her to mourn. And she was grateful.

Emma didn’t know how much time passed, but finally, she stilled.

"It’s over?" she asked, turning her swollen eyes to her friends. "Alaric’s dead?"

Lea moved to her side, placing a hand on her back and nodding. "It’s over."

Emma swallowed, allowing Lea to take her hand as she knelt next to Thomas's body. The others joined them, lending her their strength in silence as the sun continued to set.

When the last glimpses of the sun’s rays began to disappear, Emma leaned forward, pressing one final kiss to Thomas’s cheek. She stood, choking on a sob as Janelle and Lea held her up, supporting her as she took her first steps away from him.

Emma paused. "Will you bring him back? To bury him?" she asked Gray.

"Of course," he said, bowing his head, and Emma nodded. She couldn’t stand the thought of him lying out here alone for even a moment, a cold body amongst the hundreds scattered through the wood.

Stars blinked into the sky as the last of the sun fully set, the horizon turning into a tapestry of pinks and purples and oranges, a wave of shimmering magic washing over the land with a force Emma had never seen before. The trees bent and bowed as it rushed past, magic returning to the earth as it had always been intended to be, and as if breathing life into the very soil, the trees of the Wicked Wood began to bloom.

Tiny green buds appeared on the branches, popping open into bright green leaves and small yellow flowers. Before their very eyes, the dead, rotting ground transformed, wildflowers blooming beneath their feet as far as the eye could see.

Emma cried out as the skin above her heart began to tingle, then burn. The sensation took her breath away, and she looked down, gasping as she examined her skin. With a sob, she turned back toward Thomas, reaching forward with shaking hands to pull the corner of his bloody shirt away. And there, on his blood-stained skin, was a new mark—a moon, the twin of the one nowtattooed on her breast.

Proof that she had been loved by a man who had sacrificed everything, including his life, to keep her safe.

Epilogue

Lea

The wind blew softly across the rolling hills of Bearswillow, the long stalks of grass bowing toward the three freshly dug graves as if in deference to their memory. Gray stood between them, a prayer tumbling from his lips and tears shining in his eyes as he eulogized the dead. Genevieve, Thomas, and Eudora. The final three to be buried.

So many had been lost—too many—but their sacrifice had been honored back in Auropera. A tree had been planted for each of them, Lea funneling her light into their roots and helping them grow deep and strong until the garden was bursting with life. The garden sat between the castle and the town, full of bright, fragrant flowers and uninhibited sunlight, a resting place where families could honor the ones they’d lost. But for these three, Lea had chosen somewhere different. Somewhere closer to her heart.

For them, she’d chosen home.

Emma had agreed wholeheartedly. Had wanted Thomas’s final resting place to be the place he’d loved, near his family, and in the beauty of the mountains he’d grown up in. Lea didn’t think Emma would leave this place anytime soon, but she couldn’t blame her. Thomas’s family would take her in, give her a place to stay and make her one of their own until she was ready to return back home. If she was ever ready.

Emma knelt next to the fresh mound of dirt, Elise just behind her, her own face wet with tears. Emma had dressed in all white, her dress now stained with dirt as she whispered softly to the headstone bearing Thomas's name:Brother. Son. Friend.Soldier.Mate. And beneath the dates of his birth and death—his mate mark—etched into the stone with the same finality as the one marked on his body.

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