Page 85 of Songs of Retribution

Shaan tucked around me carefully, aware of my injuries. My glamour on him had disappeared when the magic had transferred to Lira, but it didn’t matter. We stood a distance from soldiers.

"I know it's ridiculous to cry," I said. "He was horrible to me my entire life, and he was about to beat me to death, but…"

"He was your father," Shaan whispered into my hair. "You’re allowed to feel however you do. It's okay, love. You can cry."

Tears flooded forward then, and I shifted towards him, wincing past the pain in my ribs, and rested the uninjured side of my face on his shoulder.

We'd won, but at a tremendous cost. Shaan rubbed my back. Smoke lifted from the field to reveal a sea of dead bodies, broken horses, and chaotically blended soldiers. Someone on our side had already called a ceasefire.

Dragons, free from my father's spell, swept around agitated. Their flapping wings stirred up ash.

Soldiers turned their attention to the creatures.

I clumsily sat upright. "Help me to my feet."

Shaan did so carefully. He slipped into magic, perhaps by accident, and I could sense the grief and concern he had for me. I pulled him close then turned back towards the dragons.

I remembered the Yakshas on the island and how they'd responded to me displaying their magic. The dragon protected Lira when we’d stolen the Amentium.

A dragon reared back, prepared to open its massive mouth and take out more soldiers.

I called a flame forth, a beacon of lava and sparks that overpowered the sun and turned the battlefield into an enormous ember, everything glowing orange.

The dragons all turned towards it, moved away from the soldiers and tents, and swept in our direction. Shaan tensed, tightening his grip enough that I winced. The five remaining creatures landed before us and looked down.

We were two ants staring at giants.

Their eyes crackled with magic, and I braced myself to use every power I had to stop them. Then they bowed, one after another, lowering their massive beaks before me. When they remained still, I got to my feet, reached out to the nearest one, and touched the leathery surface of its face. It opened its orange eyes and looked at me, as if it waited for something.

"It's over," I whispered.

The field still burned and soldiers cried out as sirens flooded into the wreckage to heal the injured. We had a fight ahead of us, taking over the Seelie and making changes wouldn't be easy. But I knew we could do it.

"It's done," I said and licked a final tear off my lip.

EPILOGUE

Kali’s messengerfound many things about this world she’d been assigned to strange when she first arrived in it. Names were the first thing. Such an odd idea to apply a string of sounds together to identify a being. The fae had a sense of others’ souls which they called a magic trace, yet they still relied on the awkward jumble of noise to identify each other.

The messenger had been in that world a short time—scarcely more than a few decades—yet her heart had warmed to these short-lived creatures Kali had tasked her to look after. The Prasanna prince with the shadows had once said Kali held his team in her hands. At the time, the messenger had smiled, because he was right. Kali had sent her to protect them and direct them on their path.

Only that, though,Kali had warned.

She was to be a messenger, a guide, and interfere as little as possible. Beings couldn’t grow as needed if she intruded too much. It was usually a simple order to execute, but she’d warmed to these beings in her time here and now she regretted leaving them. Kali would let her stay longer, yet there were other worlds and realities where she could help. She didn’t understand why she continued to hover, invisible to the fae, as snow drifted gracefully onto the Seelie palace.

She remembered when she set Kali’s plans into motion. When she made sure a certain siren gathered her courage to leave on the very night a certain Prasanna prince passed through the same town.

Admiration had swirled through her over the bravery and foolishness of her creatures (as she came to see them), but she didn’t understand them. Not until she’d followed them through a year of adventures and hardship. She shuddered, but it wasn’t from the icy wind that sliced through Seelie lands. It was because she hated harming her creatures, longed to stop it, but loved them too much to do so. They wouldn’t have risen to their task if they hadn’t faced all they did.

After the war, a dozen things had happened and the messenger had watched all of them carefully like a mother chicken hovering over her brood. (She found the concept of chickens—hilarious creatures—a delight.) Lennox had been confined to bed rest from his injuries for months—siren healers were only able to help so much because the damage came from the being holding his origin magic. His sister had bustled in with trays of food which she hefted into her lap as she sat in a chair at his side, reading reports Eldrick crafted for her of small skirmishes and lingering unrest among the Seelie. He helped her strategize, and she acted as the temporary figurehead.

Orman had walked in one day a few weeks after the battle and looked around the room. “How’s it going?”

Lennox groaned and Shaan lifted his face from the book he read, but Lennox waved him off. “Ready to get out of this bed.”

Orman grinned and sat on the end of it, bouncing the mattress, and Lennox grimaced. “That’s what I imagined,” he said before scratching his jaw. “The elves got the dragons all returned to their resting place. They won’t be telling the Seelie or any other fairy court where to find them. I hope you can understand that, mate.”

Lennox, who still had severe swelling on one side of his face nodded. “I expected that. And they’re guarding the Amentium mines?”

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