I knew some truths about that word now.
You weren’t always born into one. But if you were lucky, you found one somewhere along the way. It was a place where you fit and were accepted, where people helped you with your problems and you helped them with theirs. Where you made mistakes and so did they but the love never wavered.
A place where erosions never turned into landslides because you dug one another out. And always would.
Shazam and I stepped into the portal together this time.
The Unseelie King walked to the edge of the Horsehead Nebula, great dark wings trailing behind him, staring but not seeing.
What was it she’d once said to him?
You have so many ambitions. I have but one. To love.
And he’d thought, small.
Human.
Beautiful.
But small.
He’d liked that in his woman, a small lovely ambition. Given that she didn’t have his talents, he could see that was enough for her.
He, however, had from the very first moments of his existence teemed with power, bristled electric, exploded with it. He was a supernova. Creating was his drug, addictive and irresistible. All-consuming.
He’d believed mere emotion could never compete with the power rush of slapping together worlds and watching them evolve. That love could yield no prize that might make it worth turning his back on shaping civilizations and birthing stars, building his Court of Shadows.
He’d been wrong.
When he’d found her on that tiny provincial planet in that tiny three-dimensional universe, she wasn’t the one who needed saving from her flatland existence.
Life was so simple. It always had been.
Be the conductor, forever removed from the orchestra pit.
Or be part of the song.
The Unseelie King turned his face in a general upward direction where if there were something like him standing in the wings waiting for the chance to go a long distance out of the way to return a short distance correctly, it might overhear and take up the reins, as he did what he should have done a small eternity ago.
It felt good.
Human.
Small.
Beautiful.
He said, “I quit.”
MAC
I was stretched out on the Chesterfield in front of a hissing gas fire, listening to the rain patter against the windows of the store, indulging myself in a time of reflection before I got up to tackle what would surely be another eventful, fascinating day.
Tomorrow was Halloween—and Barrons’s birthday—and the sidhe-seers were having a huge party out at the abbey.
Dani had moved back into the fortress with Shazam and was quickly becoming a living legend, bristling electric with energy and intellect, traveling the slipstream with her enigmatic, flamboyant Hel-Cat. Kat and Enyo were gathering yet more sidhe-seers, and there was talk of reestablishing a global order.
The black holes had vanished from our world and the song had awakened life in even the Shade-devastated Dark Zones. Although it was late fall, we were having a rainy spring and I suspected our seasons might be completely out of balance for a few years.
Deep in the earth, connected to the core by the True Magic, I felt a new, subtle magic in the planet. Our world was alive in ways it hadn’t been for hundreds of thousands of years.
Dublin was bustling again, each day we reclaimed another part of the city, and life was slowly returning to as close to normal as it would ever be again.
The unique Fae hues still stained our world, and, until I figured out how to either sing the walls back up between the realms or unearth the power of our court and move it to a new planet, they would continue to do so.
What to do with my race of immortals was the next stage of my journey. It was bound to be an interesting one.
My parents had settled in Dublin with no intention of ever returning to Georgia.
We’d lost and gained things, we’d grieved and celebrated. The future was a mystery to us all. One we would explore together.
My greatest concerns were for Dani. Getting Shazam back had alleviated some of the anguish I’d been so worried might turn her back into Jada. But she wasn’t fully Dani anymore either, the way she had been when Dancer was alive. There was a coolness to her diction, a distance in her gaze that I suspected might be there for some time.
Still, all in all, life was good and rich and there was no other place I’d rather be.
I rolled over onto my back and stretched out, staring absently up at the ceiling, five stories above my head.
Slowly becoming aware of the distant mural.
I narrowed my eyes, wondering for the hundredth time what it was. Then, with a snort, I invited the elements around me to erect a tall, shining scaffold, kicked up off the sofa and climbed the handy ladder on the side. There were quite a few things about being the Fae queen I didn’t at all mind. Still, sifting and hanging midair was something I wasn’t yet comfortable with, hence the scaffolding.