He was so beautiful. For a moment, tears sprang into my eyes at the thought of how close we'd been to losing each other, and I scrubbed them away. A brush with death, and a clock nearly out of time. But the cuts on my neck and the bruise on my head would heal before long, the enemy had been defeated, and any time I started to panic about time all I had to do was look at Dain and feel the total relief and comfort of perfect balance. We'd built our anchor, plunged over the cliff, and caught each other. We were hand in hand, spinning on the dance floor with our eyes on each other, and we were binary stars in an eternal balance.

With a soft smile, I kissed Dain on the temple. Even in his sleep, Dain leaned the smallest fraction into the touch, making an almost-inaudible sound of pleasure.

"I love you," I whispered, lacing my fingers through his. I settled myself in bed next to him, looking at the man whose heart would always hold me, for whom I had killed a Queen and defended a nation, the person who had given me a new life when death came calling. "I will love you until the end of time," I said, a blessing as much as a promise, and fell asleep with a smile on my lips.

59. Life After War

Chapter 59

Life After War

They let us sleep until almost noon before someone figured out that they could send Kamharida in after me. Dain hadn't moved at all during the night, still in the exactly same prone position, and I didn't wake him. Not only had he been awake and fighting for three days, he'd been battling his mother the whole way, who could draw on the power inherent to Stag Court itself to fuel her blood magic.

Nobody is ever going to go to war with us again, I thought, looking at him for a long moment. A demigod and King, whose armies loved him. The Beast of Phazikai, who had destroyed a city in seven hours in his youth. It struck me, suddenly, how young Dain was. One hundred twenty years was a great deal of time for humans, but for the fae? There were people in Stag Court who had been alive when humans were newborns on Earth's landscape. Zhiolas had been in love with Alluin longer than Dain had even been alive.

I shook my head, kissed him softly on the hair, and got out of bed to deal with the aftermath of war.