Darkest Mercy

Epilogue

A year later . . .

He knelt before her.

“Is this what you freely choose, to accept winter’s chill?” she asked him—the faery she’d fallen in love with so many years ago. She’d dreamed that they would be together forever, but not like this. It was so strange and beautiful that she couldn’t look away.

“It’s what I want,” he assured her again.

“You understand that if this doesn’t work . . .”

He paused, glancing at her with pain in his eyes. “I’ll still be here. If you don’t want to risk it . . . I’m still here either way. We don’t need to do this if you aren’t sure.”

“Keenan—”

“But I am willing to take the chance if it’s what we both want,” he said quietly. “I would spend eternity in the Winter with you, even if it means being your subject.” He paused before adding, “Irial and Niall say it should work.”

Discord says it’s a good idea. That’s comforting.

Donia pushed back her fears. “But if they’re wrong . . .”

“It’s what I freely choose,” he repeated.

She walked over to the hawthorn bush they’d planted together last year. The leaves brushed against her arms as she bent down and reached under it. Her fingers wrapped around the Winter Queen’s staff. It was a plain thing, worn from the countless hands that had clenched the wood.

Please let this work.

She stood and held it out to him; he wrapped his hand around it.

He clutched the Winter Queen’s staff—and she hoped. For a moment she thought they were wrong, as she watched him falter. She felt the tendrils of Winter slide into his skin, the shards of ice fill his veins. The staff was an extension of her, and she felt the pain of it all over again as Keenan’s body was remade.

With icy tears sliding down her cheeks, she knelt beside him and called his name: “Keenan!”

“My Queen,” he breathed reverently as his eyes filled with snow.

Unlike her, he was born of winter, so he wasn’t aching with the pain of the cold. In truth, he was more stunning in that instant than he’d ever been before.

“My consort,” she whispered.

He took her free hand in his. Bands of ice began to wrap around their arms, binding their wrists together. “Will you be my forever, Donia?”

“Yes. Will you share my life? My court? My forever?”

“Till death, my Queen.” Keenan sighed the words against her cheek; frost formed in her hair.

She pressed her lips to his, relishing the cold that lifted from his skin.

And the Winter Queen and her consort covered their winter garden with a fall of white snow.

The End