Nymre’s fingers curled around the balustrade. The same one. The one beside which he had embraced her so many times. Where they had stood together, looking into the night, while his shadows drained the living essence from the woods around them. She could still feel his breath on her neck—warm, hot, familiar.
She had cried for two months. Silently. Unseen, grieving loss. And then this day came. She felt hollow, like an old mossy well long emptied of water. But her tears had dried, and she understood she had to live. Her lips still needed his. Her body was cold, stripped of its flame. But this was the life she would live now. Until something inside her broke—and maybe, just maybe, spring would grow in her again.
Winter roots still clung deep within her, claiming her body and her heart. She would need to thaw. She didn’t want to—snow and ice reminded her of her love.
Flawed, cruel, painful. But real. Strong. A love that had given her wings stronger than her own. Now she had to rely only on the feathers and wings she was born with. Black and soft—but now made of shadows. Scattered beneath her feet like on the day of their first night together.
His cruel raven.
Her shadow king.
When she learned that Leira would bear Lorian’s child, she felt nothing. Her wet eyes, her hollow spirit—everything demanded she focus on her own pain. And when the day of the mossy well arrived, she saw the truth clearly. This child would be Lorian’s only heir. The only way to continue the Ain’Dal line. Nymre would never give him a child—an empty throne would pull the Unseelie into war. The court would fight and bleed itself dry until the Sacred Woods grew bored and chose the strongest… or the one it deemed most fitting to rule a new godless world.
So she did it for Lorian. To honor his line. As much as she had disliked Leira, the almost primal hatred had faded. Leira was only a human Lorian had taken, and she had been so certain he loved her. Perhaps he had, in his own twisted way. He had fooled them both—her and himself.
When Leira entered Lorian’s chambers—now Nymre’s—the raven faerie was sipping her herbs, her posture elegant yet not free of exhaustion. These months… these cursed months… had been hard, cruel, and had nearly destroyed her. But she felt his spirit beside her—Lorian’s spirit. Perhaps it still gathered shadows around her, because she could swear that at night she still felt their caress on her skin.
Warm. Hot.
Familiar.
Leira simply sat beside her. And Nymre smiled.
She had loved him too, foolish as she was. Perhaps a spark of him lived in her as well—just as it remained in Nymre.
Nymre disliked Leira. But she was the only other person who had felt his touch as an equal. The only one who understood how to love him—and how to be loved by him.
Now, Nymre’s fingers tightened around the balustrade.
“You are aware that my court demands your death.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Nymre scoffed.
“They do not want revenge. They want the throne.”
“They are terrified that his line may survive. They are scavengers feasting on a lion’s flesh—yet while he lived, they could only croak from afar.”
Nymre’s brow lifted.
“Lion?”
“A beast from the human lands, my lady.”
Nymre looked into the horizon. The snow ceased to fall, and the land bathed on faint sunlight. The woods around them seemed distant and alien, with a veil of mist surrounding them. She could hear the forest’s pulse. Dark—but at the same time, so full of hidden life.
“We live in dangerous times. The court knew they couldn’t act during the burial rites. But once the sanctuary rises, once they build enough obelisks and monuments for their savior, they may decide that my regency is an attempt to usurp his power.”
“My child is not enough to secure the throne?”
“Oh, they would love to reduce the matter to human offspring. I can almost hear them insisting that no king was ever born of a human.”
“But from what I know, many—”
“Of course!” Nymre laughed, bitterly. “But quietly, without ceremony. No king was anointed before his birth. No king took the throne years after the previous one’s demise.”
Leira’s smile twisted.
“No king killed the gods before.”
“That and only that holds them. He is a god to them now. A savior, a hero. These times are delicate… and I must handle them delicately. I hold no power over this palace. Dal’coler was mine only as long as Lorian lived. They despise the very idea of my regency… which is precisely why it is so satisfying.”
Leira’s eyes glimmered in the darkness with understanding.
“You truly mean to crown my son the moment he is born.”
“Yes. Snow will linger only as long as winter’s consort reigns. He will be able to choose his season. He will be able to choose…”
A shiver ran through her.
Again, she felt the brush of elusive shadows. Gentle, yet insistent. A kiss behind her ear, exactly where she liked it. And a surge of courage in her heart.
He would believe in her. Because even with all his cruel flaws—he knew she could do this.
And she would.
She would make this court bow.
“My lady… it is three months until—”
“Yes. You are safe. You are a petal of the old era falling onto new soil, a light from a dead star still echoing. I will not allow these power‑hungry fools to destroy everything.”
Leira’s smile widened.
She had feared that after the disappearance of her lover, protector, and enemy, she would be executed in the most terrible way. She had taken fae lives—not always with her own hands, but always standing where death arrived. She expected no one to defend her. Least of all Nymre, who she had once believed would peel the first patch of skin from her body.
Yet it was Nymre who came to help her. She knew it was to secure Lorian’s offspring… but she was grateful, surprised, and lost all the same.
The absence of Lorian in her mind was terrifying. For a month she couldn’t sleep or form a coherent thought. She was like a fish stranded on the shore, staring at the sea—so close, so unreachable. Her tears would not fall. Her heart was a wound.
She had hated him for so long—and loved him just as fiercely. He not only had been her lover and guardian, her tormentor. He had been her maker.
And that was reason enough to hate him even more—for going somewhere she could not follow.
A puppet abandoned by her sculptor.
An idea without purpose.
But then came the day when tears finally fell, wounds began to knit, and she felt like an empty moss‑lined well, dry but ready to open to the rain.
For him. For herself.
For the life she still wanted to live.
That was what bound them so tightly, wasn’t it?
That excruciating, ferocious will to live.
And then… amid all the ruin, amid all the despair—a single breath of wind carrying the faint scent of violets. A touch on her skin during nights when she choked on fear and loss. A whisper. A glimpse.
And she began to wonder.
Maybe Lorian had not become a god of flesh and blood. Maybe they would never love each other again. Maybe his presence would never stop her heart the way it once had.
But the forest remembered. And it carried him through Ain’asel, from the grove where he had rooted.
And…
… wasn’t that its own kind of immortality?