by May Dawson
“I love you, Tera Donovan,” he says. “I always will.”
“I love you too,” he says.
I squeeze his waist. “You’ll take care of them.”
“Not like you will.”
I squeeze my eyes shut against the sudden flood of tears. It’s true that they’ll be a mess without me. But they’ll go on.
“Tera—” he starts to say, and I know he’s going to try to stop me, even now.
So I leap off Aerowyn, as best as I can, clinging to the shield.
I plummet down toward the rip. From here, I can see where the two realms bleed together, the fracture between them. Then for a second, I see all the realms flickering past in that cut in reality; there’s the bright land of the Fae, and another pocket that looks almost like another Avalon and—
I want to see more. But as I plunge into the Rip, pain and cold washes over my body. It’s excruciating, and I can’t help but scream. The realms all seem to swirl around me, and I catch glimpses of all the different worlds bound by the same fabric of time and space but they move past me too quickly for anything I see to make. I try to scream again, but I can’t even draw a breath.
Then, mercifully, the world goes black.
Chapter 37
Sunshine falls on my face, glowing through my eyelids. I turn my head, and I feel the sharp prickles of dried wintery grass pressing up into my cheek.
I sit up, confused where I am. Is this Heaven?
There are familiar stone ruins around me, and flowering trees that are nothing but twisted brown sticks now. Corum. I’m at Corum. It’s not as cold here; there are spots of ice in the garden, but no snow. The earth is soft and wet beneath me, and I scramble to my feet, trying to get away from it.
I’m naked.
I turn around. This must be the afterlife. But really? I’m back at school?
Is this supposed to be my Hell, or my Heaven? Because Corum University wasn’t exactly a place where I was overwhelmingly happy or sad.
Just being here brings a thousand memories to mind. The first time I kissed each of those boys. The joy I felt when I returned to Avalon. That moment when I stuck up for Stelly, when I threw myself into being a friend even though it was terrifying for me. The feel of Penny’s egg, beating under my fingertips.
Maybe this is my Heaven, but only if the people I love, or some kind of shadow of them, are here too.
Maybe I’ll be their ghost and I’ll be able to watch over them. Even that would be better than nothing.
“Tera?”
It’s a familiar, soft voice.
I whirl, and Stelly stands there. She’s been crying, her face pink and swollen, and her long blond hair is disarrayed.
I must be a ghost.
Then she rushes in and hugs me so hard that I feel a pop as she cracks my back, and I laugh as I hug her back.
“How?” I ask. Wait, if I’m alive, then I wasn’t a sacrifice, then the rips never closed. “What’s going on with the rips?”
“They’re all closed,” she says. “All of them. Every last one.”
“Then how am I here?”
She hesitates. Then, distant voices float in the air toward us. She quickly thrusts a dress toward me. “Here, put this on.”
I quickly yank the dress on over my head. She drops a pair of brown leather flats at my feet, and as I bend to shove my feet into them, my long braid of chestnut brown hair falls over my shoulder.
I freeze. As I straighten, I catch the end of the thick braid, which reaches nearly to my waist. I rub the smooth plaits with my thumb. “Stelly.”
My voice comes out level.
“Let’s get someplace warmer.” She wraps her arm around me, rubbing my shoulder. I hadn’t even realized that my skin was all goosebumps. “We’ll talk about it there.”
“I need some answers.”
“I know.” She glances over her shoulder, though, as if she hopes someone else will come and save her from my questions. “I’m missing some of the details myself. But I’m glad to see you, Tera.”
A few minutes later, we walk down the familiar trail and our house stands in front of us. All the lights seem to be on in the windows, and it looks cozy and familiar as dusk is falling.
I remember Airren walking up these steps in front of me, and trying not to stare at the shape of his shoulders and the way his waist narrowed.
When we walk through the doors and the stairs loom in front of us, Mycroft’s memory is right there with me. He swept me off my feet when I was exhausted and carried me up. I remember Cax teasing me, that handsome smile flashing across his narrow face, as we sat at one of the tables in the room. The little coffee cart tucked in the corner of the room is bustling, and the room smells like old books and fresh-brewed espresso, the way it always does.
Sudden tears sting my eyes, and I don’t know why. I don’t even know what’s going on to know if I should cry or not yet.
“I thought I was dead,” I say out loud, and it definitely seems like I shouldn’t be crying.
“You died to protect Avalon.” Stelly and I climb the stairs together. “No one will forget what you did for us, Tera.”
But she just touched me a few minutes ago.
“I’m not a ghost.”
She stares back at me, looking just as bewildered as I do, and then bursts into laughter. “No, thankfully. You’re not a ghost. You’re a freshman, though, so maybe that’s worse.”
She unlocks our bedroom door, and I follow her in.
“It looks just the way we left it,” I say, staring around at her fluffy, ridiculous bed and my simple blanket and pillow, at the books that fill our bookcases and the rubble of all her clothes on her side. “Did you get more hats? I think there are more hat boxes.”
“I had to do something to entertain myself after my best friend left me,” she shoots back.
Then I catch a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror that hangs on the back of the door, and I stop.
The girl who looks back at me must be me. When I raise my right hand, so does the mirror image. When I press my fingertips to the curve of my cheekbone, so does she.
But she’s different than me. Her face is pretty, but foreign to me. Wide blue eyes gaze back at me. Her lips are pink, and so are her cheeks; her skin is paler than mine and my scattering of freckles over my nose and cheeks have disappeared.
The whole thing is so damn unsettling.
“Who’s body is this, Stelly?” I demand.
Is this necromancy? I didn’t think that was possible, according to the laws of magic, but there are old stories. The other possibilities all seem too terrible. I can’t imagine my men hurting another woman, even to bring me back from the dead.
“It’s no one’s body,” she says. “It’s yours, now.”
I stare at myself some more, but it still doesn’t make sense. Suddenly, remembering the name tattooed on my back, I tear the dress down, turning to see myself in the mirror. I have to twist to see. I see nothing but white shoulders, a long neck, a nipped-in narrow waist. My back is unmarred. There’s no longer a scar in the shape of the name of one of my father’s victims.
She bites her lower lip. “I don’t understand everything—”
The door flies open behind us.
Mycroft reaches me first. He stares at me wildly. “Tera?”
“More or less,” I manage.
He grabs me in a hug. The rest of the guys pile in behind him, wrapping their arms around me. I pass from one of them to another, being hugged and kissed, hearing their murmured words of relief. It’s so good to see them all again. It’s good to be alive.
My gaze fixes on Cax. “What the hell did you do?”
I’m sure it’s him, somehow, and he pulls a face, his expression abashed.
“I didn’t think I could stop you from dying in the rip with the shield,” he says. “There was that prophecy—”
“I thought you were all skeptics,” I say. Yes, I remember that prophecy that I would be betrayed by my
men, that I would die alone. I guess we’re two-for-two. But none of that played out the way I thought. “How did you bring me back?”
“I didn’t exactly bring you back,” he says. “Merlin helped me—well, and Devlin and Rian, with Vasilik magic—and we transferred you into a new body. Your old body…died.”
I imagine my body, my face alive with terror, falling into the rip, and I feel suddenly sick.
“And where did this new body come from?” My voice comes out surprisingly level.
“It’s a recreation,” he says. “We had something of Guinevere’s, and—”
“I’m made out of Guinevere?” I interrupt. “Queen Guinevere? Who died fifteen hundred years ago?”
“You’re like a…clone,” he says.
“I’m like a clone, or I am a clone?” I demand.
“You are,” he says reluctantly. “but you’re Tera on the inside. And we can all see you for who you really are. It’s just like when we had our faces masked when we went into Vasilik—”
He’s wide-eyed, talking fast, trying to convince me that it’s going to be alright.
I close the distance between us, bobbing up onto my toes, and brush my lips against his cheek.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
It will take some getting used to.
I’ll mourn Tera Donovan.
But I’ll have the chance to live in Avalon, to be someone else.
Cax’s lips nuzzle the corner of my mouth, and I turn into him, kissing him fully. His hands sweep gently across my body, tracing the new shape of my unfamiliar curves. He kisses me without hesitation, no matter what face I wear.
There’s a thump, the sound of paws thundering over the floor, and then Cax and I are knocked apart. Penny jumps up into my arms as best she can, and I stagger back, laughing.
“You might need a new face too, girl,” I tell her. “People are going to be suspicious if they see you.”
I glance around my crowded dorm room. I’m surrounded by the men I love, by my best friend.
It doesn’t matter who I look like.
I’m home.
Epilogue
One Month Later
“A word, Miss Degrance.” Radner says when she’s dismissed class.
I go down the steps of the lecture hall, trading a look with Stelly.
“Good luck,” she mouths. “I’ll wait for you outside.”
As the room empties out, Radner stands up, leaning slightly on her wooden leg. “You’ve done a surprisingly acceptable job of catching up after starting so late.”
“I’m not sure what to make of that,” I say. Is she complimenting me or insulting me?
“You wouldn’t,” she says. “I’m assigning you an extra credit project, and then you should pass.”
I cross my arms over my chest warily. “What kind of project?”
“The kind you might want to bring your lovers to discuss. Well, the ones who are convenient, anyway.”
Devlin is home in Vasilik right now, working tirelessly to help his people set up a fledgling democracy. He’ll portal home tonight, though, and so will Rian when he’s finished with his court for the day. He and Alia are working together for now, although in the long term, she’ll probably take the Crown. She was innocent in her father’s seizure of the shield, and Rian may have been born to lead, but he doesn’t really want to rule.
They both live in splendid castles, but at night, they walk through their portals and come back to the little house Airren bought on the outskirts of Corum for the six of us.
I don’t know how we’re going to make this work forever, but we’ve made it work so far. We’ll figure something out. We always do.
“Alright,” I say. Maybe it’s a mission that’s worth taking, something that will keep Avalon safer. “We’ll hear you out. No promises.”
She rolls her eyes. “You seem very confused about your place in the world, Miss Degrance.”
“Oh no.” I flash her a smile. “I know exactly where I belong.”
When I walk out into the brisk winter air, Stelly is waiting. She dances from foot to foot, doing her best to fend off the cold. Her gold-trimmed white coat was made for glamor, not for warmth.
I tuck my arm through hers, and we walk together down the long twisting path past the library and down to town. When we walk into the little house, it smells like fresh bread and burnt sugar. I stop and breathe in deeply.
Aerowyn and Penny both sleep in front of the fireplace where a fire crackles. They take up so much space that Stelly and I have to edge around the room to avoid waking them.
Airren and Mycroft graduate in the spring, so Airren decided to buy our first house early. We all still live at the university, technically, but we spend most of our time here.
Where we can live as a family.
In the kitchen, Mycroft is reading, his chin propped on his fist as his eyes flicker rapidly back and forth across the page. Airren, on the other hand, is cooking at the stove. He tosses the pan full of vegetables and catches them with an easy practiced motion.
“Pour yourself a glass of wine,” he says. “I hear Radner wants to talk to us.”
“I can’t wait,” I say.
He turns and winks at me. He’s embraced domestic life lately, but in the end, he’s still a Marine and a spy. He’s still one of the most deliciously dangerous men I’ve ever met.
I head for the wine, but when I pass Mycroft, he catches me around the waist and reels me into his lap.
“I told the kings to get their asses here by seven for dinner,” Airren mutters. “Where are they?”
“No respect.” Rian stands in the doorway behind us.
A second later, Devlin appears. When the two of them move together, they make me think of twins, even though they share no blood. Devlin’s crown is tilted, and I kiss Rian hello, then move to fix Devlin’s crown.
“I forgot,” he says, abashed, throwing it onto the kitchen island like it’s nothing. Then he gathers me into his arms, kissing me hard.
We share dinner, and a few more drinks with Stelly, and then she portals back to our shared room.
Then it’s just us, still sitting around the kitchen table, chatting and laughing. Between the six of us, and all our very different adventures, there’s always a lot to catch up on. And I love it.
“Dessert?” Rian asks, his brows arching.
“We had crème brulee,” Airren protests, but he’s just being obstinate.
Mycroft’s already sweeping me out of my chair as I pretend to protest. He throws me over his shoulder, carrying me easily toward the stairs.
“Wait!” I protest. “We’re supposed to go see Radner.”
“Let her wait,” Airren says. “We don’t work for her anymore. We can go in the morning.”
But we still fight for the Crown. On a volunteer basis.
Thanks to Rian and Devlin, we’re all richer than sin now. Not that anyone would guess from the modest house, just big enough for the six of us—and the dragon and the unicorn. It’s all we need.
It’s all I ever wanted.
Mycroft deposits me on our bed. It stretches across our entire room. It’s big enough for five tall, athletic, beautiful men, and one incredibly lucky woman.
The weddings will come later, and so will the babies. For now, I’m still young, and so are they. But we’re a family anyway.
Mycroft leans over me, kissing my throat, and I catch his shoulders and tug him up so we can trade kisses. He straddles me, and his hands catch my wrists, drawing them over my head. I smile against his lips. Once I couldn’t bear to have anyone trap me. But now I love being trapped by them.
Devlin replaces him, kissing my lips as Mycroft shifts lower, straddling my thighs. The two of them undress me, and I lay there lazily, watching their muscles ripple with their movements.
Airren lays by my side, running his fingers through my hair, and I turn my head to the side so I can kiss him. Then Mycroft sinks low over my thighs, pressing a kiss to my core, and I
sigh with pleasure at what I know is to come.
I lose myself in the five of them as Cax and Rian join us. Every part of my body is caressed and kissed, the five of them working as smoothly together as they do in a fight.
Heat stokes between my thighs, but Mycroft backs off when my knees tighten against his head, on the verge of orgasm. Flushed with warmth and need, I push them gently away from me so I sit up on the bed.
“Rian,” I murmur, pushing him onto the bed beside me.
His eyes spark with mischief and affection as he gazes up at me. I throw my leg over his lean abs, and he takes my hips in his hands, helping me balance. His cock teases over my clit, and I bite my lip, biting back a moan.
They make me so wild for them. Together, we can do things I never knew I could. We can save the realm. We can make sex work for six.
We’re still figuring that out too, but it’s fun working on our happily-ever-after in every way.
I ride Rian, gliding up and down his cock until my thighs press against his lean abs. Then I feel Airren press behind me. His cock teases down the curve of my ass, and I moan at the feel of his tip against my inner curve.
Rian runs his hands up the bare skin at my sides before drawing me down toward him. He covers my mouth with his, kissing me sweetly. Airren bends over the curve of my spine, sweeping my hair back, kissing my shoulders and the back of my neck. All the while, his tip teases between my thighs.
I toss my head back and moan, desperate for them now. Airren slowly presses in alongside Rian, the two of them filling me up completely. I let out a soft moan.
Mycroft leans over, capturing my mouth with his, as he caresses my breast. Every time his thumb strokes over my nipple, my hips rise in desire. When he rises to his knees, I reach out and catch his cock in my hand, feeling the thick, warm weight of him, stroking him as his eyes flutter closed.
Cax kisses me, and I grin up at him.
“Cax Roman.”
“Mm?” he asks, his expression teasing. None of them have quite gotten used to calling me by my new name. But I have to leave Tera Donovan behind sooner or later, too.
