Chapter 47: Epilogue

~Eight Years Later~

I can hear their laughter even before we’re through the archway to the gardens. Our private gardens. The summer sun is shining, and all around us is the smell of flowers. It’s like a picture straight from paradise itself.

Amera is walking with me. She has come every year, just as she said she would, with Brandar, to spend the summer at Helos’s court.

“They’re causing havoc,” she says, looking over to where Helos is teaching our youngest son to shoot an arrow, exactly the same way I spied him teaching Zan so many years ago.

He has gray streaks in his beard now, and if anything, I think it makes him more handsome.

He looks up at me, his beautiful eyes glowing, and I feel my heart somersault.

Even after all these years, this man, this king, still makes me swoon.

We’ve had three sons. Three beautiful, strong boys, all just as mischievous and headstrong as Zandar.

We’ve had peace too. Seven years of peace now.

A minor king decided to try his luck for me barely a year after Issar’s downfall, and Helos once again was forced to raise his army to defeat him.

It took less than an hour for the battle to be over and the man to lie dead on the field.

When Helos returned to me afterward, we decided we’d waited long enough, and that’s when I conceived our first boy.

Enst.

He was barely starting to walk when I conceived our second. Taig.

Enst is now seven. Taig is five, and little Ulrich is three. Zandar is a strapping boy of fourteen now. He’s almost as tall as his father, and it’s hard to believe he is still a child and not a man already.

He acts and looks far beyond his age, and in truth, I love him as much as if he were my own flesh and blood, as if I bore him myself.

“They always cause havoc,” I reply.

Amera laughs.

She’s pregnant with her third child. She bore Brandar a girl the summer after they were married and a boy the next. I think she really loves him now. She certainly seems to, and he is obviously besotted with her.

She goes to join Brandar, and I smile, watching her. Watching them, our family too.

“You look pensive, my love,” Helos says, sneaking up behind me as if he can, as if I cannot sense his aura from miles away.

I laugh as he wraps his arms around my waist and kisses my cheek.

“Not pensive. Content,” I correct him.

“Is that so?” he murmurs.

I turn in his arms and kiss him. “You have made me content, Helos. Our boys too. All four of them. I think I might be the luckiest person alive.”

He shakes his head. “No, Kera, I am the luckiest person alive, to have caught you, to have won your love.”

I roll my eyes. “Perhaps we are both the luckiest then?”

He laughs before kissing me again, and I can’t help the moan of delight that escapes me as his lips press against mine and his tongue delves into my mouth.

“Can you two stop that?” Zandar says, looking between us. “We are right here, you know?”

He’s just on the cusp of manhood, and the questions he asks sometimes make me blush so red Helos teases me for days.

“When you’re older and in love, you will be just the same, Zan,” Helos replies.

Zan shakes his head, snorting. “Not a chance,” he mutters.

“Go find your brothers, Zan,” I say. “I haven’t seen or heard anything from them in at least five minutes, and we all know what that means…”

That they’re up to no good. That they’re no doubt destroying something and the head gardener will be annoyed again.

“Urgh,” Zan moans, stalking away from us as Helos and I laugh.

“And where are you sneaking off to, little one?” Helos asks, picking Ulrich up and swinging him around until he squeals with delight as his little legs kick out.

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” he cries as we laugh, and when he sets him down, he sprints off after Zan like a little rocket.

“What a perfect family we make,” Helos says, looking at me.

“How perfect?” I ask.

“As perfect as anyone could wish for,” he replies, taking my face in his hands.

“What if there was one more…,” I say, watching his face as his eyes widen.

“Are you?”

I nod.

“Kera,” he growls, picking me up, swinging me around, almost the same way he just swung our son. “When did you find out?”

“The doctor confirmed it, but I’ve known for a couple of days,” I reply. “Only we will have to take more care this time.”

“Why? Are you sick? Is the baby sick?” he asks, putting me down carefully, as if I might suddenly break.

I shake my head. “No,” I reply, hesitating for a moment. “But, this time, it’s a girl.”

He meets my eyes, understanding instantly my meaning.

A girl.

A ~siren~.

Our boys have royal blood, king’s blood, and siren blood too.

When they grow up, when they become adults, though they will not have the pure traits of a siren, they will be heartbreakers; I have no doubt.

They’ll have the ability to charm, to beguile, just not quite to the same extent that I can. They will not be able to breathe underwater, nor will they sing, but they will be able to seduce any woman, if they chose to.

Helos and I will have to take care to teach them manners, and morals too, lest they turn into the very monsters we have been fighting against.

But a daughter.

She will be like me, ~more~ than me in truth, because she has Helos’s blood as well. She will hold more power, more sway. She will be in more danger than me, and yet she will be more protected, stronger too.

Helos and I have spent seven years building a new world, working with the Council, working to create a safer place, and I hope when my daughter grows, it will be enough for her.

“She will be safe, Kera. We have made this world safe for her. Safe for you too,” he murmurs.

I nod. “I know.”

“A daughter,” he says. “A beautiful daughter.” He looks at me. “You have made me the happiest man alive, Kera.”

“And you have made me the happiest siren,” I reply, kissing him.

My love. My king. My Helos.

~The End~