104 | ACT VII, SCENE XV

P R E V I O U S L Y

"This," I whispered, slowly slicing through his neck with his own weapon, "this is for me."

[ONE THOUSAND YEARS LATER.]

HARTINGTON CASTLE, ALNWICK, STORMHOLT.

EDWINA

SOME PEOPLE WERE JUST BORN to fight.

Just born to be a living, breathing weapon made of bone and flesh instead of flame and steel. Just born to be tested, over and over, again and again, to be broken and splintered and crushed until there was nothing left.

Because this was what the universe did. This was how it made survivors.

The blood was everywhere.

On my crooked fingers, on the stained knives, on the marble floors.

"Do it," she crooned. "Kill him. End this."

If I had even a shred - a shred - of decency left in me, I would have put down that dagger and let her destroy me before I touched him. Something in me fractured as my trembling hands picked up the blade, a prayer whispering on my tongue.

She nudged me with her foot to move closer to him, to him awaiting his death.

"Go on," she purred.

I turned the figure around, and whatever remained of my heart charred away to ashes.

I knew that face.

I knew the despair and misery that thrived in those blue green eyes.

I knew the way that red hair curled in the damp, the way those full lips curled with a twitch.

My hands finally stopped shaking as I studied that hated, hated face.

My face.

Then I gripped the knife and plunged it right into my wicked heart.

The face began to bleed and melt into flesh as white hot agony struck me in the lungs. The face changed, and it was Pandora leering again at me, eyes shining as the string of cold gemstones around her throat strangled her. She turned to Drusilla, furious and frigid as the frozen crown atop her head. Tears of crimson rolled down her cheeks into a sea of red, vultures circling her head as her bloodshot, rotting eyes twisted in anger. The face changed to Alaric, wickedly smiling as he jabbed knife after knife into my heart. Then he turned to Celestina, then Deimos, then Aidon, to Emerick, to all their cold faces laughing at me, mocking me, taunting me as I screamed and screamed and screamed.

"Edwina!"

The screaming - the screaming wouldn't stop.

"Edwina!"

I finally woke up in a cold sweat, perspiration beading on my brow, my body refusing to stop shaking. His arms were around me, but I barely felt anything - barely felt my own body as the dam of memories burst, sneaking out of my eyes and rolling down my cheeks. I clutched at him, desperate to have anyone to hold on to as sobs heaved out of me.

My father's death anniversary. The nightmares were always the worst, always on this day of the year.

"It was a dream," he murmured softly, rubbing my back as I shuddered, goosebumps erupting everywhere on my skin. The horrible taste in my mouth - I could feel the metallic taste of blood on my tongue as he gently wrapped a blanket around my shaking body and helped me chug down a glass of water.

I couldn't speak. Couldn't cry. Couldn't make a sound, not for the life of me.

I didn't have to. Because he knew.

"The same one?" he whispered.

I nodded numbly.

"Come here," he said hoarsely, opening up his arms, an inviting escape from the treacherous cold creeping over my skin. "Come to me."

He quietly hugged me, his steady presence like an anchor. I curled up into his chest as he sighed deeply and stroked my hair, pressing a kiss on my tear stained cheek. Comfortable relief enveloped me like a blanket as he held me, knowing that there was no place in the world safer than the security of his arms.

We spent the night like that, buried under the blankets as he wrapped his arms around me and I curled my legs around him, an occasional whimper escaping me every now and then as he'd quietly wipe away my tears and whisper sweet nothings to me.

I didn't know what I'd do without him.

I'd once been pregnant during this time of the year. The dreams had been so violent, so twisted back then - it had taken me so long to finally get my head around them, to get used to them. Even now they drove me to tears, but there was some strange comfort in knowing that it would be just the same one. That night had been one of the worse ones, though. Sleep had not come easily, not after I threw up everything I'd eaten after screaming and banging on the wall for half an hour before bursting into tears.

He had quietly held me and helped me into a tub of water. I'd nearly fallen asleep when he came back and lifted me up, then settled me on the fresh sheets before snuggling under the covers beside my sleeping form.

Because those nights were rare - both of us sleeping peacefully. Other days it would not be so easy, not with all those nightmares shared between us both. We were quite familiar with each other's screams.

But we had made it.

We had made it through all of it.

After lying buried in a box of marble for hundred years, it had taken me quite a bit of time to sort out my feelings. One minute, I had been standing in front of my family and killing myself, and the next, I woke up in darkness to find myself locked in silk and velvet. The night I had returned was nothing but a dim, blurred spot in my memory.

But the life I had before it. And the one before that... lords, the lives.

I'd been human. Once again. For twenty two years.

My name had been Aspen Hill.

I'd had a mother. A father. I'd had friends.

And I had died after I got in an accident.

I had three different lives. Three different deaths. Each one more gruesome than the last.

When you've lived so many lives and died so many deaths, reality gets blurred. Everything looks the same, no matter how hard you try to spot a difference. It had taken me weeks to orient myself into reality - that I was well and truly back - that this was not a dream, not a vision, not a figment of my imagination.

That I was back home even after the nightmare that was the war. That I was alive, and that I was with the man I loved so much that I thought my heart would burst. That the blood and the gore and the horrors of those years were behind us, and that we were free of it. Forever. That Thanatos was gone, that he was never coming back.

I was never going to go back for Ambrosine.

Not after I'd made my peace with the past. I didn't care where she was, what she did. But I was never, ever going back to look for her ever again.

The therapy had lasted for years. I'd been so scared, so reluctant to go at first. It had taken them nearly two years to finally convince me to see one. The prospect of even talking about it, of unlocking that gate to let the memories flood through - it had not been easy.

The first session ended with me in tears. A complete disaster.

Because seeing it happen in my mind, feeling it play out behind my eyes - it was too real, too devastatingly dangerous, too close to driving me to the edge of hurting myself. It was enough to have nightmares, but speaking about it was another step too far. To acknowledge it, to voluntarily speak about it... it had been unthinkable.

But those years had been so hard. I couldn't sleep for more than a few winks at night. I couldn't see the darkness creep back into Tristan's eyes every time I woke up screaming. He'd always been nothing but patient, the quiet, caring gentleman, holding me close with warm love and soft kisses.

It had been late at night once, when he thought I was sleeping - I heard a few sniffles and a quiet sob from beside me. The bed shook too. He'd been crying.

Mourning the loss of what I'd once been.

Which was when I decided I had to get better.

It had been another two, three years before I finally braved another visit.

He was a meticulous one, Dr. Lewis. Hailed the best in his field, he only observed me over his rimmed glasses, hair streaked with pepper grey. He wasn't among the ones who'd flinch every time we stumbled upon some gruesome detail, instead he'd cross his fingers, take a sip of his coffee, and ask me to go on.

There was no pity. No judgement.

He didn't see me as a wounded animal, but a soldier still standing at the end of the war. That quietness, the sheer camaraderie between us - how he never judged me for the way I reacted at certain things, how he'd call me out on bullshit sometimes - that was the only thing that made me go back. Tristan knew almost everything about what happened in that prison cell - or most of it anyways. But he never judged me either. Never resented me for the tiny shiver that seldom ran through me still at the sight of needles, or the tiny flinch someone else might miss if a certain knife was too sharp.

He saw my flaws, he saw them all, and he never stopped loving me anyway.

It had taken years, though.

To even start getting better.

But as much as I hated to admit it, the visits helped. The medicines too. I still remembered the first day I'd returned to the weapons room, picked up a fine spear and thrown one to Tristan, challenging him to a combat. I thought my hands would have forgotten how to move, but they hadn't. He'd been careful, cautious even - but I wanted to show him.

That I might have fear still residing in my heart, but I was ready to start living again.

He'd worked with me day after day as I reacquainted myself with steel and leather, pushing through my fear instead of letting it chew me alive. I wanted to live, I had survived, for heaven's sake. I had my life back. My crown back. My husband back. And I would never let anyone take advantage of my past and let it pull me down again.

I turned my head to look at him, finding him fast asleep, his hair curling slightly, the tension at the back of his neck loosened. His arm was draped over me in a comfortable embrace, safe and loved. I listened to the sound of his breathing in the darkness, feeling my heart beats slow down into a humming lullaby. I knew what he'd gone through all those years. All the pain he'd locked up in his chest and suffered alone. I knew of all those nights he'd gone without a wink of sleep, no longer familiar with rest. I just wanted him to know that he'd never have to be alone or miserable or lonely again, that I would be there with him till the end of eternity.

We'd taken the Blood Oath again, within a few days of my return. The lack of that familiar red scar on my wrist had become a sign of panic, a sign of disorder. Eros had a quiet ceremony by the beach with just Aidon and Elodie as the only witnesses. The waves had been lapping at our feet as he'd bound our wrists together, and then untied the knot - before Tristan quietly lifted me off my knees and dropped me into the water with a smirk. I'd let out a playful shriek and run after him, our screams of joy crashing against the sound of the waves, where I grabbed hold of him by the collar and kissed him right on his full lips.

The Titan blood had been in his veins, and after the ceremony, it flowed in mine too.

I was never going to die.

The scar sat now back in place, and it surprised me how a mark of such violence could only signify such love. It was strange. But the world was strange in its ways, I supposed.

My father had raised me to be a woman who'd never have to rely on a man's sword. But he never warned me how empty the spaces in my heart would be. He told me that I was strong enough to handle it on my own. I used to think that too, when I'd first become Queen Regnant.

But the moment that crown touched my head, it had changed my life. I was no longer the naïve woman who had attended that coronation with nothing but pride in her eyes.

I was older, and wiser, and stronger.

And those very same eyes were now filled with trauma, and scars, and horrors that I had never imagined. But I never lost that pride. That spark. It was part of who I was, and it would never die out. Because I was Edwina Tremayne, and my body was built to be a breathing weapon.

The horrors in my life had taught me that some empty spaces could only be filled by another person. You simply can't survive without love. No matter how much I loved myself, I couldn't  wipe my own tears like Tristan did. I couldn't drink myself under the table without Llewellyn, Aidon and Eric to compete with me. I couldn't talk to myself when it was late at night and the only person who answered my stupid questions with even stupider answers was a drunk Miriel.

A life empty of love, it drives you mad.

The morning had slowly broken in, a rosy glow bathing the room in tones of pure gold. The waters of the Ocemond Sea sparkled out of the window, and the birds chirped in the hills afar. Nothing had changed, yet everything was so different.

He turned to me, eyes wide open, and very, very blue.

"How long have you been watching me sleep, woman?"

A soft smile raised my lips as I traced idly at the back of his palm, fingers lacing at last.

"It's been a while."

His eyes flicked over my face at once, making sure there weren't any dried tear tracks around. Once satisfied, he pulled me closer to his chest, nose buried in my hair before pressing a kiss on my head. My lips met his neck, feeling a low groan rip from his throat as he pulled my leg over his hip, his hands travelled over my nakedness under the fluffy duvet. A finger flicked me down there, feeling the heat travel to my core as a small moan escaped me.

"I daresay this has been here a while too," he grinned.

A chuckle broke from me as I caved in deeper to his touch, sensation travelling in tingles down my spine. He crushed me to his chest with devastating gentleness, pressing his lips to mine in urgency. I groaned at the softness of his skin, like silk over marble.

"It's a Sunday morning - oh!" My back arched off the back as his lips met the side of my neck, pressing soft kisses along the slope of my jaw.

"No work," he grinned. "And no annoying children to disturb us."

I flicked his nose playfully, and he threw back his head with a laugh. My heart melted like golden butter. His smile was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

"And plenty of time later to pursue... activities," I muttered under my breath. "Go back to bed, Valmont."

I'd already woken him up once in the middle of the night. It happened too often. And I felt bad for tiring him out, even when he said he was fine.

"While you get drunk on margaritas at seven in the morning? Yeah, sure," he rolled his eyes, propping himself up on an arm, eyes clearer than the morning sky, so deep that I found myself drowning in them. "Remember that time you had so many and thought you were a cow?"

"Tris-"

"You mooed at me and asked my mother why I wasn't mooing back," he muttered. I stuck my tongue out at him, narrowing my eyes.

"I was just drunk. When have I done anything rash?"

"I keep a list, lady. It's alphabetized," he crooked an eyebrow, a smirk on his lips. Try to change my mind, his eyes dared me.

I flung a pillow at him.

He rolled his eyes again as I put on my dressing gown, tying the ends of the belt together. He pulled me to him by the waist, pressing a kiss to my cheek, a goofy smile on his face.

"Don't be greedy," I smirked, before pulling away at last. He shot me a sour look before puffing his chest out and patting the pillows before ducking back under the covers. I sighed and pulled the blankets down, pressing a soft kiss to his head.

"Goodnight," Tristan muttered from inside the blanket, "Wake me up if they're making canapes at lunch. And don't finish the remaining brownies before I get there."

"No guarantees, you know."

"Brownie stealer!" his whine drifted across the room as I combed out a few tangles from my hair, a smile on my face.

"You stole three of my cupcakes last week! We're even!" I called out to him with a grin, slipping outside of the room.

We'd modernized the realm after I'd come back and deemed it unfit to live in any longer. The rebuilding had been slow and sluggish, and half the kingdom still lay in ruins after the catastrophic disasters of the war. Progress was slow, but at least it was progress. Deimos had resisted long and hard, snappy and angry even now - but he had finally relented too. Not a trace of that anger remained when he discovered a gorgeous vintage Rolls Royce in old shop. One that I had wanted, before the Everly bastard snuck off with it.

Now I found him smugly roaming around in the streets while flaunting his car at us.

Emerick had marriage after marriage following Justaline's death, before he accidently kissed Geneva while they both were in the middle of one of their arguments. It had always been awkward between them, and now it was even more so - she tossed off any attempts of him flirting with her and went back to hide on her islands whenever she caught sight of him.  And yet, the two of them... had a thing. A weird thing, but definitely a thing.

Halette and Vincent had finally given birth to a baby boy a few decades after the war, gathering to the courage to finally do it. We'd still see each other almost every few days, the first thing I had to teach her was how to use currency when Eric revealed her pickpocketing talents to me. She'd been hard at work distracting everyone from their grief by pleading them to go shopping, and even I had to admit - she was an excellent thief. In fact, they both settled down in a mansion near the sea, a few miles from our home. Vincent buried himself in piles of books inside his library while Halette opened up a studio for herself, filling up the blank walls with artwork and charcoal sketches. I want to be free, Edwina, she whispered, her eyes a soft green as they lingered over her son walking along the beach... I don't want to be afraid anymore. If you can overcome your fears, so can I. I'm going to embrace being a mother.

And she did. Dimitri was a golden haired, bright eyed youth bursting with life and energy, grass growing under his feet as trees listened to his voice. After my father died, his powers passed on... to Halette's son. My cousin. And Elodie's very special friend who made her cheeks turn pink whenever she saw him.

Sarette closed down her vile laboratories for a few years when she decided to become an organic chemistry professor at Harvard for a while. The problem was that she was around for so long that people began to wonder why she wasn't ageing - so she raged and came back to Endollon for a few years, stuffing herself with mimosas and Belgian chocolates, before leaving again, alternating with her visits to the mortal world every few centuries.

Fayette started a chain of cosmetic retail shops, vain and precocious as she was. She had never been good at anything, so it had come as a surprise to all of us when her retail expanded into a booming empire. Drusilla, they said, left many years ago and apparently lived on top of an icy mountain, surrounded by a ring of spells. We were only too happy to leave her alone. The last time I had seen Drusilla had been more than a thousand years ago, and the only thing I knew of her was that she was alive - and always suffering as her curse played itself out, day after day, year after year.

Helios and Nyx were hardly seen for a few years because they kept on sneaking off to the Louvre Museum to meet their parents. Cosmo and Titania's human forms had died some time after, but Atherton had been optimistic they'd reincarnate again, and so they did. Every time the two of them died, they'd pop up in the course of a few years - sometimes choosing to become a movie star, sometimes a doctor, sometimes an entrepreneur. It had become a game for the immortal siblings to hunt down and find them every time they were reborn, but they stopped after one lifetime where Titania became a scandalous actress who did a lot of... adult shows. It had taken Cymbeline Herculean efforts to drag her siblings away from the screen.

Miriel found herself a Keep in Normount, spurning suitors left and right while she only worked and studied. She disappeared for a few years to study law at Yale, and came back with eyes shining bright with knowledge. She was still the Head of the Elder Council, and while nothing really happened like what had at the Trial all those years ago, she was an important part of Endollon, presiding over matters of legislature in the absence of the Triarchy while simultaneously hunting down criminals.

Eric had become quieter. Wiser. He'd had a rollercoaster of a life hunting me down, and he insisted he was done with drama. I understood that. And I forgave him. I knew he was sorry for what they'd done in the past. Amphitrite had nearly gotten me killed. The past couldn't be changed, but she did. I found it in my heart to let go of the past, to see past it, to forgive both, him and Amphitrite. I wouldn't be alive had it not been for them. I owed them my life, and my life was far more precious than holding back a bit of burrowed hate.

Amphi just wanted a life of peace with her children, running about as she organized weddings and dinners. She'd insisted on dragging me for dress fittings whenever I was pregnant so that I wouldn't run out of new clothes to wear. I had a sister once again. And it filled my heart with such joy that I let go of that bitterness still wedged in a corner of it. I had a family now, a real family, and that was all I ever wanted.

Tristan had been awestruck the first time I'd shown him how to use a smartphone. His eyes had gone wide and lit up when he finally learned how to use the damned thing after endless nights of pestering me to show him how this button worked and why do I look so funny when I turn the front camera on. His mind was so sharp, so inquisitive, so thirsty for learning - I couldn't help but laugh if I'd be sitting in a meeting while he bombarded me with meme after meme, alternating with photos of a little puppy he found walking in the street or a new type of dish he saw somewhere. He was just too tech savvy - if there was a new phone or a smart watch in the market, he'd know about it. I loved to surprise him on his birthday I managed to get hold of an unreleased version of the newest smartphone. It was worth it. It was worth seeing that smile on his face.

Our mornings were so quiet and peaceful, just the two of us alone while the children were sleeping. We'd be having breakfast, drinking coffee, and he'd sit in front of me, sleeves rolled up, blazer hanging from a side of the chair as he worked on something on his laptop. I loved to kiss him in the quiet comfort of those mornings, to inhale that fresh scent of cologne and aftershave, to see his blue eyes look at me with such depth, such love, that it made me melt. I got him a brand new MacBook on his birthday once, and he flaunted it to everyone for days before they all decided they wanted one too. The next day he was using a MacBook Pro and smirking every time he saw Eric roll his eyes from behind the screen.

There had been a time when everyone had been bit by the Clash of Clans fever, with arguments breaking in the middle of dinner over someone smashing someone else's clan followed by aggressive shouting. Elodie liked to annoy her brother by cursing fluently in Latin. She taught Aidon to some new vocabulary too, and I found them both hurling non stop insults the morning after Llewellyn and Dustin had ruined their ammunition. The next day, Tristan destroyed all three of their clans with a dark smirk. They'd looked at him with open jaws before he had raised an eyebrow and shrugged his shoulders with a "they're in-app purchases. I'm rich."

He had broken down and rebuilt Hartington Castle from scratch, and we'd both worked on it together and transformed it into a towering monolith with uncountable glass windows and state of the art technology in every room. We needed something to do with ourselves, to make us busy and give the wounds of the war time to heal. There were so many times we would fall asleep watching some movie in the huge amphitheater, usually on a night when we were done with our work and had a busy day.

Tristan would make me promise not to watch a single episode of Game of Thrones without him. I would pretend to be annoyed and irritated even as he caught up on the episodes I had already seen, though I'd secretly smile on the inside when snuggling beside him and getting to pull off my dress whenever a sex scene came on. "You're getting the better view anyways," I'd grin as he'd laugh, hungrily pulling me down to him. I'd moan when his lips would kiss down the side of my neck, our passion ignited into hot flames.

We always had an unspoken competition finding each other extravagant gifts on birthdays and anniversaries, blowing up expenses out of proportion to see who could find the better present. It started off as little thing, when I had hand painted him a set of new ties and he had forged a ring of platinum and set it with diamonds. Once he booked the whole mall for the entire night so that he could take me shopping, and I'd bought him a whole new property on real estate to build a castle. One time he spent fifty years building a five hundred story castle, all in secret, and then smugly handed me the key on my thousandth birthday with a knowing smile. I had gone giddy with joy and clapped in delight when I saw that the topmost story disappeared into the clouds and above them. Another time I brought him an island and he got me a private jet, and we laughed it off together and flown to the island on the jet. We had both taken classes and acquired a license a few years back, and the flying was more bickering about who gets to fly the jet and less actually flying the jet.

These were but material gifts, thing we could buy seeing how filthy rich we both were. But at the end of the day, all I needed was his arms around me, his blue eyes bright as our lips would meet, and he'd say "I love you."

And that was all I had ever needed.

In the end, I needed so little to be happy.

Just the sunlight on the water, and his hand in mine.

And our family, safe and peaceful.

That was all I ever wanted.

My family.

My tiny little world, mine alone.

And whenever I felt down - I remembered them. The very reason I lived.

My little piece of happiness.

I still remembered the day I'd been overloaded with work and had been three days past my date. And then he had come home at night, slipped an arm around my waist as I had looped my arms around him with a knowing smile - and shown him the test.

His cry of joy startled me for a minute as he swept me off my feet and whirled me around, placing an urgent kiss to my lips over my delighted chuckles.

He had gone running and shouted it from the rooftops, and he couldn't wait to announce it to everyone once we'd gotten it confirmed from Rosalva. The fact that I was going to be a mother - after all those years of yearning for it - I couldn't begin to explain how happy that made me.

We'd stay up at night, looking for names together, working through a huge pile of books. He tried to find excuses to pamper me every day, from rubbing my feet when they were swollen, to 'your lips look cold, can I warm them for you?' Underneath all the happiness though - we were worried. Because of the scar on my hip all those centuries ago. Rosalva was so, so careful and meticulous, but the morning sickness had been horrible. There were too many cramps and pains, and most of the time, I couldn't sleep a wink. I nearly miscarried once after a nightmare that had me sobbing for three days. Those days were the worst, with the needles and the poking and prodding, but he held my hand through it all. And he never let go.

I'd been in the middle of supervising a trial when the time came, my waters breaking minutes before I delivered the verdict. Helios and Llewellyn were sitting right beside me, shouting for the healers as they held my hand. The ladies of the house were by my side in minutes, but I refused a wheelchair, instead gritting my teeth through the pain as I let them lead me to my chambers.

The pain - the pain had been agonizing.

I screamed my lungs out. Amphi stayed by my side, offering me ice chips with soft smiles. Tristan sat beside me too, cursing the neighbors, their cats, their dogs, their cows -

All that stopped mid sentence when Rosalva handed us a tiny baby boy wrapped in a blanket of soft cotton.

I could barely control my sobs when she placed the crying infant in my arms, and there were tears in Tristan's eyes too when he kissed our son on the head. "Thank you so much," he had whispered lovingly, kissing my brow. The child - he had looked like the splitting image of his father... with jet black hair and a sharp nose, but with my full lips. And then he'd opened his eyes-

-the same shade as mine. Deep, beautiful sea green.

I had been inconsolable at that point, bawling my eyes out loudly even as Elodie stroked my arm gently. I cried out for my child as I felt that precious life, that precious warmth go from my arms, but then our son was sucking on his thumb and looking curiously at his father with such wonder, such adoration that the beauty of it shattered my heart.

"Twins, Edwina," Rosalva had muttered with a smile. "You're having twins."

It had taken a few minutes for the words to sink in, and then they started encouraged me to push again. It was harder, and more painful, but I fought - for that fragile life, those tiny little eyes that were filled with trust and love. To feel it.

A girl.

So small - so precious - she was wailing so loudly that I had to feed her to let her quiet down a bit. "Now I know who she gets the loud voice from," Eric had commented, giving me a smirk as I held my little daughter in my arms for the first time. Her grip had been surprisingly strong, and she held to me with a steady, firm stubbornness, suckling quietly as I gasped at the foreign sensation. Her curls were a deep, brownish red - and Tristan had broken into more tears when he finally got to hold his tiny daughter. "She's so beautiful," he whispered.

She had her father's eyes.

Then she let out a string of coos when she saw the both of us looking at her with so much love - her father utterly enchanted with the tiny, red infant - and I knew she was going to have him wrapped around that little finger of hers. Her brother was quieter and calmer, but persistent all the same, clinging to me and basking in my attention, a hint of a tiny smile on his little face whenever I kissed his soft cheeks.

"It seems that they both have inherited... quite some strong powers ," Rosalva had beamed at us, with dimples falling in her cheeks. "Your son is the lord of sun," she declared. "Shining brightly with wondrous light and giving life to all things that grow on this land."

Apollo. He had his powers.

"And your daughter," she continued, "seems to have inherited Cosmo's power himself. The goddess of time."

And we had been beside ourselves.

We named him Emmett. Powerful and strong and universal. And our daughter, she became Asteria II.

Our first children.

We had four other children as well. A red haired, clever son called Caspian, who inherited the legacy of Alaric Everly and his powers as a deity of warfare and weaponry. He was always busy tinkering with something or the other, breaking things apart and then trying to fix them together.

Our second daughter, Eden, was a beauty with rebellious curls of wild black hair and a savage sense of humor which made her dark green eyes light up whenever she cracked a joke. She could snap her fingers and have the blazing summer replaced by frigid winter in an instant. It came as a surprise to us when Rosalva explained that she controlled the seasons... inheriting Titania's powers, even all those years after her death.

Avery was our youngest son, the lord of justice, a youth with a stock of messy hair and solemn, grey eyes. He took life a bit too seriously, we always found him with a book in hand. He had no friends except for a lone puppy and a tabby cat that loved to follow him around. His two elder brothers often tried to get him to loosen up, have a sparring match or two - he was too polite to complain, but we soon realized that he preferred his books to the sword. So we didn't force him. Avery spoke in philosophical answers, and his face was always too sad - as he'd been remembering a past, troubled life. Helios assured us that it would pass soon, but it still concerned me. He appeared to have a natural, uncanny knack for justice - settling quarrels and solving problems as if they were no more than games. He was interested in joining the Elder Council now that Justaline was gone and her powers had passed on to him.

It was our daughter, Elisabel, who was the youngest - barely more than a toddler of two, with an innocent face and Celinette's shimmering silver eyes. She was always bursting into giggles whenever we picked her up, her chubby arms waving in the air as she would try to catch hold of my fingers.

"Don't let her looks fool you," Rosalva had warned. "This one is going to be lethal. Such ones are rare, but here she is. I can see her reading into the future and cracking minds like a walnut shell."

The courtyard was already ringing with the sounds of live steel, swords clashing and men shouting, punctuated by a string of insults from a very angry sounding young woman.

"Ree!" I called out from the balcony, "up early, are we?"

The red haired woman looked up, breaking into a smile before rolling her beautiful eyes.

"Em took my new spear, mom!"

I sighed, finding her brother twisting a sparkling new spear in his fingers, light bouncing off it in golden colored beams as they caught the sunlight. He had grown into a charming young man, with waves of jet black hair and steady, powerful eyes that could bring even a mighty lion to heel. He had a dark and bitter sense of humor, but we loved him all the same. For he was the sun - calm, peaceful, mighty. Beside him, Llewellyn and Ness's son, Lucien, shrugged with a grin. Emmett looked up to meet my eyes as I put my hand on my hip, shaking my head.

"She broke my nose. Twice."

"My spear has a diamond tip - aunt El gifted it to me!" Asteria protested. She was a wild, lively creature - and our wonderful daughter - born with such a precious gift that it had taken both Tristan and I quite a few years to learn the way her powers worked. She could see into the past, slow down or speed up time if she wished, and perhaps - just perhaps - even change time itself one day.

"You're spoiling them, El," I muttered with a grin.

"It's my job," Elodie looked up at me from a corner of the courtyard, chuckling. Elisabel was balanced on her knee, her tiny face quiet and thoughtful as she looked at her siblings quarreling with some sort of interested delight. El waved at the baby, trying to get her attention before pointing to me.

"Ooooo - ooooook!" The child burst into giggles, babbling excitedly, clapping her tiny hands. Elodie grinned, hoisting Elisabel up her shoulder to give her a better view of me. The baby had lost interest by then, and stared in amazement as a white dove on the roof before beginning to drool on El's shoulder.

A laugh slipped out of my lips. I'd feed her soon.

Beside them, Juliet, Llewellyn's daughter, was sitting with her back against the wall, a book balanced on her knee as she took a bite of a green apple. Avery was reading from over her shoulder every now and then, too busy collecting a pile of shining pebbles from the ground around him. The baby was now interested in a particularly shiny one, and she reached out excitedly from Elodie's shoulder to grab it.

"My spear!" Asteria whined again, running behind her twin as he ducked a blade she flung at him, a playful smile on his face.

"Emmett, give that spear back to your sister."

He looked up, raising a dark eyebrow.

"She doesn't let me try her weapons - I lend her mine all the time!"

I sighed, exasperated. Asteria had crafted herself a whip which she coiled around her wrist, making it look like an innocent bangle - unless, of course, someone made her angry. I'd seen her slaughter men from head to toe with that whip alone. I'd proudly smile at her as she'd grin at me, before tossing back her hair and climbing onto her horse to go riding in the fields. Emmett was less wild, but a force to be reckoned with in his own way - he preferred hiding daggers up his sleeves like me, slicing off men in clean strokes before darkly raising an eyebrow and walking off to pick a fight with someone else.

"It's mine!" his sister protested, swinging her long braid behind her back.

"It's a Sunday morning. For fuck's sake, Ree - will you stop that shouting!" Caspian strolled into the yard, pushing wet hair out of his eyes before they fell on the damn spear.

"Caspian! What have I told you about swearing around the baby?"

"Sorry mom - wait... is that a diamond tip?" he pounced onto his elder brother, who whizzed out of his way smoothly, running past Lucien before he grabbed hold of it. "I want that-"

"It's mine!"

"First one to the lake gets it!" Emmett shot his fist in the air with a grin, running out as he climbed the steps two at a time. The other three ran after him, with Ree still muttering angrily as she chased her brother.

Tristan and I had both wished that the girls learned how to fight - and we had both taught it to all our children. How to wield a sword, heft a mace, pull back a bow, and fight back. Because I wanted them safe, and I wanted them to be able to defend themselves - if a time like that ever came. I did not want them vulnerable or unable to fight back - because living meant fighting forever, a bitter lesson we had learnt.

The sound of the young people running around the castle filled the halls with laughter and my heart with joy. Those years... with our children, teaching them the ways of life and showing them how to fight back - those years had been the best.

I spent my days running after them all, doing my work, being with my husband. We kept ourselves busy, busy right to the point of exhaustion. Some days would not be bright, hovering over us like a dark cloud that brought back fresh waves of pain whenever we looked back into the past. The other days I'd feel a little less miserable, as if their laughs drove out the despair from my mind.

We had fought so hard for this future, this love. We had killed for it. We had died for it.

Those days still haunted me sometimes. The terror I felt anytime someone mentioned that night I had been taken and tortured to death. Or the night I had spent crying over his body, feeling the absence of that life swirling inside his chest. Sometimes that hour in Seattoria would come back to me, that dagger with which she had so brutally made me kill my own father. All those bridges I had destroyed, all those castles I had burnt when I had plunged the Bloodstone right into my heart. Tristan knew exactly why there were nights when I would wake up screaming, clutching hard at anything I could get my hands on, clinging to him as tears shuddered down my face.

Sometimes I would still see that haunted look flit past his eyes for a moment. See him blink once, twice, to drive the burning away. See him look down to his chest, to the scars which still remained on it, and then to the red line crisscrossing both our wrists where we had cut it again. Truly immortal, and ready to live forever.

Because we were still the same.

The same Tristan and the same Edwina who had avoided each other so much, had repressed that feeling so much - had wasted so much time hating each other, loathing each other. We were the same people who had taken angry, murderous oaths, who had blazed down palaces together, who had fought off armies single handedly. We were still the same people who had survived all the brunt, the hurt that came from wearing the crown - that came from murders and false allegations. We were still the same people who had survived the war and survived the other side of death.

We had both known loss. We had both known love was a double edged sword that could hurt you as much as it hurt the other. We were two sides of the same coin - always hurting, never giving up. I was his salvation, and he was my saint. There was no other way for us to be, no other way for us to exist without each other. This was what the universe made us for, and this was what our ancestors fought for.

Us.

There was nothing left to hurt us now, nothing that could hurt us now - we had gone through it all. All that pain, that loss - it was going to remain with us until the end of time, until the very universe ceased to exist. And even then, we would still be one, together until the very end.

Who would ever believe this fantastic and terrible story of our survival?

Because we were survivors, and you should never ask a survivor what they did in order to survive.

Because we had made it. We had made it through at last, and this life, this future - it was a gift.

Because we were good people, and I think we deserved a soft epilogue.

Because some people were just born to fight.

And we had fought it.

All of it.

• • • • •

So.

This chapter is really close to my heart for SO MANY REASONS.

1. Tredwina babies

2. Tredwina babies

3. Tredwina babies!!

I had the most fun writing these amazing people. Did y'all notice the fact that Asteria is a just a micro version of Edwina? She's an angry, angry young woman - I daresay Edwina was a lot like that when she was that age. Emmett is a piece of work too, but he loves annoying his younger sister. Btw, I know it's super cliche (with the eye and hair colour combinations) because I find that around so often on Wattpad - but I simply had to put it because it's adorable! Those scenes were planned out long before, and I'm so glad we're finally getting to see them! Not to mention, Tristan insisted on naming their daughter after Edwina's mother, and Llewellyn's son Lucien clearly got named after her father. Just their way of showing their love for her, and I think it's pretty sweet.

Speaking of which, Tristan finally knows how to use a goddamn phone! He's really adorable when he does that xx there's no wonder Edwina loves him to bits and pieces. Writing about all that still haunts her even after so many years was really, really sad. She essentially rebuilt herself over these years along with rebuilding her kingdom. It was heartbreaking to have her suffer so much, and the only ending Edwina Tremayne ever deserved was a peaceful one with her family. Family is all that matters to her. Seeing her finally at peace with herself, content, quiet - it's been a long time since we ever saw her like that. Makes me happy to think she now has her life back, and while those horrors still continue to haunt her, she's fighting back.

She didn't give up.

And neither should you. Be like Edwina, guys.

Whatever you're going through, no matter how painful and heartbreaking it is for you - push through it. The misery does have an end. Everything has an end. There was a time when Edwina had nothing left to lose, her family was dying, people hated her - and look where she is a thousand years since then. She always wanted to have children, and I know it was cliché - but I had to give her that. That one little piece of happiness. I've never made a character suffer so much as she did, and she deserved this ending.

I won't go all philosophical now, I'll wait till the end of the book for that huge author's note. Btw, I wanted to mention that the lit quote about survival was by Joy Harjo, and the one about the epilogue was by Nikka Ursula from Seventy Years of Sleep! These were amazing lines, and I just had to include them because they fit so perfectly. Anyways, stay strong, stay golden, stay tuned for the very last chapter of Crown of Glass!