Chapter 38

Thirty-Eight

Rhiannon was the first to reach Cael.

Desperately, she knelt by his side, tears streaming down her cheeks as she scooped his bloodied head into her lap. "My sweet love," she said. "My dearest, sweet love."

He smiled weakly. "It's only a flesh wound," he said, and she nearly wept with joy, because, indeed, the spot on his tunic where Morwen had stabbed him was free of blood. His cheeks were still full of life, high with color. Retracting into his body, his wings had vanished by the time everyone else arrived. With Morwen's death, her soldiers fled. All her Welsh kings retreated into the woods. The mist vanished as well, and once the field was visible again in the waning daylight, only a few dozen bodies remained—mostly Welsh, though a number were allies. Their bodies lay twisted amidst a veritable sea of dead birds.

Later, they found Jack, trampled and dead.

Marcella was alive, though barely.

Rhiannon's sisters rushed the paladin into the castle, prepared to do what they must to save her life. Thankfully, everyone else survived.

Giles, unharmed.

Wilhelm, unharmed.

Edmund, unharmed.

The wolfhound, his left-back-leg injured, and limping, but healing.

And Rhiannon… only her heart ached… ached with love for the man who lay resting in her arms, his face so painfully lovely that it made her heart hurt only to see it. "You are not a Shadow Beast," she said, a hard lump forming in her throat.

His answering smile was as beauteously radiant as his face.

He was Sylphkind, pure and true.

A terrible, beautiful, fallen angel… like her mother.

Only better, kinder, stronger.