to see her beauty marked in such a way. Was it possible that demon injuries were permanent, even for a being such as Isolde? It was as though the wound—what must have been a nasty gash in her cheek—had already healed and scarred in the space of minutes. But the scar itself was showing no sign of fading.
Isolde did not seem to care. She was mourning Taran’s death; it turned out that Taran had also been her consort. Donna swallowed her own sadness. Immortality didn’t matter if you could be killed by demons. The fey weren’t strictly immortal, anyway. They could live for a very long time without aging or illness, but they could still be killed. It was complicated, but there had to be checks and balances in life and death, even for the most powerful races.
Donna was glad to see Cathal. The tall knight carried wounds of his own, already healing, but he too would be scarred. Something had tightened in her throat when the smoke first cleared and she’d caught sight of Cathal with his arm around Xan. Father and son had been reunited under the worst circumstances imaginable. Probably, had their meeting taken place under any other conditions, Xan would not have been so quick to accept the birth father he’d never known.
As it was, Xan leaned into his father, helping him to sit down so that his leg could be tended to. Amazingly, Xan’s only injury was to his left arm. He’d broken it when a Strix had knocked him to the ground. Fey healers were already setting the bone and tying a sling made of an iridescent gossamer material around his neck.
Donna approached him. “Can’t they just fix it with magic?”
Xan smiled. He looked tired. Older. “They wanted to, but I’d rather they saved their mojo for the people who really need it.”
“I have to tell you something,” she said. There were so many things to say, but this was the one that could hurt him the most. “It’s about Maker.”
How was she going to tell him? How could she say that his dream of wings was gone now that Maker had died? Well, Maker’s body hadn’t been found in the wreckage, and some of the alchemists were trying to tell Donna that it had probably burned up in the dragon’s fire. This time, however, she wasn’t buying it. All the other bodies had been recovered, so why not his? What exactly was it that Maker had said to her before she woke the dragon? Something about how he was looking forward to going home …
And the dragon itself—the dragon who had already melted back beneath the ground, back into its ley line—had known who Maker was, which made no sense at all.
She swallowed as Xan touched her face, surprising her. He wiped away some of the dried tears and ash smeared on her cheeks. “I know about Maker. It’s okay. This isn’t about me anymore. Maker’s gone and … maybe that’s the way it was meant to be.”
“But what about your wings?” Tears shimmered in Donna’s eyes, blurring her vision.
His smile was gentle. “What about them? It would have taken dozens of operations. It was never going to happen overnight, you know? And Donna … ” His smile widened. “I’ve been up there, now. The prototype worked and I flew.”
Donna swallowed past the huge lump in her throat. “You were magnificent.”
He returned her smile, joy radiating from him like the slowly rising sun. “I was, wasn’t I?”
They held each other for a long time, then Nav wandered over and told them to get a room. Donna blushed and hugged him, too. And then the two guys shook hands and Xan introduced Navin to his father.
It was a strange thing to witness, but it was also pretty awesome.
Later, she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her mother, surveying the wreckage. Donna remembered how she’d thought that some parts of the Otherworld landscape looked bleak, but that was before seeing the after-effects of a battle.
Rachel was clearly drained, her face was almost black with smoke and ash, but she was all in one piece. That was the main thing. Donna took one look at her mother’s expression and knew what was coming.
She asked the question anyway, because she had to. “Where’s Aunt Paige?”
Rachel reached out to Donna, trying to draw her into an embrace.
Donna held up her hands, warding her off. “No. Not her as well.”
“I’m sorry, darling. So sorry.” Her mother’s face crumbled, and Donna felt strangely