Epilogue

As she came to the corner, Issabella stopped walking, her hand half-raised to press the button on the lamppost at the crosswalk. Catching her breath, her hand dropped to her side, and her vision blurred. She tried desperately to blink back the tears that instead spilled down her cheeks, overflowing as her eyes welled.

The sun had set, and she stood in the light given off by the street lamp above.

As numbness washed over her like a wave, she stood paralysed, staring at the button, unable to move, even to dry her eyes. Her head dropped, and she could see her bare feet as she stood motionless. Half gasping, Abbi inhaled a wavering breath, holding it for a matter of moments before exhaling.

She was standing in the exact spot she had been in the night that Eddus called out to her and gave her the shoes she'd forgotten in the theatre.

Her legs felt weak, and she raised her hand in time to catch the lamppost to keep herself from falling.

It was here that she'd met the human. Her human. It was here that he'd fallen in love with her, and where she'd unknowingly fallen for him.

Feebly, she stepped off the sidewalk and into the street, still unable to see through her tears. There was a screech of tires as a car came to a halt right beside her.

Issabella flinched, jumping with surprise. Numb and cold, she turned to the vehicle. Gently extending her arm, she touched the car's bonnet with her fingers.

"Oh my god, I am so sorry!"

The driver of the car had quickly gotten out of his vehicle and began frantically asking if she was all right. Another car stopped, its driver getting out, curious.

"Are you ok?"

The driver of the car she stood in front of approached her cautiously, reaching toward her.

Withdrawing her hand, Abbi looked at him blankly, tears still running down her cheeks. She slowly began backing away from him, shaking her head in silence. Turning, she ran across the street, gasping as she misstepped and almost fell when she reached the other side.

As she began again running in the direction of the entrance to City Park, she heard the driver again call out to her, but did not look back. She didn't slow her pace until she'd passed the place where she'd kissed Eddus goodnight the night they'd met, outside the entrance of the park.

Sobbing openly, she walked into the park, stepping off the pavement onto the grass. Dropping to her knees, she cupped her face with both hands and lowered her head to the ground, but only for a few moments. Summoning everything in her, she got back to her feet, forcing herself into motion.

For several minutes, she walked in a daze. Using all of her effort in continuing forward, she slowly made her way further along the path.

Slowing to a stop, Issabella shuddered as a chill ran down her spine. She’d made her way slowly along the park’s paved pathway, walking in the grass just beside it. Inhaling a breath that seemed to catch in her throat, she closed her eyes. The emotion that she’d fought to quieten as she walked now began to well up again in her chest.

Just ahead, about ten paces from where she stood, was a lamppost beside the path. In the glow beneath it, there was a park bench. It was much like the many benches and lampposts along the paved pathway that ran through the park. It was like them, but this one was different.

In the tree line across from this bench was the clearing where she'd stopped Eddus from stepping into a pixie-ring. It was in the clearing that she'd shown him her world. The bench in front of her was where she'd told him that she was, herself, a pixie.

It was in the glow of the lamppost in front of her that she had tried to calm him, telling him that he'd not been hallucinating. It was where she'd apologized for having given him a burden he'd never asked for. And it was where she'd...

Closing her eyes tightly, Issabella pressed a fist to her mouth as she wept, biting down on the skin of the back of her hand. She leaned forward weakly and put her other hand on her leg in an effort to steady herself.

A few paces from where Issabella stood, she'd uttered the words that had prompted Eddus to cross into her world:

'...this might be the last time I ever see you, Eddus Brandt...'

The words echoed in her memory, faintly yet deafeningly. She hadn't meant them. She'd forgotten even saying them until she found out why he'd come into her realm find her.

Stomach clenching violently, she fought not to be sick as she remembered that night. It seemed so long ago. Stumbling forward, she turned away from the path and away from the bench.

Eddus was dead. The man she'd loved because of his kindness and trust. And it was because of her.

Had she not been so careless with her words...

Issabella stumbled as she made her way in the dark toward the clearing in the trees as quickly as her feeble legs could carry her. She couldn't stay here. Her thoughts haunted her, especially now, here in the park.

Without Eddus in it, the human world held nothing more for her. She could never return. She had to get away from this place, back to her child, back to her own world.

Stopping short just as she reached the opening in the trees, Issabella stumbled, almost falling, again struggling against a sick feeling as a cold awareness enveloped her. The world she was returning to was the very place where her human, her mate, and the father of her child had been killed.

It was the fae – her own people – that had killed him for having come to be with his mate and their child. He'd only crossed into her world for no other reason than to ensure the safety of one of the very people from that world. He was never a threat, and never would have been.

Her chest ached sharply as she gasped for breath, followed by a small whimper. For a moment, Issabella couldn't move. Her world crumbled within her as the sickening realisation set in that Eddus had been executed on what couldn't have been more than a day before she'd been given the letter granting him permission to return to the realm.

Numb and completely lost, Issabella stepped forward into the darkness of the clearing. Stifling a sob, she thought back on her day in the cemetery. She knew she'd never go back. She could never come back.

Nearing the edge of the pixie ring, she sighed wearily, looking at the ground inside of the ring of mushrooms in front of her.

The human world held no place for her, and her own realm, with the exception of her child, held nothing that she ever wanted to be a part of again.

Biting her bottom lip, Isabella lifted her bare foot and stepped through the barrier separating the two worlds.