Author's Note: This is an unofficial bonus chapter and it's just for fun. Once again, this chapter contains major spoilers for Darkly Devoted.

(Unofficial) Epilogue

It was almost midnight when I sneaked back to the hotel room I was sharing with my parents. I fully expected to give me a lecture about how late it was, but they were both sound asleep in their bed. I could hear my dad's snoring which always sounded like two rusty mechanical gears grinding against each other from the living room of the two-bedroom suite.

Good. I wasn't ready to talk to them about Holly tonight.

My dad was snoring so loudly that I realized I could sneak into the shower and wash my hair without waking them. As I stared at my reflection in the cloudy bathroom mirror, I realized that I finally looked at something close to happiness. It's been over a week since Joseph and Grace died, and I once thought I would never feel normal again.

But it's funny how life goes on, even in these desperate times, perhaps like that fish that crawled out of the ocean — humans can adapt to anything.

I felt guilty for feeling this way, even as Holly awaited news of what happened to her parents and brother. My mother was probably still grieving over Grace, and my father needed to find a new place for the three of us to live.

Yet, for what it was worth, at least our family was reunited. It was a miracle that the doctors got that Lumin to my mother in time, considering she was locked inside our house. How in the heavens did she get help within 72 hours? Would I dare hope for that kind of divine grace for any of my other friends or Holly's family?

My eyes drifted to the pillbox that was jutting out of my mother's makeup bag. No, I snapped at myself. Stop asking questions. Just accept that a good thing happened for once, something that I didn't deserve but which the universe deigned to give me.

I couldn't stop my hands from reaching into that little make-up bag with the zebra print and retrieving that pill case. It was a seven-day course. I saw a handwritten note from a doctor plastered over the bottom of it so there could be no mistake that the user would follow the instructions.

Take one a day for seven days with water.

One a day. I opened the pillbox. There were two pills left. How could this be possible that she had two pills left? That meant she only started taking these pills five days ago. The Blight Rain infected her over two weeks ago.

No matter how I turned the dates around in my mind, the numbers didn't work. Lumin pills only worked for 72 hours after the fact. That was unless these weren't Sylvirua pills.

I cracked open the pill case and picked up the last pill, the one she was supposed to take two days from now. I knew what I would find even before my eyes saw the small T engraved into the casing of the tiny green and white tablet that almost seemed to glow in the flickering light of the bathroom.

Swallowing hard, I finally understood why no one else got out of Windflower Springs, not Holly's family, not the bus driver who dropped me off on Mott street so long ago, not Mr. Weintz, the owner of the 7-11 or the doctors who stayed behind to work that hospital by Holly's house. They were all gone. Everyone was dead or turned.

Except for my mother.

I heard Joseph's voice in my head as I put the pill back in its case with trembling fingers.

They say the Lumins Terciel made were bloody amazing. Do you know how the Yagerin ones stop working after the infection has been around for 72 hours? The Terciel ones keep going.

Terciel had saved my mother, only her, no one else in Windflower. There was no rescue operation going around knocking on doors and dispensing medical aid. Holly's family was dead. She would never reach them. All because I knew now that I was the reason Joseph was in Windflower that morning, and I was the reason Terciel went back to that small town to rescue my mother.

Because I was important to someone. Because he figured it all out long before I met him on the edge of the chasm in Manna City.

I heard a noise in the other bedroom and my dad's snoring stopped. That meant that he was getting up, and he was possibly heading my way. I hastily zipped up the makeup bag with the medicine case inside it. I shut off all the lights and made a clean get-away back to my room.

It was impossibly hot and uncomfortable under the covers I had yanked over my head. I wanted to get up and open a window, but I was scared that it might rain overnight. Although the Blight Rain had stopped, I didn't think I could ever willingly let the rain in through my window ever again.

Instead, I squeezed my eyes shut and willed myself to sleep. I knew I had successfully fallen asleep when I opened my eyes and found myself in the wreckage of the private plane where Joseph had died.

I wanted to sleep, but my memories wouldn't let me rest. I didn't want to go inside that plane and see Joseph's body where he was missing part of his skull. But there was nowhere else to go. As I walked up the broken steps into the remains of the aircraft, the belly of the plane melted away into the columns of a grand old estate covered in winding foliage.

"Faherty, or as you knew him, Jack, thought if you brought him back here, you could save him, Orienne."

I spun around even though I could recognize that voice anywhere. He was standing beside me now, not a boy of eleven but sixteen. He had been that age when I died. He was already tall, but no one would mistake him for a force of nature. He was skinny back then, as though his skin had been stretched across too much bone. His skin was so pale from avoiding the sunlight that I could see the latticework of red vessels under the white skin of his cheeks. His hair was a mess of curls on his forehead, and when he smiled, it was like he stole a bit of my soul without lifting a finger.

He would flesh out that frame and develop into a magnificent young man one day. I would never live to see that day in my past life, and it was only in my imagination that I envisioned him as a grown man.

Even though as Ailith I had seen him as he would become, in my mind, in this place, this River Way, he would always be a boy to me.

"Levit told me Faherty begged you to save him in the end. My mother, Odelia, never helps anyone who has nothing to offer her in return."

Oh, Blake, he was always full of that snarky humor. Ailith would have been disgusted at his careless words, but I chuckled.

"You were watching me this entire time."

"Now we can finally talk. No one else is listening."

"Are you really here?"

"Perhaps, perhaps not. It doesn't matter. Will you finally share your secrets with me? About what happened here, in River Way?" Blake asked, raising an eyebrow as though we were sharing a joke. Yes, a joke upon which rested the fate of humanity.

"What on earth do you mean?" I asked and continued walking into the mansion. My memories came back to me with every step, and I felt myself standing taller, holding my head up higher. "I have many secrets, as do you. You saved Ailith's mother. You did it because you wanted a favor in return."

He smirked at that. My son enjoyed the bantering. I spoke to him with an irrelevance that only a mother could. I could tell that he missed me, but was he really here? He was lying cold and dead at the bottom of that chasm. Was I only conversing with my illusions?

Looking at him, I understood how my mother felt about losing Grace. I, too, had lost a child in the last weeks, except I had killed mine with my own hands. Was this my mind's desperate attempt to say goodbye? Was any of this real?

"I want you to tell me the truth about Glenn Winick. Who was he to me?" Blake finally asked, speaking each word of that question carefully as though it was hard for him to admit that there were things in this world he didn't know. That despite all his cleverness and influence, he couldn't figure out. That was the question he still needed me for, his poor dead mother. As he furrowed his brows at my silence, I knew that in his mind, he already had an answer for that question. He was just waiting for me to confirm his suspicions.

Blake swallowed with difficulty as though his mouth had gone dry.

"He was my half-brother, wasn't he, Odelia? I always suspected as much. He kept so many secrets from me. And his daughter, Amari, she —" he trailed off when he said that name. I saw tears form in his eyes, but they didn't fall. His face hardened, and he continued. The tears disappeared. Yes, that was my son. He always knew how to move beyond his pain. "She could make the willow tree move, as you could."

"He's not your brother," I stated bluntly before he could continue.

"Then why? Why doesn't any of this make sense to me?"

"Because when Glenn was a child, he was badly hurt, fatally. It was the Levanti. They came for me, but they got him instead. His father threatened me, and I—I healed him with my cells. He took on properties of my being. The same thing happened to Odelia when she was a child. Yet, you never knew the real Odelia. I am your mother. My soul latches onto certain vessels for my consciousness to reside. That is why even when you were sick as a child, I never healed you. I—I let you find a way to heal yourself because I would never risk that for you. Because Blake, I love you."

Now, I was the one with tears forming in my eyes. There was a part of me that wanted to embrace him, to fold my arms around his frail body and tell him that I didn't mean it. I didn't want to kill him in Manna City. Was it cold down there in that chasm? Was it lonely? Didn't he know he was the one person Odelia couldn't sacrifice? That was why when she died, she left him Tahil lake and all the benefits that would come with it. He created Terciel because in those pills was the magic of a foolish mother's love. A love that could bend the will of a goddess to save all of the world's children.

"I know," Blake whispered back. He reached for my arm and touched me lightly before drawing back. It was as though, for a second, even forgot why he was here. That sentimental illusion didn't last long. "And I thank you for that, mother. But you know as well as I that my death won't stop the Reaper. Only a human with the strength of the gods can defeat him. And their life will be forfeit. We both know, for various reasons, that individual was never meant to be me."

"You are asking me if your son, Ian is that one who can kill the Reaper. You want to know if Jadueriel intended to use Ian to take on the Reaper before he went on a detour and came after me. Or did you convince Jadueriel yourself to come to Florida to look for me to buy yourself time?"

"Stop it," Blake snapped, his voice suddenly sharp and hostile. "Sacrificing Ian, cannot be the only possible answer."

I stepped back at the sound of his harsh tone. Our conversation had hit a nerve. The facades fell away, and I understood everything. Suddenly, it dawned on me why he willingly gave his life in Manna City. He didn't do it to save the world or to save me, or even Holly. He did it to save his son. Ian was alive, and my son intended to keep it that way.

A human with the strength of the gods, perhaps Ian was the only one in centuries who could bear that mantle. Yet, even a naive boy with immense powers was no match for a preternaturally conniving father.

"I'm here because I want to ask if there can be another tribute to your cause, Orienne. If, by being down here in this cavern of the undead, I can be of some service. I need to know if the two of us can change the destiny of this planet."

I knew why he was calling me by that name. He wasn't to banter with his dead mother, he was here to implore a goddess to give him to save his son. As Orienne I knew that guiding Ian into that entrance to hell in Manna City was our best chance of killing the Reaper for good. As Ailith, I knew that saving humanity was more important than saving a boy. Did I want Holly to suffer any more in this living nightmare of destruction? Why should I allow Blake to stall what could be our best chance at survival as a planet?

Yet, Blake knew that once as Odelia, I gave him the powers of Tahil despite Orienne's disapproval. Funny, how mortal weakness can tamper with the immortal will of a goddess who wanted the best for the world's children. 

"Please," Blake repeated. "Have faith in me."

"Who do you have in mind to perform the task?"

"Amari Winick."

"Will she do it?"

Blake smiled at me in a way that only I could fully understand. He would find a way. He truly was his mother's son. I now understood why he was so curious about his relationship with Glenn Winick. He wanted to know what the chances were of Amari being able to kill the Reaper in Ian's place. I didn't believe it could be done but knowing my son, he always had a way of making things go his way. 

 He had come here, revealing to me that key bit of information that Ian was alive with the hope that I would agree to let him send some foolish girl to attempt the task of killing the Reaper first. He had bet a great deal on the fact that I would agree. The world's belief that Ian was dead would have bought the boy a couple of months at least.  

"Then I will allow you the opportunity to try, but I can't promise you very much time."

"Rest assured, mother, time is a luxury I don't have," Blake jested. "I'm slipping away with each passing day. No one wants to finish this more than I do."

I nod and my eyes went back to the portrait of a dragon that hung in our grand foyer. "Do you know why they call him the Reaper, Blake?"

"No, mother, but I suspect you do."

"He is the one who weeps. You will bring an end to his tears by tearing out his lonely heart."

"And then your eternal soul can finally rest?"

"Yes, perhaps on that day, we can both rest."

The END

The next part of this series is "The Last Heiress," coming in Fall 2022. 

To those of you who haven't read the Darkly Devoted Series, you can access it by clicking on my profile.