Eupehmia has not realized she’s
pregnant yet, but others might!

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What was life, on the other side of tumultuous change, tremendous gain, and personal tragedy?

Well, it was all pretty fine.

Actually, it was more than fine – it was great. Adonis was the perfect specimen of anything she had ever desired in a man. Tiberii had just brought forth the third generation of Frostfang Vale’s dutiful caretakers. Dalmatia was married and laden with children of her own. The long night had broken, and neglected to return. Further, no one she cared about had died for a long, long time.

It wasn’t just great, it was all spectacular!

Somehow, that led the silver woman to stand in front of her herbal storehouse. It was far from where her den lay, as she had followed her intuition to find a small cavern on the far eastern side of the range, which too was on the eastern side of the mountain, as it was drier and less prone to the rains that blew in from the sea…

But now it stood empty; forgotten. The entrance, which had been compacted and worn smooth, had been reduced to dust. The herbs that had been left on the shelves had been scattered by rodents, and some had grown mold. It even looked as if a family of raccoons had moved in, raised a family, and then left.

Phia hadn’t been back since she had spent that night here with Ric, more than four months ago.

She hadn’t wanted to go back. Hadn’t wanted to come and face the location she had passed her last hours with Alaric, speaking all the things their hearts dared not say. It hadn’t been beautiful, but it had been raw – and mere hours afterwards, the man lay dead. Bleeding underneath a pile of yellow eyes.

In truth, Euphemia didn’t want Adonis to know, now that she understood how he felt about nonmonogamy. What had passed between her and Alaric felt profane - from the very beginning, to all the secrets passed between them here. The woman could find it in herself to bring it up with Adonis again – and for what reason?

Not when the Storyteller was so lovely, and the world had kept on turning so finely. There was nothing in her storehouse that would rouse suspicion, but that was not the point. Euphemia knew, and Euphemia remembered.

This wasn't even to mention at all how Euphemia had not touched an herb, or harvested an herb, or planted their seeds, or even looked at a woody plant in months. In her desire to avoid the storehouse, Euphemia had nearly forgotten she was an herbalist at all.

The end of the world hadn’t helped, either.

So the woman grabbed a fallen branch betwixt her jaws, and began to methodically sweep out the cobwebs, and intermediately gathered the old herbs into a refuse pile.

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