The Faerie Curses

Epilogue

"Commander Marissa!"

The newest edition to the royal military approached me in a hurried, stumbling entrance, despite the fact that I am standing solemnly in the kingdom's graveyard. I've visited this place often over the past few months, so often that it doesn't come as a surprise that my knights are able to find me here.

I straighten my shoulders and salute the latest knight who has been searching for me. He stops abruptly at the gesture and bows clumsily in return, his wings fluttering with a rhythm I remember distantly from my own flights.

It comes with being a wide-eyed newbie, I suppose.

The knight's face flushed with awe as his gaze took me in for the first time. He wears the expression of a child who is face to face with his greatest hero, a legend he has looked up to for a long time.

Instead of feeling uncomfortable with such attention, I give him a pointed look as he gaped at my decorated uniform, ice sword, and my wingless back for a few moments longer than he needed.

Being the realm's only wingless faerie tended to earn me more than a few sideways glances.

"Um," the knight coughed, jarred back to his purpose. "Queen Mab would like to inform you that Queen Titania formally thanks you for your assistance in restoring Summer Court from its devastating attack three months ago."

I nodded curtly, my tight braid rustling against the small of my back. The blowing snow blankets my crisp blue coat, dancing across the medals strung across the front.

"Thank you, Knight Christopher," I told the rookie. "Please send note to Her Highness of Summer Court that I will aid her in her future conquests to the ogre lands as well."

Knight Christopher's entire face seemed to beam at the sound of his title.

"Right away, Commander."

I couldn't help but smile fondly at my last encounter with the ogres, that fateful night in The Human Realm when the greatest legend of our world was set into motion.

So long ago.

"Queen Mab also requests that you train her bodyguards; she reports that their combat skills are unfavorable and will most likely get her killed in an instant."

I contained a snort. "I will most definitely address this situation," I responded. "Sometimes these boys just need a woman to whip them into shape."

Knight Christopher grinned at my last comment, oblivious to the weighted air of peaceful silence that surrounds us. Atop a frosted hill, I can glimpse the entire graveyard of the kingdom. Tombstones lined in endless rows gazed back at me, many of them belonging to innocents that perished on Midsummer's Night.

Ever since the battle with the sprites, ever since the slaughter of our land's blood and the vanquishing of the death curse, The Faerie Realm has labored to restore its former splendor. But once I had destroyed the death curse, I took the lives of every sprite along with it.

It has been deemed that criminals would no longer be punished as sprites from now on, but with imprisonment inside a certain underground lair in The Human Realm; a cavern that used to belong to a mysterious Master whose identity has been concealed from the kingdom.

There, all those who have broken the accords will no longer be in touch with magic power, and will spend the rest of their sentences working in the caves.