The next thing Aoife knew was pain. She ached all over, and it felt like there were weights attached to her eyelids. An unfamiliar middle-aged woman with a kind, round face slowly came into focus in front of her bleary eyes. Aoife tried to speak, but it came out as a whimper.

"Oh- oh, my!" the woman stuttered, rushing towards the door of the room. "She's awake! Master, she's awake!"

"What?! Ten minutes, I swear, I leave for ten minutes-"

Before she could even process what was happening, the door to the room swung wide open, and in walked a very frantic looking man with a long white braid swinging behind his back. There were dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, wide with shock as he barreled into the room. He rushed straight to her side and held tight to the hand that was on top of her blankets, as if she might slip away from him without notice.

Tarran.

Tarran was alive.

And, Aoife noticed, he looked very angry.

"You are the biggest idiot to ever grace the face of this green earth!" Tarran snapped, tears in his eyes, looking for all the world like he wanted to murder her and hug her at the same time.

"How?" she asked, already feeling tears running down her cheeks.

"How are you the biggest idiot? Oh, I have several words about that-"

"How are you alive?!" she cried, squeezing his hand a little tighter, looking him over frantically for signs of injury.

"Well, I definitely died," he admitted, taking a seat at the edge of her bed. "However, someone decided they wanted to battle the Reaper for me."

"You could be grateful!" Aoife said, utterly failing at finding a tone that sounded anything close to frustrated. She sniffled as a heaving sob welled up in her throat, fresh tears immediately beginning to fall.

"Oh, again with the waterworks," Tarran said, but there was a slight blush to his cheeks as he picked up her hand and kissed her palm. "I am grateful. But you are never to scare me like that again, you asinine bleeding heart...."

He was insulting her, but his tone betrayed him, and Aoife couldn't help but smile. She noticed then that her wrists were bandaged, and that they ached when she moved them.

"Those will heal, but slowly," Tarran explained. "You may not have an iron sensitivity on an ordinary day, but the best guess I have is that your skin reacted with the metal when magic flared up in your hands, and it burned you."

"More scars," she mumbled, eyes passing over the bandages with a strange sort of dismay.

"More evidence of all you have survived."

The door opened then, and a familiar face came through. "Sorry to interrupt," Camilla said, looking at Tarran with a catlike grin.

"Camilla!" Aoife said joyfully, clapping her hands together.

Wait... the Queen!

"Where is the Queen now?!" Aoife asked, eyes wide as she surged forward, sitting up straight.

"Calm yourself. You're still healing," Tarran said, gently pushing her shoulders back against the pillows.

"I imagine she's licking her wounds," Camilla said thoughtfully. "She'll be in a sorry state after being asleep for so long, even with the crown to aid her. Not to mention that word is spreading that Elina's granddaughter has been found."

"Why does that matter?" Aoife asked with a groan as she reached out for Tarran's hand. She just wanted to focus on the fact that he was alive.

"Most of the Fae are old enough to remember Elina. They know she was supposed to be the Queen- she had the power and the disposition, and Lily simply did not. People see the spitting image of their beloved Princess at the Quilland palace and hear that she's wielding the same power... They'll talk."

Only a fraction of what Camilla was saying made any sense at all, and Aoife didn't care. She was still dazed over waking up to find Tarran not only alive, but healthy. She had time. They had time. Aoife opened her mouth to ask if her plan had worked, but then she noticed something peculiar.

Through the v neck opening of Tarran's white shirt, she could see his Mark. His entirely silver Mark, without a single trace of its former inky coloring in sight. Granted, she couldn't see his entire chest- and the thought of that probably would have made her blush under normal circumstances- but before there were at least traces of the darkness all throughout the silver lightning that stretched across his skin.

It was then that he noticed her staring.

"What? What are you looking at?" he asked, a faint twinge of color rising to his cheeks.

"Your Mark," she explained, squinting at him yet again. "It's not black anymore. It's silver like a normal one."

"Did you not tell her, you idiot man?" Camilla asked, smacking him on the arm.

"Well, it didn't exactly come up in the thirty seconds before you walked in the room," he muttered, rolling his eyes. Camilla shook her head in disappointment, but then she looked up at Aoife and it melted away into happiness.

"Tarran isn't cursed anymore, Aoife. You broke it," she said, a smile on her lips. "And with that, I'll take care of managing things around the estate while you two... catch up."

Camilla turned and walked from the room, shooing two women in aprons down the hall with her as she went, but Aoife was still dazed. Maybe she was dreaming. Maybe she was dead and this was the afterlife. It didn't seem like anything at all should have worked out in their favor, especially not with her last ditch effort to eradicate his curse...

But here they were. When she pinched her arm, she felt the sting. When she tried to move, she felt the stiffness in her muscles. This was real.

"My magic... broke it?" Aoife whispered. Tarran beamed at her in a way that made her wish he would never, ever stop smiling like that.

"Not by sheer force of will, no, but I'm certain if anyone would break a curse by simply bludgeoning at it till it crumbled, it would be you," he said with a laugh. "You fulfilled the conditions to break it."

"I... how?"

"I didn't even think about the three parts of the curse qualifications being filled by the same person," Tarran said slowly. "I just assumed there was no way to find three people willing to die for me, or even that fulfilled those conditions."

"You never hurt me," she whispered, brow furrowed.

"I did. I hurt you the very first day we met in the woods," he said, momentarily looking away.

The blast of magic. The tree. He thought she was there to hurt him, and he'd-

"That... counted?" Aoife blinked. She hadn't thought about that day in a long while, not when she had Tarran right in front of her rather than only a fleeting memory of him.

"It did," he confirmed. "The black marks are gone, and I've heard word that it's like crops are springing up overnight with how fast they're growing. You didn't just chase the curse out of my body. You really, truly broke it."

"I didn't even die," she said with a weak smile.

"And I'm glad of that, but you did come far too close for my liking. You were right about your life magic acting as a loophole, but you passed so much into me that it left you drained." He perched on the mattress beside her and Aoife reached out for him, tugging him under the blankets to sit shoulder to shoulder with her against the pillows.

"I take it you aren't worried about touching me anymore?" he murmured, wrapping his arm around her.

"I love you," she mumbled. Aoife threw her legs across his lap and snuggled into his chest, enjoying the red flush to his cheeks when she looked up.

"I... love you, too," he whispered, carefully letting his arms wrap around her.

It was pleasantly warm next to him, snuggled under blankets. She was exhausted despite having just woken up, and this felt safe and warm and comforting.

"Can I go back to sleep?" she mumbled.

"Of course you can. I'll let you get some rest." He shifted to get up, but Aoife did not move to let him out of the bed.

"Stay." She only snuggled in closer. "The curse is gone. My magic won't try to cure you in my sleep, so just... stay."

"We should take touch slow," Tarran protested, but he didn't seem truly convinced.

"This is slow. This is like a hug. Just... extended." Aoife's eyes fluttered closed as she relaxed against him.

He seemed like he wanted to argue, but it didn't matter. She dropped off to sleep within mere moments of deciding to keep him beside her for a while, exactly where he belonged.