Chapter 18: Epilogue: Kiku's POV

The funeral was two weeks later. I stood in front of the grave, wondering why no tears would come. Then again, I had cried enough for several lifetimes in the last few weeks. Maybe I had just run out of tears.

The grave was next to Yao's. Might as well make visits to graves an easy, one-stop trip, right? Then again, I knew I probably wouldn't be visiting either grave for a while; the new one brought back too many memories.

And yet… as painful as it was, I suppose I had the person buried next to Yao to thank for the happiness that I had somehow manage to scrounge from the gutter of my life. It was amazing that he could have led me to the kindness and love of the man standing beside me, despite all that he had put me through.

After the funeral, I stood staring at the graves of my brother and father, my hand in Heracles', reliving the past few weeks in my head. I had witnessed yet another brutal suicide, and I still had nightmares about the contents of my father's head splattering across my bedroom wall. Heracles was always there, though. Even when I had been in the hospital for the multiple wounds he had done to me, he had stayed by my side almost constantly. Mostly, we just sat in silence, our fingers and legs twined as he laid next to me. The doctors had given us weird looks, but a glare from Heracles had made sure they kept their comments to themselves. When he was angry, yes, he was terrifying, but he wasn't ever angry at me. Watching him and my father fight had been one of the most frightening experiences of my life, even after all the trauma I had gone through at the hands of the man who raised me. Still, Heracles was a gentle, warm presence that was always by my side, anchoring me and reminding me that there was still some good in the world.

After the funeral, I moved back to Greece with Heracles. There was nothing for either of us to stay for, and Akantha was frantic when she heard what happened to me. Still, being smothered and coddled in the most motherly way possible wasn't anything I would complain about.

We lived there for a while; I had to learn the language and it was difficult at first, but Heracles was there to help me. When we decided that it was time to start over completely, in a place no one had ever seen us before, we moved to New York. There, we got married—finally. To my surprise, we found Alfred Jones and Ivan Braginsky—two of the people who had been the biggest part of my hell when I was younger—running a foster home. Ivan had recognized me immediately and started to apologize profusely, and I could clearly see that Alfred had had a profound effect on his personality. It was cute.

We eventually got past it, Heracles and I even adopted a child from their home. It was a little boy from Korea, named Im Yong Soo, and he was—and still is—as dear to me as Heracles. Luckily, he didn't have a cat allergy; Heracles still insisted on taking in every stray cat he saw. I didn't mind, and neither did out son, so our house was pretty much covered in a rainbow of cat hair at all times.

I love it, though. I love the city. I love the house. I love Heracles. I love Im Yong Soo. I love everything. All the hate—toward myself, toward my family, toward other people—that used to be my automatic response to everything, had been replaced with pure, unconditional love. .

And I would not change it for anything. Not the sky, not the stars, not the moon. I have everything I could ever need, and nothing could ever change it. I will not let anything change it. I have my heaven, and I still love it even though I had to go through hell for it. I love it more because of that, actually.

I love it.