At last: the final chapter! it's funny to think that when I started this fic I didn't think anyone would be interested in it or that I would ever finish it - but here we are. Sorry, this is rather sad - I seem to end just about every story with tears. shakes head Hope you all aren't too upset.

Also, the last line is very similar to the one in "Golden Prince" by Ken Catran - and to anyone who likes to read Troy stories, I definitely recomend it. It's a great book, and the line seemed perfect for the ending. I must apologise for this chapter - it's sill pretty raw, and I'm not really happy with it, but I didn't want to keep you all waiting any longer.

A HUGE thank you to EVERYONE who read and especially those who reviewed - also to the 26 people who have this story on their fav list, thank you very much! Here are my fantastic reviewers, in no particular order:

June Birdie, aquamum, Priestess of the Myrmidon, LANCELOTTRISTANBABY, Crafty, demongirl04, Readerfreak10, faeriesTrulyExist, Luckylily, Plutobaby494, KnightMaiden, MedievalWarriorPrincess, aragornsgirll, Jenni, JessipurrMalfoy, Daughter Of Athena, butterflykisses71, Lady Dream Weaver, the sarahnater, Ancalime, Scouter, Black Knight 63, Nilmelwen, Sunniva, dw, Shanua, Some Crazy Lady, Ohio-isn'tfor-lovers, SK-1, Lady Marek, TreetopScout, lilshelly, Evenstar-mor2004, Chait, Elodie, SaraB, heavenlysky, bamameg, JennyRen, Jaded-Chaela, gitana dragon, Makayla and Quinn.

Your choice of knight with icecream and chocolate topping:P And to anybody I missed, deepest apologies, thanks for reading and reviewing!

That said, I'll shut up now and let you get on with the story, please review at the end!

Thank you all very much.

I flew back to the fort in the pale dawn of the next day. The sky was touched with purple and yellow as the sun rose – it seemed unfair to Tristan that the new day could bring such beauty when he was no longer alive to witness it.

I landed first in the forest beside a stream. I drank the cool water, my grief a physical ache in my chest. On an impulse I changed back into my human shape, wondering if I had changed at all from my time as a hawk.

I looked at my reflection in the water and stared. I glanced behind me, but there was no one there. It really was my reflection on the surface of the water. But I hardly recognised myself.

I looked terrible. My hair, once reddish brown, was mostly grey with streaks of white. My face was lined and withered, my cheeks hollow and my eyes sunken.

My hands were lined with veins and shook ever so slightly. My skin used to be a tanned brown – now it was white and papery, dry and thin. Only my eyes, still green and brown, were unchanged – but they were dimmer than I remembered. I was old.

As I realised what had happened, I became aware of my body aching and stiff. So this is what it's like to be old. My knees were stiff and cracked alarmingly as I stood up. My back was sore and I couldn't twist properly. Walking was as hard as climbing up a wall and I didn't even dare trying to run. If I did, I'd probably break an ankle.

I sat down on the grass beside the stream in an undignified heap. I was old, old and dying. I could feel the erratic beating of my weakened heart and my lungs didn't seem to hold air as well as they once did. Only a few years ago I had been fourteen. My body may have been old, but my mind wasn't. Like the young girl I had been I started crying at the unfairness of it all.

It just didn't seem right – Tristan dead, myself old and withered when I should have been no more than sixteen years old. I suddenly wondered if the pain in my chest was just grief or whether my heart was giving out. It was a chilling thought.

I glanced once more at my human reflection and winced as I transformed back to a hawk. I didn't want to see the pathetic, old creature I had become. Suddenly twenty-four didn't seem that old.

As a hawk Ilooked againat my reflection. Even as a bird there were changes. My feathers, once thick and glossy, had lost a little of their sheen and colour. My eyes were faded and sunken, and my beak was worn down. I was old.

I took off, wanting to get away from the awful truth. I was old and near to death – I was suddenly glad that Tristan wasn't here to see what I had become.

Flying was harder than it had been yesterday. I couldn't fly as fast or as high as I used to, and it taxed my strength to fly even the short distance to the tavern where Vanora was.

The knights had returned – that was evident from the subdued atmosphere and the drunk, miserable knights slumped at a table in the tavern. Vanora was sitting beside Bors, her head laid against his chest in a comforting gesture. She looked up as I landed beside her.

'Aderyn,' she said, and I felt my grief twinge again in my chest. Tristan would never call me that again, and he would never learn my real name. Somehow that small thing seemed of the greatest importance. Something that I had failed at.

'I'm sorry,' Vanora whispered, tears making fresh tracks down her face. 'I know how little those words mean. But truly I am.'

I keened softly, low in my throat. Lancelot stirred from where he had been resting his head on his hand, and looked up.

'I didn't think you'd return,' he said sluggishly.

That showed just how much he had drunk. I had never met anyone before who could drink so much and be so unaffected by it. The fact that his speech was impaired told me more than the many bottles that littered the table.

'He's gone,' Galahad said blankly, his voice slightly muffled as he rested his head on his folded arms. 'He was the best of us all, yet he was killed.'

Grief threatened to engulf me. It had been me who had distracted him at that crucial moment – I had taken his attention away from his surroundings. If not for me, he would have noticed the archer before the arrow took him.

It was at that moment that Arthur entered. His grief was a shadow on his face, and I knew that it was an echo of my own. He had lost yet another knight; another friend had given their life for him. His eyes were haunted as he stood at the head of the table.

'Knights,' he said, as he so often had before.

He stopped as they all looked up at him. Bors, his eyes glazed with both the pain of Tristan's death and the remembered agony of when Dagonet died. His eyes flicked over them all and rested on me.

'Tristan is to be buried this afternoon.'

The knights all nodded, but I felt their already sunken spirits fall lower at those words. Somehow burial made it complete, irreversible. I shook my head and gave a loud call. Arthur glanced at me questioningly.

There was no way that I would transform into my human shape in front of the knights now. I wouldn't let them see me in my old, weakened state. To convey my meaning, I snapped at a candle on that table that was lit.

'Fire?' Arthur said slowly. 'You want Tristan to be burnt?'

I nodded. Burning would free him completely from this world. Perhaps then it would be easier for me to accept his death. Arthur looked at the other knights, who looked at me and then nodded.

'It's fitting,' Gawain said slowly, drunkenly.

Arthur nodded. 'Then he shall be burnt. At sunset today.'

He turned abruptly away, before the knights could see the pain on his face. I saw, however, and knew that he shared my white-hot grief and pain that nothing could extinguish.

I didn't stay with the knights any longer. It took a supreme effort to get myself off the table, and I know that Vanora gave me a very concerned look as I laboured to get into the air.

I flew slowly out of the fort and over the field where I had so often hunted for Tristan. Suddenly my body seemed too heavy for me to be able to hold up. It was the thermals that saved me, the currents of air that allowed me to drift gently down into the trees instead of falling like a stone.

I had almost no strength left – hazily I wondered what it would be like to die a second time. I had died once already, when that tree fell on me – but this was different. This time I wouldn't be going on to a new life in a new world – or would I? Perhaps there was more to death than there appeared.

I wouldn't know until I died. If how I felt was any judge, I wouldn't have to wait for long. My heart was unsteady in its beating, and I struggled to gain enough air. I glanced up at the sun – It was almost midday. I had hours to wait before sunset. It seemed an eternity to wait before I saw him again.

The smoke rose into the pale sky streaked with orange. Not many were gathered in the cemetery to pay their last respects to the strangest, quietest of the knights. I watched as each of the knights said their last farewells.

I hovered over the fire, trusting to the air to hold me aloft. My strength was almost gone, my heart was aching as it strove to keep going. I felt worn out, as if I had run a thousand miles in only a few hours. I was tired, so tired that sleep hovered just out of reach. But it was not sleep, only death.

Tristan's sword was planted at the top of where the mound would be – but instead of buried under heaped earth, his body was being consumed by fire. The smoke dispersed as it rose, blowing away in wisps.

All around me, I was conscious of everything. Of the wind blowing above me, of the beautiful land below me. Of the warmth of the sun, the cool touch of the air. My thoughts were strangely disjointed, and the ache in my chest was a constant thing. I wasn't sure if it was from grief or exhaustion – the latter seemed the more likely.

I saw Arthur kneel down at the side of the fire. He bent his head low, whispered something, then stood and stepped back with a bowed head. Everything was becoming sharper, the colours too bright and everything just too overwhelming. Black pulled at the edges of my sight, but I fought it back.

I swooped down over the fire, letting the body of a rabbit fall from my claws. The result of my last hunt – my hunt for Tristan. It took everything I had to rise back into the air.

I floated just over the fire, the heat wafting up in waves as the air held me up. Gawain glanced up at me, and Vanora looked worried as I dropped a little in the air.

Suddenly I realised how silent the world was. I could hear nothing but my own harsh breathing – not the crackle of the flames, the crying of Vanora's youngest child or the sound of the wind amongst the trees. I felt myself drop lower in the air. My times almost up.

I thought back to the first time that I had met Tristan. My thoughts touched briefly on my family and friends, but their memory was hazy. The clearest among them was Ebony – and I suddenly wondered how she was, and whether she had managed to find her way home from the forest. She was a good horse, one of best I had ever known. I loved her, and truly hoped she was fine.

I started to lose vision. I felt my wings grow weaker until I could no longer stay in the air. I fell through the air, the air that had so often held me up now letting me go. My last sight was of the sky, tinged pink and orange, with the smoke from Tristan's body rising into the heavens.

Then my world went black as I felt the sudden searing heat hit my feathers as I fell to my death. It seemed fitting that I, too, should burn with Tristan. Pain was distant and dull, hardly touching my thoughts at all. I knew this was my death, but I wasn't afraid. I knew it was time.

I could still remember that day when I flew above them - the knights and Arthur on Badon Hill, ready to fight and die for what they believed in. Tristan had loved me, and he had known I had loved him in return. He would be waiting for me, waiting for me to catch up. Together we would go into the second life, and we would never again be separated.

It was a good thought to hold as the darkness drifted over me.