Oh the travels and travails of our hero...
Elaine has been away for so long, but finally makes it home. She brings a warning of a dangerous new enemy, the shingamu, that she encountered at Occi.
But most importantly she gets to see her friends and family, some of them just require a little more work to find.
Spoilers below ...
Elaine uses her lowest skill, The Stars Never Fade to grant some more years to several folks. She learns it has a 2-week cooldown. Each person's curse is unique to them. And white dove starts to get frustrated with her. At the end he just yells a curse ("DOORS!") at someone before flying away.
In return for these grants of more years to empire she gets women made into full citizens. A stern talking to from Night, who said he could have helped her with this in a better manner.
Her Phoenix companion continues to grow. Toward the end of the novel, we find out that Julius is in the Fae realm. Artemis (who loves him), Auri (her Phoenix), and Autumn (her teenage healing apprentice/merchant friend) join Elaine.
Autumn immediately breaks the no agreements rule, repeatedly, however it gets them to Julius and eventually they escape the realm. One of the trades was for her name and now Autumn is Amber.
As they exit the realm, we hear something from one of the interludes that indicates we are about to have a massive time jump.
This is confirmed when we read Night's interlude taking place 1, 10, 100, 1000, and finally 10000 years after her disappearance. At which point he becomes emperor himself.
Hopefully he and Elaine will get to visit in the future. I'm sure a meetup with Iona and her Ice Wyvern are also in the future.