I unlocked the cell, but Gwendolyn didn’t walk from it. She knelt low and pressed her forehead to my feet.
Outside the dungeons I told Osric I needed to be alone, and I walked up through my palace to the room that had been mine, and before that my parents’. They had loved each other in this room, without being bonded, and they had died here on the same day, together, without being bonded.
I’d had Dren and Galia’s belongings removed so now the room was bare. I sat on the balcony and watched the stars. I thought of my nation and felt exhausted by the very thought of what lay ahead. I was sure, though. In my heart I was sure about what needed to be done, and there was comfort in that, at least.
It was Thorne who eventually found me. He pulled a chair beside mine and sat with me, watching the sky quietly.
‘When do you leave?’ I asked.
‘Tomorrow morning. We need to get the girls home, and Ambrose is determined to rectify Vjort.’
‘What will he do with it?’
‘Clear it out. He told me last night that he doesn’t want a single soul left inside its walls. That it will be forbidden to enter – at least until the memory of the violence there doesn’t taint it anymore.’
‘He’s really going to change things, isn’t he?’
‘He says that by not putting our faith in kindness, we let it die.’
I smiled, thinking it very like what I had come to believe about the warders. ‘I should find Finn and tell her how much she annoys me before she goes.’
Thorne laughed a little, but it was just a breath, really. ‘She … went ahead. You might not see her for a while.’
‘Oh. How is she?’ I asked.
He shrugged. Looked at me. ‘She loves you. She said to tell you.’
‘And I her.’
Thorne smiled and nodded as though that was right. ‘It’s the girls you should be more worried about. They’re already weeping at the thought of saying goodbye to you.’
I was dreading it myself.
‘What will you do here?’ he asked. ‘The city … it smells of grief and pain.’
I closed my eyes. Felt his hand on my shoulder, then on the back of my neck. ‘I’ll just do my best to help it heal.’
‘Falco, you know that if you call me, I will be here. Any time, and always.’ There was something fierce in his eyes as I met them. ‘There are very few people left in this world that I care so deeply for. You know that, don’t you? Call me and I will come.’
I smiled, and was astonished to feel my eyes shifting to match his pale blue. ‘Thank you, brother. The same goes for you. But I’ve never had to do this alone before. Isn’t it about time I tried?’
There were unshed tears in his eyes. ‘No, Falco. No. It’s not about doing things alone. Nobody should have to do things alone. It’s about people, and family, and love –’
‘Okay, yes,’ I said quickly, pulling him into a hug. ‘You’re right. So tell me what’s wrong.’
‘Nothing,’ he murmured, but he held me tight for a long time.
‘Gods almighty,’ I said after a while. ‘Do the berserkers know their king is such a softy?’
‘Shut it,’ he growled.
‘Now you’re sounding more like your da.’
He laughed.
‘What a man, huh? Think your ma will marry me, now he’s gone a second time?’
‘You’re an idiot.’
‘So I’m told.’
Later I crept into the bedroom I’d had Ella and Sadie settled into. They were sleeping in the same bed, while Roselyn and Erik slept in chairs by the door. I didn’t know exactly what that poor group had gone through together, but they clearly didn’t want to be parted.
I sat on the edge of the bed, shoving Sadie over so I could lie beside them.
‘Ow! Fal.’
‘Move over then, fatty.’
She grumbled but moved aside. Ella reached over her and took my hand. ‘Told you.’
‘What?’
‘That you were a chrysalis.’
The three of us stayed like that until morning. It was the best sleep I’d had in weeks. In the morning I kissed them goodbye, thanked Ava and Ambrose as profusely as I possibly could, and then I waved as their carriages rattled out of sight.
Osric and Brathe were at either side of me on the steps. I hadn’t expected Brathe to be here, so soon after losing Inga, but he was and I was grateful.
‘Let’s get to work, boys,’ I said. ‘We have a country to rebuild.’
‘Should we not wait for the Sparrow, Majesty?’ Brathe asked. ‘She will want her people taken care of, and a say in the ruling of Kaya, surely?’
I shook my head, my heart aching. ‘Her people are our people. We are one, and so we will act as such. All who fought for the Sparrow are welcome here, or welcome to return to what remains of their forest. And as for Isadora, I don’t think we’ll be seeing her for a while.’
‘Why, Majesty?’
I smiled, eyes lifting to the sky. ‘Because she’s free.’
Epilogue
Roselyn
I am a long way away when news reaches us in the north of Emperor Falco’s announcement. I am ‘as far north as any man or woman can wander, are they not made of ice themselves’, as Erik puts it.
The castle where the hirðmenn grew up sits perched on a jagged sea cliff. The icebergs in the water are blue with cold, and the sky dances violet and green some nights. It is just as he described it in his stories, or perhaps more beautiful. We sit and watch these lights together often, drinking wine and speaking softly, just as we are when Erik’s sister delivers the announcement. One year from the day Falco reclaimed his throne and began to rebuild his nation. One year from the day Erik changed my life.
After Falco crawled into bed with Ella and Sadie that night, Erik and I crept out, sure of their safety while the surprisingly capable Emperor of Kaya watched over them. We found ourselves in a dark corridor, much like the one in Vjort where it all began.
‘Can I escort you to your room, Lady?’ he’d asked me, and I’d nodded.
With our feet clipping against the marble – what a strange building, made of strange smooth stone – we reached the room I’d been put in for my stay in Sancia. The Pirenti folk were leaving in the morning, and though I felt bad for thinking it, I would be glad to leave this city with all its sadness. Poor darling Finn had lost both her brothers, and I hadn’t known that night that she too had been lost.
We reached the door to my room and paused. ‘Goodnight,’ I said.
‘Lady Roselyn,’ Erik stalled me, ‘I must ask you something.’
I waited, thinking obsessively as I had been of those last moments with Thorne, and the look in his eyes as our fingers touched.
‘Would it please you to have me as your servant?’
I blinked. ‘Pardon?’
‘I … have a hole in my heart, of your very making, Lady. I must beg you to take me as your guard, for my life is yours and I shall follow you to the world’s end.’
My skin burst into flames. But through that shock I understood that this was guilt, given voice. ‘Erik,’ I said, ‘you owe me nothing. Please believe that. I could never … never ask you to give up your life.’
He shook his head, his black eyes feverish. ‘And you must believe that I had no life before you.’
My eyelids slammed shut. I shook my head – this was too much. He didn’t know what he was saying, didn’t know how disloyal even this conversation made me feel – even the thought of such a conversation.
‘Forgive me,’ he said in that deep, melodious voice.
‘Guilt is no reason to change your life.’
‘It is not guilt that moves me, Lady,’ he murmured.
‘Erik … I cannot … I have nothing to offer.’
‘Then I shall make you a vow,’ Erik told me. ‘I will never ask of you anything, Lady. Never. But I will follow and serve and protect. Because that is what you deserve, what your courage has earned. That and more.’
And in that dark corridor I simply hadn’t known what to do except nod. From then on he followed me, stayed silently by my side, a shadow, a presence, his gentle kindness a thing of deep and lasting comfort. I no longer felt so alone, and if I experienced guilt or disloyalty I hushed it by reminding myself that this man simply wanted to protect what he hadn’t protected one night so long ago. And surely Thorne couldn’t begrudge me this simple company, in a world so cold?
Now Erik and I sit in the far, far north, watching the glorious lights in the sky. The chill of the air makes me think, of course, of my husband. My thoughts never stray too far from my nieces, either, and we will return to them soon, Erik and I. We will return to my son, who has lost the greatest thing one can lose and yet still carries on. We will go back to him, because closeness is what matters, but I wanted to see where Erik came from, and how he came to be so sweet. His sisters live here with their husbands and have all turned out to be as kind as my guard.
Leerie, his youngest sister, is the one speaking Falco’s announcement now. ‘“Choice”, his Majesty has proclaimed in response to his decision, “is the most important thing in this world”.’ Her eyes are lit with curiosity.
‘Thank you, love,’ Erik says to her as she rushes off to share the news with the rest of the castle. He turns to me, smiling a little. ‘He has turned out to be a worthy husband for you after all, if you change your mind, Lady.’
I blush and shake my head, then realise he is joking.
‘Will we leave in the morning? I imagine you must be eager to get home to the fortress after news like this.’
I am distracted by the purple in the sky – just like the purple of Ava’s eyes. Belatedly, I remember to reply. ‘I’m not sure I’m ready to leave yet, Erik.’ Affairs of politics have never been part of my life, nor do I wish them to be.
‘As you wish, Lady.’
The words open something within me that has long been closed. I ask, unsure why, ‘Am I intruding in your home, Erik? Would you have brought me here had I not asked?’
His mouth falls open. ‘Intruding? No, Lady. No. I … have wished to bring you to my home since the first time I told you of it, back in a misty valley filled with wild horses.’
My heart starts pounding. ‘But that was … that was before Vjort.’
‘Aye.’
‘You’re confused, Erik. After Vjort was when you decided to offer your life to me.’
He smiles, and in this glowing light his strange face-tattoos look beautiful. ‘No, Lady,’ Erik says softly, ‘I am not confused.’
I shake my head, turning from him.
‘Would you like me to explain?’ he asks. ‘I mostly get the feeling you don’t wish me to speak the truth, content to remain in your memories.’
‘I am.’
‘Very well. Forgive me.’
I warn myself not to speak, but speak I do. ‘What is the explanation?’
He hesitates. ‘It’s just … that I love you. Since the light of a campfire and your hair so red within it. Since then and always. I will love you, from afar, until the day I die, without needing or wanting or asking for anything in return.’
I stare at the black water, moving colours reflected on its surface. I think of the veil and my husband beyond it, and I think of the night spent learning that the protection of those I love is a greater purpose than grief or misery or being a wife. I think of the love in my heart, so much love, for my husband and son, for my brother and sister-in-law, for my nieces. I think of all this love and I realise there is still space enough for more. There is always space for more. And my husband would never begrudge me that.
I look at Erik and say, ‘Thank you. It is a privilege to be loved by you, Erik.’
His eyes fall shut and he shakes his head. ‘My Lady …’
I don’t say anything more, and nor does he, but my heart whispers perhaps one day.
Ambrose
The tasks that become impossible without hands are innumerable. The troubles in my life have increased a thousandfold. Simplicities become complex. Easy becomes difficult. I rely so much on other people, when once I was utterly independent. There is very little dignity left. I wake in the night certain I still have hands, that I can feel them and use them. So often I reach to pick something up, only to knock it over with a clumsy stump instead.
The things I can do without my hands are far fewer, but I think they mean more. They are worth more, because they take so much more effort.
Things like eating, drinking and dressing. Things like holding my wife, and touching her. Like helping my daughters saddle and care for their ponies. Things like facing my enemies and demanding not their fear, but their respect.
I am forty-six years old, and I have reigned longer than any Pirenti ruler has in the recorded history of the world. Before my mother, the throne was a bloody place, quickly won and lost by king after king after king. A man was lucky to survive a handful of years on that throne. And I used to believe that my longevity was because I was a man that none could kill. Because I fought and defeated any who threatened my power, protecting my family and my rule.
But here is what I know now. Here is what my family has helped me learn.
I am the longest reigning King of Pirenti not because I can make my people fear me, but because I have made them love me.
Laws are changing. Death penalties no longer exist. I am gathering a panel of people who can decide together what kind of punishment befits a crime – such decisions should not fall to one person. Vjort holds no souls and no sway over us anymore. Its barracks have been abolished, its soldiers dispersed across the country where they can’t feed off each other’s prejudices and violence. They have been given other jobs, peaceful jobs, because we have no war to fight, no battles to win.
Nothing so important is ever easy, but because of my hands I have come to see easy as lazy. I will see a change before I die, of that I am determined. And when anyone asks me why I am doing this, I simply say that my wife inspired me to be brave enough to be the first of a kind.
Ava
In Ella and Sadie’s room we have built a kind of annex around the window so that Ella can sleep within it, the cold air from outside keeping her temperature down during the night, while Sadie is kept warm. It was the only way to keep them in the same room, for they refused to be parted.
After hearing the news of Falco’s announcement, I follow the steps up and up to my daughters’ room, that I might climb into the annex and huddle beside them. They’ve turned it into a cosy fort, its walls hung with thin gossamer material and the ever-present moths. Usually they giggle and whisper and tell stories until Sadie gets too cold and then goes to her own bed, but tonight I find them silent.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, squeezing my body into the small space left to me.
‘Nothing,’ Sadie says.
‘We miss Rose and Erik,’ Ella explains.
I sigh, stroking their hair. ‘They won’t always be north. They’d never be parted from you for long.’
‘Ma, I have to tell you something,’ Ella says, voice barely more than a whisper. Sadie shakes her head, looking out the window.
‘Okay,’ I say, concerned.
‘I’m wolven.’
I frown, searching her pretty face.
‘And it means you might hate me, because it makes me open the window.’
‘Hate you? Ella –’
‘I always open the window.’ She starts crying and it scares me to my core. ‘I opened it that night and that’s why it happened. That’s how he found her.’
‘Who?’
‘Aunt Rose,’ Sadie murmurs.
‘I opened the window,’ Ella cries, pressing her face to my chest.
I shook my head, holding her tight. ‘No, my darling. No. That is not your fault. You must never blame yourself for the actions of others, nor think that anything you do could deserve violence or cruelty. Sometimes people hurt each other, for any number of reasons, but that will never be y
our responsibility to bear.’
‘How do we stop them?’
‘With generosity and kindness and courage. Is that not what your Aunt Rose believes?’
They nod.
‘She loves you both so much. We all do. Never think I could hate you, darling, no matter what you do or what you are. Never.’
‘Even if I hurt people one day?’
I frown, stroking her face. It scares me that she thinks it a possibility. But the answer is obvious and true. ‘Even then,’ I tell my daughters, knowing that one of them will never be like other people. She will be different, her life the more dangerous for it. But I will die to make this world the kind of place that doesn’t harm those who are different. I’ll die before I let my daughter be treated as another young girl was. A girl born different, with hair and skin so ashen that she was brutalised into a creature who didn’t understand love. Not until it was taught to her. My daughters will not need to be taught love – they will know it, always.
Thorne
I am lying on a rock in a sea cave, thinking about the day we won Sancia back from the warders. I think of it often. In this moment I am reliving a conversation, because that is what I mostly do now. Relive things that have happened in the past. I think I am reliving this particular memory because I just received a courier message from Ambrose calling me home to discuss the Emperor of Kaya’s new decree.
My mind wanders first to that very same Emperor, and how proud I am of him. What he has managed to do in one year is vast. The city has been rebuilt and restructured, and every soul who was loyal to the Sparrow is now also loyal to Falco, if only for his tireless efforts to integrate them into society and his impassioned loyalty to their leader, Isadora. My thoughts wander from that to rest on the farewell with my father, and to my mother’s passage north, almost to the ice itself, with a gentle hirðmenn. And, last, it wanders to the conversation I had with my uncle that day a year ago, after the dust settled and we were alone in the kitchens.
‘What was he like?’ I asked.