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‘Thank you,’ he breathed, voice choked. ‘Thankyou …’
And I could have told him it was his victory as much as it was mine, could have told him I would have been dead without him, could have told him every drop of red I’d aimed at her had been drawn in his name and his name only …
But I had the rest of eternity to find those words.
So I held him tight instead as we stood there in the unnatural quiet – held him and breathed the scent of his solid body and tried to believe, truly believe, that it was over.
It was mere minutes later, just as I was gathering courage to make my way back into the battle raging outside, that my parents swept into the hall – covered in blood but very muchalive, the expressions on their faces as good as any victorious blare of battle horns.
Rosalind gave a triumphant ‘Ha!’ at the sight of the Mother’s corpses, hugging me close before venturing deeper into the hall. Agenor, more surprisingly, merely blinked at Melinoë and the gash in her throat, then whipped around to Creon and me with a strange urgency in his expression. ‘Who?’
Creon nodded at me before I could figure out what he was even asking. ‘Em.’
‘Ah.’ My father’s broad shoulders sagged half an inch as he sent me a smile that was somehow watery and proud at once. ‘Good. Good.Excellent.’
I wanted to ask what in the world that was supposed to mean but didn’t get the chance; Lyn came soaring into the hall the next moment, letting out a fierce cry of triumph as she landed. One of her shoulders was soaked with blood, and claw marks on her other arm suggested hounds and narrow escapes. But she hugged me as if pain did not exist, and the happy tears in her eyes made me believe it for a moment – damn the dead, damn the injured …
We hadwon.
The full realisation still wouldn’t land.
Tared strode in moments after Lyn, sword in his hand, the widest grin I’d ever seen on his face; Naxi bounced through the gates a minute later, sticking out her tongue at corpses at every turn. Rosalind was saying practical things about bringing in the wounded. Agenor was summarising the battle to me or Creon or no one in particular, something about half of the Mother’s army defecting as soon as the Alliance’s magic was unblocked and made the fae forces realise their High Lady was beyond the point of being harmed by anyone …
Their voices seemed to slide off me like dewdrops off leaves. As if I was barely eventhere, amongst the bones and the rubble,the ruined remains of the Mother’s throne still towering over the hall.
More of our allies came pouring in through the open doorway. Alves faded out to return with straw mats, blankets, wounded bodies. The smell of blood mingled with the atmosphere of dazed triumph, hysterical relief somehow mixing effortlessly with the pragmatic bustle ofmorework to be done; healers appeared out of nowhere, fae with their blue magic and nymphs with their potions, everyone around me seeming to know exactly where they were needed. I caught a glimpse of Rosalind, attending to a group of injured humans. Agenor had vanished to deal with captives or gods knew what else army commanders had to deal with.
I asked a passing fae healer if there was anything I could do to help. She looked at me as if I’d suggested I’d do a little dance to cheer up the wounded and informed me they were managing perfectly well, no need for me to exert myself, and why didn’t I find a slightly more pleasant place to enjoy the fruits of my work?
Was that what I was expected to do, now – celebrate while the dead were buried?
I wanted to ask Creon but found he’d left the hall as well. Gone to have a word with some of the Mother’s captured army commanders, someone informed me.
I retrieved Feather from a helpful alf who would not stop excitedly shaking my hand for two minutes, then floundered to the exit, past the beds of moaning and howling injured. Delwin was there, missing half a leg, a woman by his side who resembled him so closely she had to be his sister. Thorir lay sprawled out on a mat a bit farther down the aisle, trading quips with his healer as she patiently stitched his guts back into his torso. Helenka, the nymph queen of Tolya, was carried in as I slipped out of thehall, bleeding all over, the hair of a decapitated fae head still clutched in one of her clawlike hands.
In the antechamber of the hall, people sat kneeling by the bodies of their friends and family, sobbing quietly over them.
I didn’t dare to look any of them in the eyes as I hurried out.
The world outside was a mess, nothing like the city I’d left behind on my first visit: collapsed walls, scorched flowerbeds, human bodies dangling from the White Hall’s façade. Here, too, people were buzzing around wherever I looked, quickly applying bandages, chaining up fae. The humans of our army seemed to be going from door to door looking for survivors and bringing the bittersweet news of the city’s liberation; here and there, groups of terrified citizens huddled together as fae repaired the first of their houses with sweeping bursts of blue.
I ran into Edored and Nenya a few corners away from the city centre. He was carrying her through the rubble-filled streets, rambling about his plans to chase down a few fae to make up for missing the battle; in his arms, Nenya was no longer waxen in colour, rather looking like she ought to be quite capable of walking again. They both beamed at me when they noticed me. The blood mark had vanished with the Mother’s death, they reported, and more healers from the various magical isles would soon arrive.
‘That’s wonderful,’ I weakly said, unwilling to admit I’d forgotten about that cursed mark entirely.
‘All thanks to you, Noisy Death,’ Edored said, throwing me a broad grin that looked like a hand-less salute and walking on.
I watched them until their voices died away – Nenya protesting that surely her feet would be able to carry her now and Edored claiming for the first time in his life that he’d rather be safe than sorry – and felt strangely hollow for reasons I couldn’t pinpoint entirely.
A column of smoke near the edge of the city drew my attention. Arriving at the lily wall, I found Tared, Lyn, and a handful of other red-haired individuals bustling around a dozen hastily erected pyres, burning the bodies of the phoenixes who had fallen in battle. A child’s cry erupted from a smouldering heap of ashes just as I rounded the corner, and Lyn bent over to pick up the newly born phoenix from the embers, swaddling them neatly in a swath of cloth. On the other side of the pyres, people were setting up rows and rows of cribs with quiet efficiency.
Tared noticed me as he turned to haul a new corpse from the rather unceremonious pile by the wall. Shirt unbuttoned, arms and face covered in soot stains, he vaguely resembled a miner after a long day of work – but there was no weariness in his movements as he carried a dead red-haired boy to the nearest pile of wood, then turned, wiping his hands on his equally smudged trousers.
‘Afternoon, Em.’ His skewed grin hid a spark of concern that barely touched his voice. ‘Coming to take a look at the bakery?’
Lyn tossed a handful of fire at him from the other side of the street. He ducked to avoid it without even having looked at her.
‘They trust you with their dead even though you’re treating their revival like grilling dinner?’ I said, glancing at the other phoenixes. None of them even seemed to be keeping an eye on the one alf in their midst – unusual, after the way I’d seen them keep their distance from everyone else in our army camp.
