I want to weep with it.
I feel like a lost child.
I stand there for three full breaths, staring at the ground. Trying to control the flood of emotion washing over me.
When, at last, I have mastered it, I make my way to my horse, not knowing what comes next or where to go. To my vassals, I suppose, those who remain. To the burial of those who do not.
I try not to let that make me feel hollow.
Behind me, the wedding is concluding, orders are being given, solemn vows made. We will break camp and withdraw – both armies will – as a sign of good faith.
The war is over.
And everyone has what they want – or so the kings are saying, and so I’m sure Lady Fliad agrees.
I have done my part. And it’s no one’s fault but mine if I shattered my own heart while doing it.
I reach the horse’s head and rub his forelock, my eyes still downcast. He’s recovering from the run, but I’ll have to be gentle with him now. He can’t be pushed faster than a walk.
I lean my head against his. I have this terrible, cracked feeling as if I might break in two if I look up. As if everyone will see then that I’ve bought what I came to buy and it’s nothing but ashes in my hands.
I reach the stirrup, meaning to mount, but there’s a boot in it.
And I can’t keep looking down if I want to know who is taking my horse, so I look up.
I’m not a man who weeps. Or at least, I am not supposed to be.
Iva is sitting in my saddle. She’s smiling gently in that way she does.
I don’t know how she slipped away even faster than I did. I don’t care. I barely dare to breathe. What if I exhale too forcefully and she blows away like mist?
She kicks her boot from the stirrup and offers me a hand and I freeze in place.
“I’m riding with you,” she says simply. “You have more holes in your coat and they need mending.”
I look down stupidly. I do have holes. Slashes. A bloodstain.
“Unless that’s not what you want?” she sounds timid suddenly and there’s to be none of that.
I launch myself into the saddle behind her, wrap an arm around her waist possessively, and whisper in her ear, only for her.
“Come away from this place, and be my bride, and we two shall know true peace.”
She wiggles in my embrace enough to face me, sending tiny thrills through me from my abdomen to the tips of my ears, and she smiles that devastating smile, and she doesn’t say anything. She just lets me look into those eyes full of hope and home and all the things I keep tight by my spine loosen, and I feel like I’m taking a breath for the first time. It’s a breath full of Iva and I want to breathe nothing else forever.
EPILOGUE
HALDUR OAKENSEN
Istand by the edge of the lake and listen to the sound of the reeds in the wind, of the water lapping against the bank, of our horses cropping grass. A duck lands in a flurry of wings and water and I am at peace. I let the air into my lungs. It lingers there before I release it again. I let the wind flow through my hair and tangle my cloak.
Far away, up the hill, is Castle Tor. We’re rebuilding the walls and rethatching the roof and cleaning the brambles in the garden. We’re fixing all the things that fell into disrepair while the men were gone and the women held on grimly to keep for us what little they could.
I’ve brought home just twenty vassals. The five who survived the journey to retrieve Iva and Fliad, and the fifteen who survived waiting for us with the main army. So very few. Too few.
But we will rebuild, and we will sow peace into our fields, and build faithfulness into our walls, and bake love into our bread. I breathe in hope with every breath, and it feels too good, too sweet, as if it might be gone in a moment.
I press my eyes tightly closed in this stolen moment away from it all and I try to tell myself it’s here to stay, even if that’s impossible to believe.
