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“That you, Parlus?”

Parlus’ heart sank. He popped open the cylinder and then opened the door.

“Sir.”

The prefect had already changed out the curtains and banners. Blue and gold. The new emperor’s colors.

Parlus held up the roll of paper, still sealed with the symbol of the prefect of Norbucum. “News.”

“Your boy?”

Parlus opened it, read, nodded. “Looks like he made it up there. He’s asked for his final cara propita. I think he’s earned it.”

“Why can’t he get it from Flairius?”

Parlus’ face fell as he read the final lines. “Sir⁠—”

The Lordinius prefect had settled comfortably, but he sat forward at Parlus’ tone.

Parlus looked up.

“Norbucum’s gone, sir. Aleteria has lost the north.”

EPILOGUE

The girl is eighteen, a child and a woman all at once. She is thinner than she was but her muscles have grown harder, the results of a winter of want and work. She winds her long hair and threads it through itself, tying a knot, but as soon as she picks up the ax the hair begins to shimmy loose, so that by the third thwack of metal biting wood, the blond tresses dance freely in the wind. She growls, as if her hair were a living thing, rebellious on purpose, but the boy appears behind her and gathers it up. She holds still while he ties it with a leather, then resumes her chopping. The nights are cold in spring, and they’ll need to keep the fires burning longer, now that several of the sheep are ready to lamb. The babies could come at any time.

The boy picks up the bucket he’d set down and moves towards the corral, dumping the refuse over the low fence. If the pig wanted to escape, he could easily ram it down, but the pig is as lazy and spoiled as he is fat. When the boy takes the sheep to graze, the pig follows like a dog, snuffling up acorns, returning home to feasts of fish heads and rotting vegetables.

The boy is as tall and strong as he ever was, but the hard winter has brought a softness to him. Absent the scowl of survival that he wore for most of his life, the natural curve of his mouth turns up at the corners, giving the impression that he is continually distracted by an inside joke. Perhaps he is. They survived the winter, after all. They found tubers in the soil; bags of seeds in the corner of a hut, torn open by rodents and half-consumed, but the other half they planted, and now pale green sprouts are stretching towards the sky. They repaired the longhouse and two of the huts, and now one is a smokehouse and the other holds the animals. The pig they found rooting one day and was easy to catch, the sheep they found over a series of months, always a few wandering the grassy knolls or trapped in a hedge, but they lured them in with food and warmth and the safety of the boy with his big stick to nudge them. Perhaps that is the joke that makes him look like he is always on the verge of smiling. They were warriors once, and now they are farmers. They fought Sculpae and Dinaeii and Caerdeneii; they defied Aleteria; they survived a Faenish winter. And now the boy is in charge of combing the sheep.

The girl will be in charge of the slaughtering, when it happens. There were many talks, in the long, cold winter, tucked together for warmth. Rumors from the west float in on travelers’ breezes: the tribes are gathering. Clans that hated each other for centuries have set aside their differences to drive out the invaders. The north has fallen. What that means and whose north and which invaders is anybody’s guess. They have their valley, a well full of water. Perhaps someday, they’ll figure out how to beat their weapons into plows. The girl, thankfully, knew how to skin a deer, to work it into a fur; the boy was very good at killing it. But in the darkness, where the fire’s shadows could hide their faces, the boy confessed: he still hated the blood. He had never grown inured to it, the way his old companions had. He hoped to never see blood again. They were still hiding then. But slowly, as the winter sunk to its worst and worked its way back towards spring, they moved towards something different.

“Running a farm takes kindness as well as strength,” the girl had insisted. “Animals need care. Crops need to be tended. When it comes time to it, I’ll do the killing. I’m strong enough for both of us.”

“Does that mean I’ll need to be kind enough for the both of us?” the boy had asked, and the gentle humor that was new to her understanding of him warmed her more than the heat of his arms around her.

“Yes, you’re more equipped than I am.”

“You’re kind.”

The girl’s incredulous look earned a proper laugh, and the boy held her tighter.

He doesn’t need her to be kind. He doesn’t need her to be strong. He simply needs her. And she needs him, not for safety or protection, but because she is a creature born of wildness and revenge, and he is gentle.

She wants to watch his eyes take in a sunrise. She wants his fingers to coax pea tendrils onto their stakes. She wants to see his face when the lambs hobble their first steps, to let those babies feel the warmth of his strong hands rubbing straw and life into their newborn bodies. He is a boy who has never been allowed to be one. And she is a girl that knows how to save him.

They need each other if they’re going to survive.