EPILOGUE

It is said that in the year 34EA, in the very middle of the summer season, a powerful earthquake rocked the Mist Continent as far as the Gold Shore in Avel and as high as the scholar-city of Breych. This cataclysmic earthquake, whilst capsizing much of the land surrounding it, heralded the rise of the King Without Crown, who went on to build the greatly peaceful and greatly influential Vetrisian Empire and who, by scheme or by purpose, has lost his name to the sands of time.

But in what scraps remain of the seminal history annals entitled Recordings and Observations from the War of Trees by Yorl Farspear-Ashwalker, there resides significantly more detail on the event, and it is as follows: in 34EA, on Highmoon day 17, a category three earthquake gripped the Mist Continent for exactly seven seconds, the epicenter of which was the beneather city-fortress of Pala Orias. When it subsided, there were approximately 142 aftershocks over the course of five days. Yet this ushered in a prominent era of peace for the major nations of Arathess, politically spearheaded by the newly formed Vetrisian Empire, and such a time of growth and prosperity as we now live in is referred to as “the Contentment.”

—Excerpt from Archsage Tessal Miroux’s dissertation, entitled A History of the War of Trees, or, an Attempt to Trace the Five-Hundred-Year-Old Origins of Arathess’s Great Change.

…

Lucien,

Try not to get too angry at the polymath who’s delivering this to you. I asked him to. He’s just the messenger. Shoot me, if you must. With an arrow of love. Ha-ha!

It’s strange, isn’t it? Trying to write to someone you talk to all the time. I feel like I can be much more serious in letters—it’s the lack of body language options. Or maybe the lack of my body, period. How can I make jokes if all I have is ink and not my wonderful bosoms? Oh, does a lady not speak of her bosoms in a letter? I’m terrible at this. Send me back to Y’shennria for five more years.

I’m writing this, mostly, because I’m nervous. And maybe that’s a bad idea, because you know me—I get to blabbing when I’m anxious. Too many words, but none of them with any meaning.

So. I’ll cut myself off and cut to the point.

I love you.

Did you know that? Even if you did, I wanted to say it one last time.

But no one is ever really gone.

I wish you the happiest of lives. A long life, too. But not too long. You know how I feel about eternity.

Wherever you go, I will be.

Yours,

Elizera Y’shennria

Sitting in his chair at the high table of the negotiations room of the palace, Lucien d’Malvane felt as though the Pendronic ambassador was looking at him with the eyes of a hungry hyena.

“Surely Your Highness is aware he is approaching twenty-two years of age now.” The ambassador licked his lips uneasily. “The Golden Empress wishes to express her high regard of you, and of your ancient bloodline, and begs you consider her daughter—”

“And I’m very flattered, to be regarded so highly by the Golden Empress.” Lucien wove his voice in the careful silks politics required. “But I’m sure I’ve sent out more than one notice of the dissolution of the kingdom of Cavanos and its noble hierarchy, sir. All noble families are in the process of being formally stripped of their lands and birthright, and the assets redistributed among the commonwealth. This, of course, includes the royal bloodline.”

The ambassador’s fine red mustache twitched as he made a small bow in his chair, ruffled collar barely containing his hidden disdain. “Of course, Your Highness.”

“Then, if the royal family is dissolved,” the former prince began slowly, but not too slowly as to offend, “it seems there’s very little need to call me ‘Your Highness,’ am I not correct?”

“You are, your—” This time, the ambassador caught himself, and he coughed into his sleeve. “Your Excellency.”

The tall, pale beneather sitting against the wall among the ambassador’s silk-clad guards rolled his ruby eyes. Lucien prayed to whatever god was left that Malachite could hold his tongue long enough for the former prince to drill the facts of the new Vetrisian Empire into the ambassador’s head.

“Ah-ah.” Lucien put up one finger and waved it playfully at the ambassador. “Excellency is still a noble title.”

“Th-Then—” The ambassador stuttered. “What should I call you, sir?”

“Sir will do nicely, I think.” Lucien smiled at him brightly.

The man practically went beet down to his boots. “B-But—but you are the ki—”

“Head of State,” Lucien interrupted him smoothly, a chuckle on his lips. “Though my people do still cling to tradition. Have you heard? They call me the ‘King Without a Crown.’ Silly, really. And so…theatrical.”

Lucien could swear he heard Malachite scoff a soft “you love it,” but the rest of the room was quiet, uneasy at the unheard of shift of etiquette. The constant knocking of hammers on the palace walls and the deafening hiss of white mercury machines was but a dull undercurrent of noise here in the negotiations room, the shouts of workers and the stomps of the metallic matronics doing heavy lifting ringing far louder along the half-finished marble halls.

Lucien stood and made his way to the window, his black robe sweeping out behind him. He touched one finger to the sill, the paint still fresh. He’d ordered that the palace be the last thing to be rebuilt—housing and infrastructure first. And to his joy, the city had blossomed in the three years since. Well…since the end.

He shook himself out, holding his wooden hand tightly to his side.

New Vetris had sprung up around the crater of the palace slowly, but also in a blink. Time worked strangely in that way—constant negotiations, drawing up papers and trade requests and refugee inventories, sleepless nights of city planning with Fione, with Yorl, with the People’s Council. It all blurred together, melded and stretched and compressed until he was standing at the window today, in the fresh sunlight of spring, watching the city hum below. The horizon still looked different with the Red Lady gone, with the temple’s spire much smaller. Sometimes he’d blink and expect it to be there, wished it to be there, if only because that meant she would be there, too.

Time, reversed enough to give them time.

He scoffed softly under his breath.

Of all the rebuilding and restructuring New Vetris had accomplished together, the People’s Council was his proudest achievement. It was comprised of sixteen representatives from every walk of life, elected entirely by the people. The disenfranchised nobles had snuck in their man, of course, but outnumbered fifteen to one, his entrenched opinions barely held much sway. Bribery had tried to happen, naturally, but Fione had made the very prescient suggestion Lucien strip said nobles of their land rights. And so that had begun in earnest. T’was only doable because the nobles’ landed armies had been wiped out in the War of Trees—otherwise, civil war would’ve surely descended.

Lucien smirked to himself. Fate had given him the perfect time to step in and change things.

So, too, had it taken every other happiness from him.

But she’d be proud of him, wouldn’t she?

His sharp onyx eyes fell on the black rosebushes of the former Y’shennria manor, properly trimmed and maintained. It was an orphanage now, for all the children orphaned by the War of Trees, with Lady Y’shennria managing it gladly and well and as warmly strict as could be. He could hear the children faintly shrieking, scrambling about in the yard as they played.

On the difficult nights, Lucien would wander over to the orphanage and pick a single black rose to put in his room, to let the fragrance fill the empty spaces in his bed.

“My apologies, sir.” He turned from the window and back to the ambassador. “I’m afraid I grow weary. Shall we continue this on the morrow? Does midmeal agree with you?”

“Verily.” The ambassador stood, his guards standing to attention with him. “I would appreciate such kindness thoroughly, your—sir.”

“Then.” Lucien nodded and smiled as he swept past him and out of the room. “Farewell for now.”

His boots clipped on the sawdust-strewn marble, joined quickly by another pair with a far longer, lazier stride.

“The Pendrons think they’re so big,” Malachite scoffed at his shoulder. “Just because Varia forgot to touch them during the whole thing.”

Lucien laughed. “To be fair, not even the valkerax want to cross the Redlands.”

“They could’ve just taken the ocean,” Malachite grumbled.

“The ocean is very, very big, Mal.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“So you’ve seen.” Lucien laughed louder. The quiet descended quickly between them. The ocean. He, of course, meant Rel’donas. The Black Archives. That little island full of fond memories. A tender place now in his heart.

Together they walked through the palace, nodding at workmen carrying great loads, chopping and sanding and refitting walls. The two young men passed a particular room being rebuilt—a room that once held old portraits of an older family, and then burned portraits of a family made suddenly much smaller. Lucien had started to forget their faces halfway through year two, his father’s face last, his mother’s first, nothing left behind of them but their blackened skeletons in their beds. They had been terrible rulers but kind parents. Forgiveness, and longing, and gratitude that they were gone enough for him to undo the damage they had done. His family had become but a dust devil in his busy mind—a tremor of a memory.

Lucien was glad, at least, that the ashen smell had gone.

The valkerax were a distant concern in the aftermath. Many had died at the explosion that occurred at the Tree of Souls, and the earthquake afterward. Scattered to the wind after the Bone Tree’s disappearance, it was hard to say what had happened to their remnants. Some people said they sunk down to the bottom of the ocean. Some romantics said they flew up to the sky, to the Blue Giant, and were living on the moon now. In the distant corners of the Star Continent, it was whispered a valkerax with five eyes could be seen flying high on particularly starry nights. But sightings had been few, few enough that it would be years or more before any real threat came of the valkerax, if at all.

Perhaps they’d learned, as Lucien had, to forgive.

“Watch it!” a workman snapped at his fellow, the beam they were attempting to set in the ceiling wavering. Lucien threw out his hand, the fingers instantly black, and the beam righted itself into place.

The workman looked down and waved. “Much obliged, Your Highness!”

“It’s ‘sir’ now,” Lucien insisted up at him, smiling.

“All due respect, sir.” The man chuckled. “You’ll always be ‘Your Highness’ to me.”

“Plucky little shit.” Malachite scoffed. “What do we even pay them for?”

“For their hard work, Mal,” Lucien said patiently. “Now do me a favor and leave me alone for a bit.”

“Depends on where you’re going.”

“The streets. For some air.”

They stopped at the grand front doors of the palace, the entrance hall coated in plaster and ladders and discarded tools. She had walked through this place once, hadn’t she? She must’ve thought the former decadence all so ridiculous.

“Are you going this year?” Malachite’s question rings.

The work-flurry sounds dulled in Lucien’s ears. He meant Rel’donas, again. After the end, Lucien found himself visiting the island once a year, welcomed heartily by Yorl. Lucien gave them information on how he was forming New Vetris each time in exchange for two days’ allowance to roam the Black Archives, though roaming wasn’t solely what he came to do.

He came to count the thirty-second door on the left, in the west hall, facing the ocean. He came to open the door, to dust off the floor and chairs and table, to leave fresh flowers on it. He came to sit on the cot, and watch the ocean, and remember.

Sometimes, in the light, he could still catch the ghost of her scent.

“Maybe,” he answered Malachite. “Maybe not. Depends on how busy I am.”

“You always find time for it,” the beneather muttered. “Somehow.”

Words failed the former prince, sadness succeeding them, and he walked down the steps and out to the lawn.

To call it a lawn still would be a disservice. Where once nobles spent leisurely time walking among the thin, artisanal waterways carved into immaculate grass, a garden had replaced it. The waterways made only to impress now provided great irrigation to a dozen acres of vegetable gardens, flowerbeds, grain fields, and fruit orchards. After he’d entered the ruins of Vetris, after he’d cried enough and shouted enough and stared long enough at the last memories of his childhood, it had been the first thing he converted—a food supply for his people. The fish of Vetris held what survivors he gathered well enough until the first sprouts of quick-growing sugarleaf began to blossom, and then followed the young beans, and the red lentils, and even the weeds between the garden gave them sustenance—bitter dandelion greens and pithy butterbur filling grateful, hungry mouths.

He could scarce believe, somedays, the bounty such a garden had become. He remembered shoveling barrels of manure, of what horses still lived, into fertilizer until his whole body ached. He remembered pulling water up from the broken irrigation channels, carting bucket after bucket under the sweltering sun, Malachite and Yorl and every refugee citizen healthy enough to work at his side. He remembered most keenly the moment they’d realized they had grown enough greenery to supplant the mulch with vegetable chaff. A luxury, truly, that had now become almost laughably commonplace.

He breathed deep the smell of ripening cherries, almond blossoms, swathes of young garlic and green onions and the honey of the beehives just beyond the vegetable garden. Potato flowers grew thick and white, covering the ground in spring snow, and rows of sweet radishes and strawberries had begun to shamelessly peek their rosy countenances out for all to see.

From the scorched soil of hopelessness, they’d together made New Vetris bloom. And so did his heart learn to heal. To move, when it wanted not. To beat, even if all it desired was to stop. What kept him moving, shoveling, eating, breathing, was the thought she’d chide him for thinking such things.

You have a heart in that handsome chest of yours, and you don’t want it? So terribly ungrateful!

He smiled at a daisy, the words coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. But he didn’t want them to stop. They’d be with him for the rest of his life, of that he was sure.

Of that, he hoped desperately.

His fingers wandered of their own accord to the breast pocket of his vest, in which he kept the empty bag. He pulled it out, studying the rough burlap and, most importantly, the golden threads that sloppily stitched out the word Heart on it. The mere sight of the bag and the word brought back a flood of memories, held by the tenuous dam of time and work and distraction.

But the jewelry inside, he had no dam for.

Lucien took them out now: a bracelet of amethysts in the beneather funerary style, and a golden heart locket embossed with stars and the three moons. The locket was so familiar and dear to him, like seeing an old and wonderful friend. The bracelet was a sadder friend, one spoken to in whispers and tears.

He’d found the jewelry on his return to the Tree of Souls. After the great quake subsided, after the surviving valkerax came pouring out of the earth and flew in all directions, freed at last, he’d been the first to lead a party down again. Down to the massive crater that yawned into darkness. Malachite and Fione had convinced him to rest for only an hour, but eventually caved and went with him. Yorl opted to stay with Lysulli and patch the wounds of the surviving soldiers. It was a long trek, and a furious one on his part. He didn’t remember any of it, or even how he navigated, but he remembered how it felt—the searing rush of terror, the frantic praying unending that went through his mind until he stepped foot yet again on Pala Orias.

Or what was left of it.

The ground was still unstable, and Malachite had to hold him back. The bottom of the massive crater was so deep and wide that only the faintest suffusing of light managed to illuminate the destruction. Rock. Nothing but rock, and stone, and dust, for miles in a ruined radius.

But through it, in the center of it, the Tree of Souls still stood.

Tall white branches splayed out, greedily soaking in the light, the sun, as it hadn’t for maybe thousands of years. Magic pulsed beneath its snow bark, rainbow flashes of light traveling up and down and back again. Only the highest golden flowers still peeked from the rubble, white manes and white bones of valkerax crushed beneath.

He’d tried to reach out, to use the Tree’s great imprint of magic to teleport himself to its roots, to the First Root. But it wouldn’t let him. There was a block, an iron door closed between tree and witch, now.

So he tried to walk.

He took four steps, then collapsed from the exhaustion. Malachite hadn’t taken nicely to it, and with Fione’s help, they took him to Pala Amna and rest. In the following weeks of his recovery, and even after, they tried to get him to leave each day—to return to Vetris, to rebuild. After all, Fione said, there was no chance anyone survived. It was just miles of rock, miles of earth.

And besides, her heart was gone.

He’d noticed it the moment he teleported every soldier and friend back to Pala Amna, at her desperate request. The burlap bag in his breast pocket was suspiciously light. And when he opened it, it was empty. Not even the glass shard of the Glass Tree still remained. There was nothing. Not a smear of blood, not a single bit of flesh.

Her heart was gone.

And so was she.

But he wouldn’t accept it. Not until he went back to the First Root and saw for himself.

It was a fevered journey. Malachite was the only one who stayed with him—Varia had come to fetch Fione. He was glad to see his sister, truly, more whole and healed and free of the bone choker, but even she couldn’t pierce the steel around his mind. She was no longer witch. Her magic had gone.

The First Root was gone. Buried under rubble so far down, not even Malachite’s strength could get very far. They dug until they hit a crevice, and then another, and then one incredibly deep and right on top of where she would’ve been. The hot glow of magma at the bottom cauterized his heart shut.

Somewhere between the days and nights that passed of his crying beneath the boughs of the white tree, Malachite found the jewels—her necklace and her bracelet. But not the ring. And that gave him the only hope he could cling to. Her ring—she still had it, maybe. She had said to wait for her.

So he would.

He would, until the end of the world again.

Her heart had disappeared, but so had every other Heartless’s heart. Every single witch lost their Heartless at the same moment he lost her—every bag, every jar, every box. All of them, emptied out in an instant. Every heart magically teleported back into its body, rendering each Heartless human again, the flower-shaped scars on their chests like badges of joy.

“Luc!”

He quickly stuffed the jewels back in the burlap bag and looked up, Varia’s smooth voice ringing over the garden as she caught up with him. Her cheeks were flush with spring and happiness, her black hair long and lustrous as always. It’d taken years for her to recover to this state—to have enough flesh on her bones again to walk, to talk, to laugh. And he was glad of it.

She was still thinner than she had ever been before, a gauntness to her cheeks, and she couldn’t breathe as well as she used to. Her wooden fingers and leg still remained under her gauzy green dress. All traces of her own magic had been wiped away the moment the earthquake happened. She could no more spell a fireball than she could a pebble, and her wooden prosthetics had been unfeeling, drained of her magic. At first, the loss was devastating. She was happy to be with Fione again but seemed listless, and struggled to eat well or sleep well, the loss of magic deep in her.

It was harder still when she had to teach him, struggling and without the ability to demonstrate, how to forge a wooden hand of his own to replace the deadened one, and how to reanimate it with a constant low hum of magic. He figured out the latter mostly on his own, with Nightsinger’s occasional help, and together, the two of them finally managed to breathe enough magic back into Varia’s wooden parts that she could move them again—not nearly as well as if it was her own magic, but enough. That seemed to cheer her, if only a little.

She wasn’t the same, but then again, no one was. They were all new people, in a new world, learning. Magic still remained in Arathess, but different. It was not quite the same dark whisper, but it was there, nonetheless. It was more difficult, deeper, harder to pin down, and all witches in the world had to readjust accordingly. It would take years, perhaps decades, to return to the status quo of magic again, but he knew it’d be better this time. Truer.

He’d refused Varia’s idea of making him a glass eye that moved, too—he wasn’t particularly partial to glass anymore. He preferred his eyepatch, if only because it gave him an intimidating edge in negotiations with foreign lords.

“There you are!” Varia breathlessly smacked her wooden hand on his shoulder, and he staggered at the force. “How did the Pendronic meeting go?”

“Awful. They tried to marry me again.”

“Bastards, the lot of them,” she determined breezily. “Where are you off to?”

“More importantly, why do you need me?” he drawled.

“Because you’re my beloved baby brother, baby brother.” She laughed, head back, the indent marks of the Bone Tree’s choker now nothing more than faded, whitish scars on the skin of her throat.

“Speaking of babies.” He blinked. “How’s my nephew?”

“Oh, fine.” Varia sighed, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “Just fine. They tell you the twos are the worst age, but everybody says three comes around and then you know the true meaning of pain. And sleeplessness.” She smiled at him in that pleading way. “Any chance we could reinstate the royal nannies before then?”

“No,” he said flatly. “You made that child, and now you get to lie in his shit.”

“Woe!” Varia put a hand to her forehead and feigned fainting before instantly bolting upright. “Very well. I’ll tell Fione you heartlessly declined our request for a day off. She’ll be disappointed, but I’m sure Zeran will be overjoyed to get the chance to vomit on us some more.” She paused. “He hugs now, you know.”

“Marvelous. I’ll make an appointment.”

She’d noticed his flinch at the word “heartless.” Of course she had. But even with all her mellowing after the War of Trees, she still had that edge of pride that never allowed her to take back what she said. Though she did tend to apologize more now.

“Sorry, Luc,” she started. “I didn’t mean—” She stopped herself and smiled on his behalf. “Honestly, though, if you keep sneaking out to the city, I’m going to start to think you hate the palace.”

“Never.” He chuckled softly. “It’s just…the memories.”

Varia blinked her dark eyes. His same eyes. Their mother’s eyes. “Right. I get it. That’s why I go out to the Bone Road, you know.”

“I know,” he agreed.

Every month after the end of the War of Trees, Varia would trek out to the Bone Road. At first it was by foot, a hard task with one leg and a cane. But then they found the surviving horses, and it became easier. And then he learned to spell her leg, and it became even easier after that. He wasn’t sure what she did out there, but she insisted she had to do it alone.

He’d asked Fione, and she’d only shaken her head, saying something about offerings. He never went out to the Bone Road when Varia did, but he did once go a week after her visit, and found the hundreds of graves spread out over the marsh—every single one, the new ones from the War of Trees and the old ones from the Sunless War—newly and neatly cleaned of moss with a brush and salt, and each adorned with a little bouquet of fresh wildflowers.

Penance, he supposed. Or her way of doing it. To watch over the dead—the ones she killed, and the ones who killed in the service of their family all those years ago.

The d’Malvane siblings watched the gardeners go about their business for a moment, the air laden with heavy honey scent, before Varia put a hand on his shoulder.

“You’ll come for dinner tonight. Fione’s making some sort of heartfelt stew abomination, and I’m terrible at suffering alone.”

“She’s gotten better,” he argued in her defense.

“Oh, absolutely. Just not at the rate my bowels hoped,” Varia agreed. “I’m leaving for Windonhigh in the morning—they’ve made a new monument for the fallen. So I must be there. And so you must come to dinner to see me off.”

“I will,” he assured her.

“Good.”

She held his hand, her wooden fingers in his wooden palm for a long moment, and her smile crinkled on the edges. A smile that said more than words ever could; a smile that told him it was all right to be sad. But that they—the world—had been given a second chance, her least of all, and that to not forge forward in it was a waste.

“She’d want you happy, Luc.”

It was a hard thing to say, and a harder thing to respond to, but the gift of siblings was that one knew you didn’t always have to. Some words were just meant to be said and left to the wind, and as the two of them parted—him to the city and her to the palace—that knowing was most poignant of all.

He buried the loneliness frequently in the rush of the New Vetrisian crowd. The capital was still called Vetris, for convenience and something for the country to hold on to in the midst of rapid change, but it resembled little of its old self. The waterways were perhaps the one constant feature—too entrenched to be removed but not entrenched enough to resist an update. The pipes had been relaid in white mercury alloys and the pump systems completely overhauled thanks to Yorl’s efforts. Fione helped where she could, but for the first year while she was heavy with pregnancy, it was Yorl who did the majority of the work.

He went off Fione’s blueprints she drew up in bed, and the two had revitalized the city—a major pipeline system allowing for indoor bathrooms not just in the palace, but in every home. Running water to cook with, to bathe with. The effects were immediate; the people became healthier and had more time to spend with their families and on rebuilding their lives. The watertells became more efficient, hissing faster and delivering messages at untold speeds. Thanks to Yorl’s knowledge of beneather stonework, the buildings of Vetris were three stories taller now, allowing for more space and more shops. Connecting bridges to the buildings, such as he’d seen in Breych, allowed foot traffic to be split between the roads below and the bridges above. It was a wondrous and strange outline to see on the horizon at sunset, but Lucien felt proud of it.

The temple, of course, was remade. But Lucien’s stipulations of a free worship meant that it belonged both to the New God and the Old God, to the beneather spirits and the celeon morgus. Lawguards patrolled nigh constantly, yet it was naive to say there were no conflicts among the people—the tensions still ran high. But Lucien stood for none of it and installed punishments severe enough that the intolerant now thought thrice.

As he walked the streets, he fended off as many roving bands of merrymakers as he could—women offering him fruit from their stalls, shopkeeps holding out legs of cured lamb to him, a girl with a flower basket floating a ring of lilies over his head with a giggle. It was harder to blend in to a crowd now, what with his eyepatch, but part of him was at peace with it. He no longer felt the need to skulk around in Whisper’s gear, stealing trinkets and redistributing the wealth to the poorer. He was helping in far more overt ways, on his own accord, and that required no disguise.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t hear the call of the shadows anymore.

He managed to slip away down an alley, cleaner than the ones he remembered but no less cramped and surreptitious. A new city meant a new layout, one he hadn’t memorized as well as he’d liked, but he’d taken to using such breaks to wander, to map in his head the streets and curbs he loved so much. His boots clicked down the cobblestones, around puddles of piss and piles of discarded junk. The smell of horse dung and old vomit was almost a welcome perfume—it’d been quite disturbing to walk the alleyways at their clean, odorless inception.

And then he heard the footsteps behind him.

He whirled around, convinced it was another overeager citizen, but the alley behind him was empty. Nothing but cobble. He shook his head and chalked it up to a stray watertell hiss and continued his way down the narrow path. It branched out into a little plaza with a snake fountain, a newer one replete with silver binding and fewer gems. With water so plentiful in homes, people rarely used the fountains anymore, but this left them to be admired, and this he did for some time before crossing the plaza into another alley.

The former prince was so busy mentally tallying the left turns of this alley that he almost missed the soft rustle of fabric behind him. He whirled again, and this time his suspicions did not fade.

“Who’s there?”

Crime was crime—ever-present as long as mortals were present—but he’d done his best to catch the swindlers and conmen who tried to prey upon the rebuilding people. He didn’t want to use magic against such criminals if he could help it—preferring mortal methods. He gripped the white mercury sword at his side, knowing to draw it would be pointless in such a small alley.

And so he ran.

And the person behind him ran, too, footsteps echoing.

He raced through the alley, throwing trash bins and paper piles to the side to distract his stalker. They were fast, and good—he could hear them leaping over the debris easily, redoubling their pace.

But he was better.

He called his crow form and flung himself over the wall to his left, white feathers whirling in his wake as his feet touched ground and his cloak streamed behind him. His human legs pumped again, ducking around a butcher’s blood run and through a stretch of low, drying herbs on twine. He was losing them—he was sure of it. Their footsteps were fading.

And then he swung himself around a corner and, without his perfect mental map of the old Vetris, into an unfortunate dead end. He pulled his sword out and whirled to face his stalker, but the dead end was still too small for the blade to be swung properly.

“Tsk, tsk. Should’ve brought a dagger, Your Highness.”

His mind stuttered, his ears pricking at the voice.

Surely not.

There was no way—now, of all times? Here? Following him like she had that first time they met? She wouldn’t—this was surely a hallucination as it had been all other times, as it had been in the times in his bed, alone, in the quiet moments of a bath, a meal, where he had wished she was here, her voice playing in his head—

They appeared from the shadows, a cloaked figure.

“Enough games!” he snarled. “Who are you?”

The figure paused and then pulled her hood down.

Golden hair, spilling over shoulders. Blue-gray eyes, like autumn sky. A smirk, that beautiful smirk, pulling at her rosebud lips.

He wanted to doubt. But he couldn’t. Not with that smirk.

It was her.

…

If one were to cross the bridge high between Hordon’s Grocer and Willowtree Housing at this moment, one would see two figures in the dead end below, one black of hair, the other gold, embracing as if the world were ending, and their murmurs to each other faint.

“How—how did you survive?” the dark-haired one asked.

“I remembered,” the golden-haired one replied.

“Remembered what?”

A smile, and then, “That you love me.”

In the grand scheme of things, trying to eat while crying is never a good idea. But that doesn’t stop Fione and me from doing it the moment I walk in on dinner and we see each other. It doesn’t stop her from holding up her son, Zeran—a dark-haired little bundle of joy that does me the honor of spraying spittle all over my face. It doesn’t stop Varia from nodding at me with a faint smile. It doesn’t stop Fione from pulling me through the palace and into Malachite’s disbelieving arms, into Y’shennria’s, into Crav’s and Peligli’s, who are now human and living at her orphanage. Reginall, their tutor, takes my hands gently and weeps when I show him the flower-like scar over my heart. A heart that’s in my chest now. Nightsinger is the Windonhigh ambassador, Fione and I bursting into her office and her mane of tawny hair spiraling as she turns, streaking behind her like a banner as she runs to embrace me. Yorl stands no chance, either, his peppermint cordial flying everywhere as he races into my arms, asking streams and streams of curious polymath questions.

It only stops when Fione insists we share in her frankly terrible stew without a care in the world.

Chaos is, thankfully, only ever sometimes chaos. There are promises to meet again, plans and tea dates and sparring sessions and tutor visits to the orphanage, and then, finally, silence.

A silence in which only Lucien and I reside.

He leads me to the balcony of his apartment in the palace, the marble of it still dusted with sand from the construction.

In Lucien d’Malvane’s outstretched hand is a bag that reads Heart.

“I never told you, did I?” He smiles down at me with velvet affection. “Why I stitched that word.”

“I assumed it was because you were running low on creative juice.” I smirk.

“Not quite.” He takes my hand and presses the bag into it. “My heart. You’re my heart, more than the one in my chest.”

The swell of tears in my eyes starts again, but this is too happy a moment for them to fall. They hang there, bright and sparkling in the twilight, as my smirk melts to a smile.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re rather corny, Your Highness?”

His kiss comes suddenly, like a shooting star, burning sweet on my lips and buzzing in my stomach—he remembers. He remembers our silly little promise, his joking threat to kiss me whenever I called him that. Even now. Even three years later. Maybe he thought about it every day. Three whole years. He’s been waiting for three years, and all of it pours out of him and into me: the longing, the joy, the dreams, all the nights and days we missed, and all the nights and days we’ll have together from now on.

“No.” His dark gaze glitters back at me when he pulls away. “Most probably because I’ve never been in love with anyone but you.”

A laugh bursts out of me, and it feels like all three years of being apart vanish with that one joyous sound.

“Stop, please. Any more and I’ll be forced to throw you in jail.”

“Dungeon-jail,” he corrects.

“I did call it that, didn’t I?”

“What feels like ages ago,” he agrees, lacing his wooden hand in my free one.

There’s a sunset quiet, the balcony of the former palace overlooking the busy construction below, the children—Crav and Peligli and Perriot included—running after one another in the grass, Varia and Fione sitting together under a tree napping on each other’s shoulders with Zeran in their lap, Malachite arguing pettily with Yorl as they oversee the metallic matronics moving some wood and stone to and fro, Nightsinger gracefully leading a stream of new ambassadors from the Star Continent on a tour around the grounds.

“What will you do now, Zera Y’shennria?” Lucien asks, voice dour and serious so that for a moment, I see the old him. The young him, the first time I walked into the throne room on that fateful Spring Welcoming day.

I look down at the empty bag where my heart used to be and put my hand to my chest. Every memory is back where it belongs. Every part of me is me again. My parents, my hunger, my journey—all of it is here, with me. I listen to the beating of my heart. Every time is new, every time feels like the first, and I grin mischievously.

“Live.”

THE BEGINNING

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