Epilogue
Tamsin
The morning market smells like bread and sun-warmed apples.
It’s loud with life—children shouting, carts rattling, the bark of a dog echoing off cobblestones—and it’s… nice.
My armor glints in the light, but no one flinches away from it.
A woman selling plum preserves nods to me. The cloth vendor waves.
Marienne walks at my side, hair pinned half-up today. Her skirts swish as she dodges Callen, who’s trying to balance a turnip on her head for reasons unknown.
Liri’s got one hand clutched in mine and the other wrapped tight around the hem of my tunic. Yla darts ahead to a stall dripping with color—blush marigold, moon-thistle, garden’s breath—and tugs Marienne eagerly along with her.
This is the same market where the people once crossed the street to avoid us.
And now?
Now it feels like we’ve been here all along.
“Baroness,” the flower seller greets as we approach, a rough smile cracking through weathered features. “A bloom for the lady?” He gestures to a soft violet stem, then glances at me. “And one for your knight.”
Marienne grins. “You spoil us.”
She tucks a pale blossom behind my ear like it’s the most natural thing in the world. The children cheer.
“You’ll be the death of me,” I mutter under my breath, ears burning.
Her eyes sparkle. “So dramatic, Ser Mum.”
Gods help me.
Later, the children race ahead—drawn by the siren call of honey sticks and sugar-dusted tarts—and we’re left beneath the archway.
The same one where I stood months ago, tense as a drawn bowstring, convinced I didn’t belong here.
Now?
Now, I breathe easy.
Marienne’s hand brushes mine. I take it.
“This feels…” I trail off, words sticking in my throat.
But she knows.
She always knows.
“It is,” she says softly.
And then she kisses me.
It’s nothing grand. No gasps or moonlit music. Just a soft press of lips in the morning sun, the market humming around us, and no one looking away.
When we pull back, she’s still holding my hand. Still smiling.
Ahead of us, the children are already bartering for sweets with sticky coins and impossible charm. Yla waves back at us like she’s worried we’ll get lost.
“Come on!” she yells.
Marienne laughs.
And we walk.
Slow and steady, step for step. Through a market that was once scandalized by our presence. Through a world that finally seems like it might let us stay.
And as Marienne laughs beside me, her hand warm in mine, I know—
Home isn’t a place. It’s her.