Epilogue
Lyra
I had never been so deep into the upper knolls of Myrda. It was lovely and bright, with a rich, salty wind that rolled in off the Long Sea. I leaned out the window of a wooden coach that rattled along the dirt roads like the wheels might spin off.
One arm rested along the edge, my face in the breeze. Next to me, Roark held my hand and looked out the other side.
In the last week, most of Myrda had ventured to the palace in the center knolls for the vows of the princess and her new Draven warrior wife. Gunter had been the one to seal Emi and Yrsa’s bond, and the folk of Myrda had been drawn into the rowdy celebrations of Dravenmoor the whole of the night.
I’d reunited with Hilda, Edvin, and their families. Hilda insisted that she never believed I’d killed the Jorvan king, but folk were kept under fierce watch while Fadey and Ingir overtook Stonegate.
Thane’s voice had opened the walls and lifted the tension of fear among the crafters within the royal keep.
Months since the battles ended, and the union of Yrsa and Emi was one of the brighter days. More came when Sindri was officially crowned as the heir apparent of Dravenmoor. He would not take the title of king until he came of age, but the boy had found a place in his new clan.
He tended to spend his days with Brynn and Auki and the wolves. Kael found a place within the Dark Watch, trading his Stav Guard white wolf for the double-headed raven seal.
With two remaining soul bones permanently placed over his heart, there were times when his eyes darkened and he would tilt his head to one side, fighting whatever cruel corruption tried to bleed into his soul.
Brynn’s touch would pull him back, simple and loving, a guiding light.
Only once had my brother fallen so far into it that he barricaded himself behind a door, and it took an even darker soul to draw him out.
Skul Drek had a way of controlling vicious souls. With Kael, he’d reminded him of his bonds, showing him how weak the darker pieces could be and how fierce his soul bond with Brynn and his connections to me and his half-siblings were growing.
It worked, and he’d yet to fall back into such a dark fog again.
We remained in Dravenmoor. It was no slight to Thane, but Stonegate had been a prison of sorts for us both. Myrda did not feel like home. So we lived in the Draven palace, the king and queen of craft.
To Roark’s horror and annoyance, folk desired that we sit on councils. They claimed that our voices held a finality, as though the other royal houses looked to our word more than others’.
In a way, they did. As promised, the heirs of craft held their own sovereignty, but somehow Roark, the Death Bringer, and his wife, the melder, were the royal word of the new realms of Stìgandr.
I found peace at his side, with our black iron crowns atop our heads, or in his arms beside the shore of the Black Fjords, or learning how to scale the damn Red Ravines like a true Draven.
The only time I felt like fleeing was when I returned to Skalfirth to honor Thorian and Selena, and Jarl Jakobson and his wife bent the knee to me.
I refused to sleep in their longhouse and insisted the jarl write to Kael in Dravenmoor with a sincere, apologetic heart for betraying his firstborn. If I was not satisfied, his title of jarl would be stripped.
Roark gestured nothing but allowed a bit of the shadows of his soul to bleed out.
I took some pleasure at the sight of Kael receiving a two-page missive not a week later.
I leaned back against the seat of the coach. Roark was glaring at the Night Ledges.
“Worried for him?”
He let his head roll to the side, facing me. He shouldn’t have gone with so few men.
“Thane holds his name of ‘Bold’ for a reason. He’ll be all right. He has craft now, and Unfettered Folk are friendly with the realms.”
Roark nodded, but I did not think his soul was soothed.
Thane agreed to revisit the trade task the Lawspeaker of the Unfettered clan asked of the prince, determined to create sturdier allies of the clans. The cart came to a halt. Now it was me who looked ready to retch.
Roark touched my hand, a hidden smile on his lips. I am at your side.
“Don’t let me fall out there, Ashwood.”
He kissed me softly and mouthed Never before pulling away.
Roark stepped out of the coach first, formidable and beautiful. His dark hair had grown longer since the battle, and he’d added silver beads to the braids on the sides of his head.
He lifted his hand for me to take. In the sunlight, at certain angles, sometimes I could still catch sight of the sealing bands faded into our souls. A perfect union, a match.
I looked up the long lane that led to a longhouse. A small Myrdan farm where goats and pheasants were raised near the shore.
At the front gate a family waited for us. Four young ones, the eldest could not be more than twelve, the youngest maybe two seasons. The mother had soft brown skin with gold piercings all along the shell of her ear.
My attention fell to the father. Broad with a wiry beard that nearly struck his chest. His hair was a shade of the harvest, when the lands turned red and brown.
Roark settled one palm on the small of my back. He did not push me forward; he did nothing but stand stalwart. Always the protector.
“He looks a little like me,” I whispered.
My blood uncle. The man who took in his dying sister, who helped her child find a home in House Bien. In recent weeks, I’d spent time in the mirror alongside my phantom husband, searching for connections through blood. I’d found him.
Brolin of House Ekland. The man, we’d since learned, had never stopped searching for his sister’s lost girl after he heard of the raids at House Bien.
I was frozen for a breath, two, until Brolin’s stoic expression spread into a smile. He waved us forward.
Tears stung behind my eyes. Of all the paths I thought my fate might take me, to be here was never in my imaginings.
I looked at Roark, holding that beautiful gaze that once frightened me. From the first moment he tore back his hood at the gates of Skalfirth, the Sentry of Stonegate, the Death Bringer of Dravenmoor had owned me—heart and soul.
Our bond was born in pain and loss, but to be here, with this man at my side, silent and possessive, I would do it all again.
There were no lines I would not cross.
If I could return to the solitary servant girl throwing star plums at the thief near her cart, I would tell her to take care with her steps.
They would be treacherous, dangerous, but in the end, she would gain the fiercest of friendships.
She would claim a power that was always there, always within her.
She would see the cruelest edges of an enemy, and they would brighten her darkest night. Always.