Chapter 33 Epilogue 3 Lovers under the Loving Moon
Osric
September fluttered into October. October dripped into November and December. And at the solstice, the year flipped, and dark gave way to light, and before Osric knew it, it was spring again.
Of the ten Tīendoms, the seven not involved in the Pox conspiracy were quick to condemn the three that were.
Wessex promptly went to war with Dumnonia, Mercia, and Kent.
She was aided greatly, on her western border, by the fact that the Warden Order abandoned Dumnonia entirely, and regrouped in a secondary keep in Wessex.
They were courted by Strathclyde and Northumbria, who offered their kingdoms’ most impressive fortresses to serve as the Warden HQ.
The Kentish queen died of her mysterious ailment, courtesy, perhaps, of the Hedgewitch Order.
The line of succession was disputed; a civil war followed in Kent.
The Mercian king waged war not only with Wessex but also internally as a cadet branch attempted to usurp his throne.
The King of the Danelaw, seeing his neighbour thus occupied, went to war with him.
The Tīendoms would not know peace again for a long time.
The Orders were in chaos, solicited from every quarter by the Tīendoms, asked to save lives, to end lives, to attack, to defend, to help, to sabotage.
Every day brought some new crisis, some new decision, a side to choose, a stance to take, principles to uphold or destroy.
The Bright Paths gathered into a coalition, into which, despite the Haelan Order’s protests, the Fyren were not invited; the Dusken Paths regarded the Fyren Order with suspicion and disgust; the Hedgewitches floated in their neutral way. No one gathered at the Stánrocc again.
Osric and Aurienne were together when they could be—mostly by prior arrangement, brief and bracketed by other obligations, which left Osric dissatisfied.
One didn’t time longing. Kisses oughtn’t be scheduled.
It was March. Osric hadn’t seen Aurienne for a fortnight.
She and other Haelan had gone to some war-torn border town to provide emergency medical relief.
He found himself thinking of her too much to sleep.
She had been meant to return to Swanstone the night before.
Was she home safe? Had she exhausted herself?
Her hands had better be all right. (Gruesome visions of her Cost-shredded hands plagued Osric still; the sick white glint of her bones would haunt him for the rest of his life.)
Osric tossed and turned in his bed. He clutched the pocket watch Aurienne had given him to his chest and imagined it was her heartbeat he felt ticking. He pondered whether to visit her. No. If she was back at Swanstone, she must rest. Firmly and decisively, no.
Then—five o’clock in the morning was no time for a man to be firm and decisive—he went to the waystone.
The wards at Aurienne’s tower window had once prevented his entry, but after his heroic act of self-sacrifice at Swanstone (their words, not his), the Haelan Order had integrated Osric’s seith signature into them.
He popped the window open, careful to avoid hitting the glass cloches and orchids upon Aurienne’s windowsill.
Aurienne was sound asleep in her white bed. Her hands looked undamaged, maybe a bit of peeling at the knuckles.
He wouldn’t wake her. To see her was enough. To be near her was enough.
Curled at her side lay her cat, a black comma on a white page. The cat spotted him. Its pink mouth opened and emitted a high-pitched meow.
Aurienne stirred and raised her sleep-tumbled head. Her hair fell over her shoulders like soft night.
She spotted him. “Osric.”
Her voice was husky, sleep-laden. She used to say his name like it was a swear word. And now it was spoken gently. Affectionately. Beckoningly. And her eyes were soft—terribly soft for a queen of ice.
To his vast exhilaration, she stretched her arms out to him.
Full-hearted, heady, he floated to her side. The queen of ice had a very warm embrace. She smelled good. Hlutoform and shampoo. He buried his face in her neck. All was dream. All was a bit of déjà rêvé.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
“Yes. Are you?”
“Got back a few hours ago. Tired. Why are you here?”
“Because,” Osric leaned over her and brought his face close to hers, “I missed you.”
He kissed her all over her face and found that her cheeks were suddenly and warmly suffused with a fine blush.
He enjoyed this new power: she had been so unflappable for so long, and now he had new ways to fluster her, to leave her with blushes instead of ready retorts.
He let it go to his head. He would abuse it relentlessly. He did like to see her suffer.
A warning growl sounded in his ear, which advised him that a small creature full of knives was nearby.
He lifted his head. Aurienne’s cat regarded him in disapproval.
Osric said, “Pspsps.”
The cat’s yellow eyes narrowed into slits.
“She hates everyone,” said Aurienne, stroking the cat between the ears.
“She doesn’t hate you.”
“I had to earn my way into her good graces. Mostly by confessing to murders.”
Osric turned to the cat. “I can do that. How much time have you got?”
The cat looked him up and down.
“I’m a Fyren, you know,” added Osric impressively.
The cat regarded Osric with absolute condescension.
“She’s picky,” said Aurienne. “The murders must be Warranted to count.”
The cat stalked away with her tail held high, as though Osric had wasted enough of her time.
Aurienne sat up higher and bumped herself against a desk—a desk that was, come to think of it, strangely close to the bed. Osric had been too fixated on her to notice that her quarters were crammed with furniture—two desks, an absurd amount of shelves, stacks of books.
“Why is it so crowded in here?” he asked.
“I had to give up my office to make room for more beds,” said Aurienne. “With all of these wars, we’ve got loads of new patients, and beds are more critical than admin. Several of the labs are going to be shut down, too. Mine included.”
“Shut down?”
Aurienne said, with neutral professionalism, “Temporarily. Saving lives in the immediate is more important, and we simply haven’t the space for the influx of the dying. Six of the Tīendoms are actively at war.”
“That’s their choice. Why should Swanstone help any of them? What happened to being apolitical?”
“It’s civilians we’re helping. Not soldiers.”
“But your research…”
Aurienne’s mask of professionalism faltered. It was replaced by sad resignation. “Fifty beds today are more valuable than research that will only be applicable tomorrow.”
She cut herself off with an enormous yawn, which she muffled into a fistful of her sheets.
“I’ll let you sleep,” said Osric, pressing a kiss to her mouth. But as he rose to leave, Aurienne snatched his sleeve. He turned to her with an interrogative brow.
“Stay,” she said.
“Stay?”
“I don’t want to say goodbye to you already. We always have to say goodbye.” Her fingers tightened on his arm. “Stay.”
This broke several things loose in Osric: new hopes, new, entirely stupid ideas. He thought of the things. Giving her things. Together things. Till-death-do-us-part things. Forever things.
(However soon death might part them. Whatever forever looked like, navigating these war-churned tides.)
He yielded to her command. He removed his cloak and assorted weaponry, kicked off his boots, and lay next to her. What a sweet communion, to gather her in his arms. What an ecstasy, to put his face in her neck. Palms found cheeks, and lips found lips, and everything was kisses, kisses.
“Are you free tomorrow evening?” asked Osric.
“I can be,” said Aurienne.
“Come to Rosefell. I want to show you something.”
Aurienne fell asleep in his arms. Her hair danced across the pillow like swirls of forgotten cursive. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. He touched bliss.
Was this what love was? Noticing curls on a pillow, kissing the tops of heads, floating? A ruinous thing.
Fatigue left dark smudges under Aurienne’s eyes. She held Osric’s hand loosely, curled against her collarbone. Terrifying that this blistered, calloused hand held his heart cupped in it. He was at her mercy. What a rush. What vertigo. He passed his thumb over her knuckles and their peeling skin.
He lay motionless as she slept. She snuggled into him closer. The feel of her cheek pressed to his chest obliterated everything he thought he knew about value, about preciousness. This was the most exquisitely important thing in the world. He brushed a fingertip against her cheek.
Was this what love was? Falling into it, again and again?
She stirred back to consciousness hours later.
Their kiss awakened the sky.
The next evening, Aurienne came to Rosefell. Her Haelan dress was adorned with long cape sleeves, fluttering in the cool March breeze.
“What did you want to show me?” she asked, stepping away from the waystone.
Osric took her hand and led her through Rosefell Hall. She followed, observing rooms, previously stuffed with sheet-draped furniture, now standing empty, and walls adorned in mosaics of blank patches.
“I’m so sorry about all your things,” she said. “It still makes me sad to walk through here.”
“Tristane is expensive,” said Osric.
With a look of mortified guilt, Aurienne asked, “You haven’t sold off your books, have you?”
“No,” said Osric. “I left the libraries untouched.”
“Oh, thank Frīa. But your collections—”
“Doesn’t matter. Things can be repurchased. People can’t.”
“But you loved the things.”
“I love you more than the things,” said Osric. “If I hadn’t bought Tristane’s help, Swanstone would be a Dreor-infested ruin. I’d still have my things and you—you’d be dead. What would be the point of the things? Tell me.”
Aurienne gave him a swift kiss on the lips.
He brought her through the house to the terrace where they had eaten breakfast after Aurienne had gruesomely murdered Lady Windermere. From there he led her down wide stone steps to the estate’s pleasure grounds.