Epilogue
“That bastard, luring my daughter from me,” Lord General Kerrigan Westcotte, former viscount and current leader of the Iron
Empire, snarled to himself as he rode hastily through the blistering colds of northern Astra toward the capital.
Once he’d gotten out of the bloodbath his daughter had finished on what was supposed to be an easy mission, Kerrigan had stopped
riding to bandage his wounded arm, still throbbing from what he was certain was a break.
Eira had stood in that clearing and summoned more magic than he’d ever seen any witch summon. How had she learned how to wield so many types of magic since he’d taken control of the Iron Empire? He had
watched her, surrounded by the horror of stone and rock destroying his knights, and had realized Eira looked exactly like
Aurelie now, that same auburn hair and ferocious attitude.
Or she kept it all a secret from you her whole life, he thought. His heart ached. He lost Aurelie, and then Kristoph, and now it felt like he’d lost the last piece of his heart, Eira. His beautiful baby girl, the apple of his eye and the only thing that kept him going. Now she hated him.
But then again, Eira hadn’t harmed him like she’d harmed his soldiers. His beloved daughter had made sure her attack had only
grazed him. She’d harmed him, but didn’t kill him like she killed the others. All of this, all of it, was for her—and she’d left the minute it all started.
There was a part of him that had hoped she’d survived all this time; she had always been smarter and more resourceful than
everyone else around her. If anyone could survive the tumultuous beginning of the Iron Empire, he was sure it would be his
Eira. He’d made sure to keep potions witches out of his mandate to keep her safe from the culling, even though Astra would
have been better off without them too. After all, he’d done all of this for her and her future—if she hadn’t made it, it would have been for nothing but power.
Kerrigan hated witches, but he loved his daughter. She was different than the rest of them. He’d planned the first months
in the Iron Empire with Eira in mind. A royal wedding to Commander Bartholomew, and then a crowning of her as his heir once
she carried the next generation of the Iron Empire’s leaders inside of her.
Instead, she’d run off with the princess and somehow kept the girl alive all these years. He’d painstakingly found a similar-looking
woman to kill so that the entire country thought that the Iron Empire had executed the crown princess. He’d assumed Princess
Evangeline would have been so incapable in the regular world that she had been disposed of without him having to worry about
handling it. He had never expected her to survive out there alone.
And now, now, she was alive! Alive, and clearly planning to take her throne back. Between her, the Rot, the damned growing rebellion,
and Corisia, Kerrigan was worried about what the Iron Empire was going to look like in a few years.
But Eira was alive, and that was all that mattered.
So he would go to Astrad, and he would share the good news with the Iron Retinue about the Soulless Knights; they were as
ready as they would ever be. Plus, Dr. Balet would need volunteers for the number of Soulless Knights Kerrigan required for
the war to come. They would attack the Corisian ships in Archport’s harbor and Kerrigan would take Corisia next for Eira.
For his legacy. For the Iron Empire.
*****