Epilogue #3
"But I know you were scared." I breathe.
"I know you loved me." That's the hardest forgiveness.
Not pretending what he did was right. Not erasing the damage.
Simply allowing love and failure to exist together. "I think it's a girl."
I have no reason to know. Professor Vale says it is too early but sometimes, late at night, I dream of a child with pale hair and hazel eyes running through the winter garden while black and gold flames follow her like fireflies.
Valerius thinks the dreams are memories from the bond. I think he's afraid to hope.
"I don't know what we'll name her." The wind strengthens. A single silver petal breaks free and lands in my palm. I laugh softly. "No. We are not naming her Alaric." The laugh turns into a sob. I bow my head. For a while, I let myself miss him. My father.
Then I move to Seren's name. I sit beside it.
"I'm still angry with you too." The dark ivy curls around the base of the wall.
"You would say I hold grudges." A memory of her voice rises.
You do hold grudges. "I learned from Valerius."
The garden remains quiet. Seren should be here.
She should be complaining about morning classes.
She should be making inappropriate observations about Valerius becoming a father.
She should be standing beside me, pretending not to cry.
"I forgive you." The words come easier now, not because the betrayal hurts less, because I finally understand forgiveness doesn't mean pretending it never happened.
It means refusing to let the wound be the final thing between us.
"You saved them." The spirits. The dead.
Me. "You came back when it mattered." My hand rests over my stomach.
"I wish you could have met her." A warmth brushes my cheek. "Goodbye, Seren."
When I stand, my mother waits at the entrance to the garden.
She wears white now, not always but often.
The black ceremonial cloaks were burned after the battle.
No one objected. Her hair has grown longer.
Silver threads run through it. A scar crosses one side of her collarbone where the old wards broke her.
She looks smaller than she did as Dean... More human.
"Were you listening?" I ask.
"Only to the part where you rejected your father's name." She smiles.
I walk toward her. "He would have expected it."
"He would have demanded three middle names and a ceremonial title." She laughs.
"Absolutely not." I shake my head.
Then her eyes drop to my hand. Still over my stomach. Her smile disappears. "Valentina?"
I look at her. Her eyes fill before I speak. "You're going to be a grandmother." My mother covers her mouth. For one second, she is silent.
Then she makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob and pulls me into her arms. I hold her. She trembles against me. "My baby," she whispers.
"I'm scared," I admit.
"So was I." She admits.
"You didn't show it." I say.
"I showed it badly." She corrects me. I close my eyes. Her fear became control, silence, secrets, but she is learning too. We all are. She pulls back and holds my face. "Does Valerius know?"
"Not yet. Only Thorne." I shake my head.
Her eyes widen. "You told Thorne before Valerius?"
"I needed advice." I say.
"From Thorne?" She lifts an eyebrow.
"He was surprisingly useful." I nod.
"He will never let us forget that." My mother's expression becomes serious. "The child..."
"I know." I nod.
"We do not understand what the bond could mean." She reminds me of the thoughts I've been having since I felt her.
"I know." I nod again.
"Or what magic—" She starts.
I cut her off. "Mother." She stops. I cover her hand. "No seals."
Pain crosses her face. "I would never."
"No decisions made without me." I warn her.
"Never again." She shakes her head immediately.
"No protecting us by taking away our choices." I remind her.
Her eyes shine. "I promise." I believe her, not because she will never make another mistake, because now she knows promises are not protection. They'e responsibility. She kisses my forehead. "Tell him before the entire academy knows."
"How would the entire academy know?" I ask.
My mother looks behind me. I turn. Eli stands near the memorial entrance. Luc beside him. Both staring. Eli's mouth is open. Luc looks far too calm.
"You're pregnant?" Eli asks. My eyes close.
My mother mutters something un-Deanlike.
Eli runs toward me. He stops abruptly two steps away as if he is afraid the wrong movement might break me.
Then he looks at my stomach. Then at my face.
Then back again. "With Valerius's child?"
Luc slowly turns his head toward him. Eli frowns.
"I know how it sounds." I look at my hands on my stomach.
"Do you?" Luc asks.
I begin laughing. Eli hugs me gently, so gently it feels ridiculous. "You're going to crush me with caution."
"I've seen what happens when Valerius thinks someone endangers you." Eli laughs.
"He knows you'll never hurt me." I reassure him.
"Yes, but now I know something he doesn't and that scares me." His face pales. "You're telling him immediately."
"I was planning to." I nod.
"Now." Eli says.
"Eli." I laugh again.
"Before he feels your mother's excitement through your shared soul and decides the academy is under attack." Eli smiles.
Luc places a hand on Eli's shoulder. "He has a point."
My mother nods. I stare at all three of them. "I regret telling anyone."
"You didn't tell us," Eli says. "You announced it in a public memorial garden."
"I thought I was alone." I say.
Luc looks toward the nearby first-years pretending not to listen. "You were not."
Whispers are already moving through the garden.
Wonderful. I turn toward the path leading to the Eternal Flame.
The bond shifts. Valerius is looking for me.
His concern reaches through the connection, then confusion, then a faint brush of the joy I failed to hide from my mother. His emotions sharpen.
I start walking. Behind me, Eli calls, "Should we come?"
"No!" I start and my mother answers at the same time. "Yes."
I turn. "No one follows me."
Luc inclines his head. "Reasonable."
Eli looks disappointed. My mother takes his arm. "Give them a moment."
"A moment for what?" She pulls him away before he can finish.
I leave the memorial garden alone.
The Eternal Flame remains in the ancient basin at the centre of the new observatory.
We rebuilt the tower around it last, not because it wasn't important, because we needed to decide whether it should exist at all.
Some wanted it destroyed. Some worshipped it more after the battle. I understood both.
In the end, we left the Flame but removed the chamber built to glorify it.
No throne. No elevated platform. No locked doors.
The basin sits beneath an open ceiling where rain can fall into it and students can enter freely.
The Flame no longer chooses bonded partners.
That tradition ended with us. Bonds are not assigned, not commanded, not celebrated as destiny. They are chosen, every day.
Valerius stands beside the basin when I arrive.
The setting sun falls through the open tower, turning the stone gold. He faces the Flame, hands resting on the edge of the ancient bowl. Black fire curls around his wrists. White-gold light rises to meet it. The two colours no longer fight. They circle each other as equals.
He turns before I speak. His eyes find mine. The bond opens with concern, love, suspicion and beneath it— Hope. So much hope.
He knows, maybe not the fact but the shape of it. The way the future has suddenly expanded inside me. "You told Thorne," he says.
I stop. "How do you know?"
"He looked at me in the corridor and said I should sit down." He gives me a look.
"That could mean anything." I say.
"He also said congratulations." He adds.
I close my eyes. "I asked him not to tell you."
"He claims he didn't." He almost laughs.
"Then why did he congratulate you?" I ask, confused.
"He congratulated me on surviving nine months under your leadership." He smiles.
"That sounds like him." I smile back.
"It did." Valerius walks toward me. The same way he approached me in the courtyard but there is no blood now, no war, only fear. His hands close around mine. "You've been hiding something."
"Yes." I look down and nod.
"Is it dangerous?" He brushes his thumb on mine.
"I don't know." I answer honestly. His face changes. The bond floods with alarm. I squeeze his hands. "Not like that."
"Valentina." He sighs.
"I need you not to react before I finish." I tell him, finally looking back up at him.
"That sentence has never led anywhere good." He says.
"Promise." I demand.
"No." I stare at him. His jaw tightens. Then he exhales. "I promise to try."
I look down at our joined hands. At the matching marks on our wrists.
At the lives we were never supposed to reach.
"When we bonded, we thought the Flame chose us."
Valerius waits. "Then we learned Aurelia and the Masters manipulated everything."
His grip tightens. "But in the end, we chose each other."
"Yes." He nods.
"And when the Flame joined our lives, it gave us one ending." I continue.
His fear sharpens. "Valentina."
"I felt another heartbeat six weeks ago." I finally say.
Silence. The Eternal Flame bends. Valerius doesn't move. He doesn't breathe. The bond becomes so still I almost panic. Then his gaze drops slowly to my stomach. His hands loosen from mine and reaches for my stomach. He stops before touching me.
His eyes lift. "May I?" The question breaks my heart, even now, even when emotion has stripped every defence from his face. He asks.
I nod.
Valerius places one hand over my stomach. There is no visible change yet. Nothing anyone else would notice but beneath his palm, warmth gathers. The bond opens completely.
My heartbeat, his, and deeper— Faint and separate, another heartbeat... a flutter of life.
Valerius freezes. His eyes close, a sound leaves him, small and broken. He drops to his knees.
"Valerius."