Epilogue
Marco: Six Months Later
Our escape from Victora was the easiest part of our journey.
Robin said it took them a week to transport him from Atrea to the city gates. Three months on, and we were all beginning to wonder if we’d ever make it home. If there was even anything left of home.
Esme, sweet and smart like her brother, had decided to try to save me from the worst of what she’d seen when they took her.
But a fortnight into our journey, one quiet night huddling for warmth in a midnight desert, she told me the truth.
The last thing she saw of our island home was fire.
Everything alight. The beach stained red, bodies everywhere.
She said there might be nothing to return to.
But there was no turning back either.
Even if my heart was heavier, knowing now that all those familiar buildings, the town square, shop doorways where I played as a child—all the memories I meditated on to survive—were gone, Atrea must still stand. It could be nothing but rock and sand, but it would still be my home.
Our transport broke down shortly after escape.
There is no fuel to be had in the wastelands, and anyway, it’s smarter not to draw attention with the noise of an engine unless you’re heavily armed, like Victoran soldiers.
So we became quiet things. Creeping things.
It could be a week before finding a new civilization, then a day to decide whether it was smarter to approach or avoid.
Once or twice, we almost stayed with some of the people we found. Drinkable water and beds, however basic, were hard to pass up.
But Victora’s arms reach wide and cruel, and we never met a person who wasn’t touched by their might.
Some communities had made vast networks underground to avoid capture should the soldiers come again. So many had crawled from one settlement to another, just hoping to survive. So many were lost, if not to the Emperor’s men, then to the infected, picked off easily, out in the wastelands alone.
But we kept on, one goal in mind, determined that we would make it home. We walked by day, beneath the blazing sun. We followed the stars by night. Stars that grew brighter the further we went from our prison. Stars that seemed to hold so much promise.
When we finally found the edge of the mainland, I recognized it. Years ago, I’d organized dozens of raiding parties, arriving there in search of the very materials Victora burned to the ground. It was there that I was taken. And it was there, once again, that I prepared to set sail.
We built a raft. It took days to gather the supplies. We kept a vigilant watch, praying Victora hadn’t decided to turn our island into an outpost, the fertile soil a commodity worth commanding.
But they were bent only on destruction—only on assuring no fledgling city would rise up and challenge their authority.
Well, they were wrong. Both to underestimate the people of Atrea and to leave me a place to draw my plans.
The fog that perpetually lies low in that strait was both reassuring and terrifying when we made the crossing. I knew all the riches that had once thrived, enshrouded by it, were gone. The first glimpse I’d dreamed of must be changed. Into what, I couldn’t imagine.
But the very first thing I saw, strong and black, emerging from shadow, was a sight that made my heart pound with pride.
Sentinel Rock, reaching up out of the darkness like a flag.
A symbol of the unbreakable will of a people.
A civilization that would go on, forever fighting, no matter what came for it.
Before the beach even came into view, I heard a familiar whistle and knew then that my people weren’t all gone. That we would arrive on that shore to drawn weapons and ready bodies, warriors, set to defend what’s ours.
But they knew Robin. And they knew Esme. And some of them recognized me on sight.
I think of all the things that affected me so strongly along the way—the fight for survival, the many times we almost died, battles with wastelands and the infected, thirst, hunger, the times we almost lost it all—nothing affected me quite like the discovery that Robin and I shared friends.
Kinsmen. People who knew us both, all that time.
Who held us both in their minds at the same moment when we, a world away, were becoming each other’s lifeline.
That first touch of my foot to my own sand sent such a wave of sadness through me, such grief for everything I’d lost—my family, my home, all those years—that I fell to my knees.
I lay on that beach and I cried. And I don’t know how long it was that Robin sat by my side and held me.
All I know is that it was dark when Maria and Esme brought us hot food.
The flavors of home. Food I ate with intense gratitude, and guilt that I was taking what belonged to someone else, even if it was given with full heart and in kindness.
I, at that time, felt no need for shelter. I wanted nothing but the open sky, the roar of the sea, and the sand still warm beneath me.
But that kind gift brought me to my feet. Took me into what was once my town to see the destruction wrought.
They’d burned it all, every last bit.
The houses that had since been erected were built anew from blackened bricks.
The people who lived there were those left for dead, or inhabitants from the south who got warning in time that it was useless to fight.
They hid in their shelters. They hid in the ocean.
And they were ashamed of it. But no one could tell them better than Robin and I, when it comes to Victora, you need to know when to fight, and you need to know when to run.
Survival isn’t a simple matter. Nothing you do to survive is ever wrong.
Our first day home, Robin and I determined to start work on a house of our own.
The tiled floors of my parents’ home, that I played on with Lucas as a child, were still intact amongst the rubble. None of the people of the island had touched a thing as a mark of respect to my family.
But they agreed it was only right I take it, rebuild there.
And so we worked, Robin, Esme, Maria, we all worked. We made a garden, gifted seeds from our neighbors. We fished, we cut wood, we worked, and we built a house for all of us to live in.
We lifted those tiles, made a basement that was more fortress. Covered it so it looked like the floor had never been touched.
Then we got to work on the rest of the town.
Day by day, Atrea rises anew. A different Atrea. One that’s preparing for war.
Training recommenced a week after I got home. I’m teaching them every trick I learned in the last five years. We’ve sent envoys to some of the communities Robin and I found along the way. We’re making alliances. Recommencing trade.
We’re building this land stronger, smarter, better than even before.
Because this time, we won’t wait for the battle to come to us.
We’ll strike first. We’ll hit them where it hurts. And we’ll take them down.
Five years, I got to learn that place inside out. And even if it takes another five years, I’ll have my revenge—
“Aren’t you done with your letter yet?”
Robin, my beautiful, eternal love, Robin, settles down on the sand beside me.
“I have a lot to tell him.”
He peeks over the edge of my paper. “And you’re sure you won’t get Evander in trouble if that’s intercepted?”
Robin still is right about most things.
And I still don’t like to admit it.
“I just want him to know we’re okay. You know, it’s going to be ten times harder in there for him now. They’ll have all those men locked down even worse than we were.”
He drops a kiss on my cheek. “And they won’t have you to train them.”
“Yeah.” It’s melancholy, in its way. I tried to be fair.
I tried to help them survive. It makes me sick to think they might end up with a cruel guard teaching them.
That I won’t be there the next time some lost Atrean slave is brought to line up.
That I can’t even deal out the small mercies I was once able to.
Robin’s hand touches softly to my cheek. He still seems to be able to read my mind. “It was your time, Marco. And you do more good here than you ever could there. Look at what you’ve done for Atrea.”
He turns his head toward the small, sleepy settlement, windows lit in cozy yellows and oranges, the reassuring sound of cutlery tinkling, the smell of home-cooked meals drifting into the night.
I drop Evander’s letter to the ground, pulling sand over it to hold it safe from the wind. Then I wrap an arm around Robin and bring him up onto my lap. He straddles me easily, made to be here with me, held in my arms.
And I breathe. Breathe deep and easy. All the fresh air of home, all the hopes for the future. Robin.
His kiss, as ever, runs all down my spine, all through me, lights me from within. Then those beautiful granite eyes, lit by the last gasp of the day, the sea and the sky all around him.
“You’re all I ever want,” I tell him. “I’d do it again. Five more years in that place just to have you for one more minute.”
He drops another gentle kiss on my lips. “Then it’s just as well you’ve already got me. Forever.”
Even now, every time I hold him, I clasp him tight to my chest. I wish I could pull him inside me, to know that no one can ever take him away from me again.
He understands. For all his own demons that he has to fight, all those months, all the death and torture, Robin always takes me in his arms and holds me just like I need. Locks himself tight around me through the nightmares. Presses his cool hand to my temple and soothes me through every horror.
He settles onto the sand now, pulls me down to lie with him, letting me rest my head on his broad shoulder, staring up at the endless sky overhead. “Do you remember that night on the balcony?”
“I think about it more often than you could imagine.” My voice holds a lascivious note, but he knows there’s sadness behind it.
He stretches an arm out long. “Orion.” The constellation shines bright blue and red over us, unmistakable even in the mid-light of dusk.
But so different from the way it looked that night.
So much brighter. So clear. Embedded in a blanket of a thousand other tiny pinpricks of light neither of us could see back then. “It’s not the same at all, is it?”
“No. It’s not.” A tear runs down my cheek at the thought of it, at the memory, and I roll over to face him. “Thank you for never giving up on me, birdie.”
He wraps his arm around me, his gaze settling on mine with more love than I ever thought I could deserve from him.
“Never. You and me, we’re as eternal as the stars over Atrea.
” His hand drops to my heart. “Wherever you are, that’s where I’m going to be.
You’re home, Marco. You have been since the first time we kissed. ”
I tangle my fingers in his hair, long now, thick with salt and sand and sunshine, just like it always should have been.
“It’s you, birdie. For now and forever, it’s you.
I’ll love you until all the stars go out, all the seas dry up, and all the worlds burn.
You’re my soul. My life. My home. You saved me. ”
I tell him every day. I tell him every night. And I won’t ever stop telling him.
He takes my hand, and he leads me home.
The letter to Evander lies forgotten in the sand, waits for the tide, then is washed away, taken to the bottom of the ocean with all the dark memories of our long journey home.
The next morning, I rip a small piece of paper from Esme’s sketchbook, and jot out the following message:
‘Safe. Should you ever make it, 38.5772°N, 121.5168°W. Leave message, await further instruction.
Say hi to C.’
“Marco! Come back to bed!”
I drop the pen down on the table with a smile.
I really only crawled out to make him breakfast. But that can wait. Everything can wait.
Now Robin and I have nothing but time and sunshine.
The two of us, together at last, from here and to the end of time.
Home.
The End.