Epilogue #3
The cheer spread down the soldiers above and throughout the entire room itself.
Robin glanced down with a smile. She knew the cheer had started for her, but she was fairly certain that most of the people now cheering did not know that.
She preferred it that way. The sounds of joy needed no explanation.
As the cheering slowly died down, the music swelled and the large doors at the front of the grand hall opened.
Onric stood at the entrance, his face stoic and his gaze intense and overwhelmed as he looked at the sea of celebrating people. Leaning into his side, her hand in his arm, stood Ashlin. Her normally shy face was alight with the biggest smile Robin had ever seen.
They slowly entered the room, moving at a ceremonious pace as the walked through the parted crowd toward the dais.
But the excitement of the previous roar was all too fresh and soon the entire room had erupted into another celebratory cheer.
Behind the future monarchs, Ian walked slowly, taking the place of King Frederch to escort Queen Cara as part of the procession. When he saw Robin standing on the dais with his family, his face lit up with a smile.
Behind them both, Lord Cabril and Mistress Cedrice took up the rear.
The older man had tears of joy streaming unabashedly down his face, as did the seamstress, who wiped them carefully away with a square of azure blue linen.
Ashlin had asked Mistress Cedrice—the woman who had promised Ashlin’s dying mother to take care of her—to walk with her and Onric into the ceremony.
The cheering slowly calmed as the procession reached the dais.
Onric and Ashlin climbed the steps, joining their hands as they turned to face the crowd.
Ian guided his mother to stand behind them where she would perform the wedding ceremony before Frederich gave Onric the crown.
As Ian stepped away from the center of the dais to take his place at her side, Robin tilted her head close to him. She was glad they were of a similar height so that she could easily whisper into his ear. “Do you have any regrets?” she asked.
Ian smiled at her, his eyes warm and clear. “None.” He reached over to slide his hand around hers, and Robin felt her chest warm.
She was home.
There was another royal wedding, three seasons later. It took place during the height of goldenreign under the green leaves of Lockwood Forest.
Without Gareth's chaos magic manipulation, the sea storms had stopped and the weather patterns had stabilized. Long days of sunshine and warmth promised a bountiful harvest.
Flowers, vines, and grass grew from every patch of dirt behind Lockwood manor. It was no great hall, but it provided the perfect carpet for a simpler wedding.
But the people who attended this royal wedding were largely the same, and the tone was no less joyful.
That was the thing that undid Robin as she walked across the grass, her arm intertwined with Ian's.
As flowers streamed through her loose hair, she blinked away the tears that threatened to stream down her face.
She was surrounded by her family. The family that had chosen her, raised her, and fought with her.
And she was surrounded by Ian's family, now her own as well.
Everyone had come, traveling back from every corner of the four kingdoms where they all had spread to live out their new lives.
Onric and Ashlin had come from the throne, leaving the kingdom to govern itself for a few days and trusting that it could.
Aden and Isa had brought a dozen of their students who raced through the meadow.
Erich, Aizel, and Celesta had sailed from Istroya, bringing Aizel's parents to meet the rest of the family.
Meena glowed with happiness as she held her growing stomach--the first child of a new generation.
Frederich could walk again, with the help of a wooden cane.
As she and Ian stopped in the center of the clearing, standing before Lyra and Brother Fletcher, Robin looked out the faces of her band of bandits.
Lane, standing at the front of the gathered crowd, had taken to riding guard on the loan caravans that now ran the western roads.
He often complained that escorting honest coin was beneath a man of his particular gifts, yet he had not missed a single run.
Robin suspected he simply could not bear to be still.
She did not blame him. There were days she felt the same restlessness pulling at her own heels.
Ulli, ever quiet and ever present, had given Robin a rare, fierce hug that morning.
The seasons of peace had not softened him so much as redirected him.
He had thrown himself into Bernard's lending venture with a grim devotion, riding out to the villages where coin had gone owed and unpaid, having the sort of low, unhurried conversations that left a man eager to settle his accounts.
He never drew the bow. He had told Robin once that he had spent too many years on the wrong side of the law to take pleasure in being on the right side of it now—but he kept the gold moving all the same, lending it out again and again, exactly as he'd always insisted they should.
Jette stood near Ulli, keeping a short distance from the rest of the crowd as she watched Aden's students tearing through the meadow.
She knew every cove and quiet harbor along the eastern shore, and in the seasons since the war she had used that knowledge to do openly what she had once done in secret—guiding freed Majis home to Istroya along the old smuggling routes, no longer fleeing anything, simply going home.
She had not seen the need to keep her mace far from reach.
Some habits, she said, had earned the right to stay.
And Nele drifted between them all, as she always did, filling cups and pressing food on anyone who slowed down long enough to be caught.
Peace suited her best of any of them. She had spent the seasons turning her uncanny quiet toward gentler ends—slipping unseen through the markets and council halls of the capital, listening for the last of Gareth's rot wherever it still festered, and reporting it to people who could pull it out by the root.
It was honest work now, sanctioned and thanked, and Robin had caught her more than once looking faintly bewildered by that fact, her clever fingers folded carefully in her lap as though she still had to remind them not to wander.
Brother Fletcher had come up from the monastery by the sea, rounder than ever and twice as cheerful.
Several monks had returned to their original home, and every season Fletcher declared his intentions of returning at last to the quiet contemplative life that suited him so poorly.
He would leave, only to inevitably return with Lane on some caravan run, swearing each time that it was the very last bit of excitement before he hung up his hood for good.
Robin let him come and go. She understood that the thrill was the thing that kept the man alive, and that the monastery would have to wait a great many seasons yet to fully reclaim him, if it ever did.
He would always have a home at Lockwood.
And Ilida, for once, stood completely still, her hands empty save for a small bouquet of flowers that some child had handed her.
She had gotten her wish in the end. Bernard's lending venture had grown into something with ledgers and proper accounts and the blessing of the crown.
And she had taken readily to organizing and managing everything within Lockwood and River's Talon beyond.
Surrounded by love, Robin turned her gaze to Ian.
His dark brown hair had grown messy of late and the look agreed with him. The lines around his eyes were curved with joy, now, instead of worry. And his shoulders, still broad and strong, relaxed under the light weight of his loose linen shirt.
He looked back at her, peace and longing in his eyes.
The Majis sang them married. Of course they did. Lyra led it, and the whole village joined, their song rising up through the fluttering leaves overhead.
There were no grand vows.
Ian took her hands. “As the crown prince, I belonged to the entire kingdom, to the throne, to my people—to everyone but myself. And I made peace with that, a long time ago. What I never dared to hope for was a place that belonged to me in return. You are that place. You are my home. And finally, gladly, I am choosing to belong here, with you.”
Robin laughed, resisting the urge to kiss him before she declared her own love for him. “I want all of you,” she said. “Your hands, your heart, your ideas, your small smiles, your calm presence. All of it. Not half. All.”
“You have it,” Ian said, leaning forward to kiss her.
And the whole clearing erupted.
That night, beside a quiet fire far away from the rest of the village, Ian sat cross-legged on the mossy ground, looking up as Robin approached him.
This quiet version of his life still surprised and delighted him on a daily basis. He'd had no understanding, no preparation for what this particular scene would look like as he had never even allowed himself to imagine it.
His entire body was at rest, and he almost felt uncomfortable with how comfortable that felt. He still was not quite used to the feeling of his body and his mind wanting the same thing, having the same thing.
And right now, he knew exactly what he wanted.
She was standing right in front of him.
Somewhere far behind them, faint through the trees, the music of the wedding still drifted on the warm night air—laughter and song and the low murmur of his family, her family, all of them gathered under the same stars. But here, in the soft glow of the flames it was just the two of them.
Robin slipped her cloak off of her shoulders, laying it on the ground in front of him like a blanket.
Ian remained where he was. Content to be.
She dropped to her knees, half kneeling, half sitting in front of him. She reached for his hands. “Shall we see who is better with a bow, now?” she asked.
He smiled softly. It was so very like her, to say one thing and mean another. To hand him a challenge when what she was truly offering was herself. “We both know the answer to that,” Ian replied. Her face was slightly higher than his, as she was still sitting on top of her feet.
She leaned forward, covering his mouth with her own.
And his hands, which had stayed so still all evening, reached forward to encompass her face.