Chapter 30 A New Page Turned
A New Page Turned
Morfran had been traveling for a week straight and still had no idea where he was.
He would have thought that, once being a Dark Lord, expert battle strategist, and forced-into-goodness general for a rebellion that took him across the kingdom, he’d know where he bloody well had wandered into.
He lowered the map, frowning at the twisted trees writhing up and out like the broken stem of an umbrella.
Just yesterday he’d resurrected a dead man who’d eaten an entire pie made out of boomberries.
It was one of his more memorable resurrections as of late, namely because once the man had reverted to a body rather than a gazillion chunks of flesh and the breath of life filled his lungs, the man had said it’d all been worth it.
Apparently, boomberries were the most delicious of the berry family, and he’d known what he’d been getting into.
Morfran had burned the bushes along the man’s cottage on his way out.
He’d, both surprisingly and unsurprisingly, become quite popular across the kingdom. Children would see him coming through the valley in his cloak, riding Dainty Stepper—previously known as Skullthrasher, his black warhorse—and dash back to their homes, screaming,
“He’s here! He’s here! Tell Ma to stop crying so much! Grandpa will be up and at it soon enough!”
He no longer resurrected those who’d died directly or indirectly by his hand.
He’d already brought back all the innocent lives he could, though a surprising number turned down his offer.
Apparently, the afterlife was one big party, and him yanking them back into the mortal realm was like that one buzzkill who demanded partygoers stop dancing on tables and put down that eighth mug of ale because they had to go muck the stables outside.
Those first few weeks had been tense, however; he’d been overwhelmed with the thought of failure, and what he knew would happen if he couldn’t bring someone back.
But over time he’d gotten quite good at it.
He resurrected the dead not for himself, but for them and their families and the lives they would have had if he hadn’t meddled with them.
Begrudgingly, he’d even brought back the members of the kNighty-kNight Necromancers Club, which was an awkward occasion where neither party would meet the other’s eyes and which ended with the members formally disbanding the organization.
The months passed, and he found that people fetched him from his tent or inn room asking not to slap him in the face for what he’d once done but for his services: a child had fallen down a well and drowned.
Someone’s uncle had gotten lost in a snowstorm and frozen to death.
A woman was headbutted by a hostile billy goat running rampant. And so on and so forth.
The hardest resurrection, however, was bringing back Arthur.
He wasn’t Bronwen’s true love, but she had free will.
What if she chose to return to his side, despite the now-fourteen-year age gap?
What if they joined together to murder Morfran in his sleep?
Nothing would bring two people back together faster than the mutual desire to destroy someone they both despised.
And did Bronwen despise him still? He hadn’t dared reach out.
In the end he’d accepted the possibility of being maimed by the two and resurrected Arthur in the man’s family mausoleum.
Unfortunately, the blizzard of the century had blown in right as he was doing so and rather than wake the dead guy, stutter out an apology, and run away, Morfran was snowed in with him for the following three days.
During this time Morfran suffered through an excruciatingly painful conversation as he expressed his deepest sorrow that he’d beheaded him and that fourteen years had passed since then.
He also confessed that he, too, was in love with Bronwen, who happened to be his true love, and who was now a famed assassin in Ruthven.
Arthur, to his surprise, took it in stride.
He only sobbed for three hours straight, after which he wiped his face, stuck out his hand, and said he forgave him.
By the end of the three days they’d bonded over Morfran’s wild plum jam and their shared trauma of Hugh’s idiocy.
Afterwards, Arthur set out for Elmswood, and Morfran went back on his resurrection tour feeling fifty pounds lighter (though that could have been because Arthur had binged Morfran’s entire stock of jams).
A little over a year had passed since Warshire had fallen to the Elmswood Rebels.
The replacement of the new ruler was still taking time—Rapunzo, many were quick to learn, didn’t want to rule but instead wanted to pump iron, name his ever-growing stuffed animal collection, and live next door to his friend he only ever referred to as Little Woman—so that had put a hitch in those plans.
In the meantime they were in good hands.
Brim stayed six months in Warshire, overseeing order and looking menacing whenever anyone tried to overstep boundaries, and spent the remainder of the year with his children down south.
Maybe one day, if they really needed him, Morfran would be asked to return to Castle Atrago, should they need someone with his expertise and experience.
For now, however, he’d grown quite content raising the occasional dead cow or person and traveling the kingdom he’d never had the chance to visit when he was Dark Lord of Ruthven?.
Rolling his map into a small ball, he chucked it behind him in irritation. It hit something solid, and he made Dainty Stepper—all right, that was too stupid a name, he’d have to change it again—back up so he could see what he’d hit.
It was a sign, nearly camouflaged due to the overgrowth of ivy vines. When he cleared it away he saw the words Elmswood Village: Two Miles→
“Well? What do you think?” he asked his horse, suddenly nervous. “Should we follow it, Dirt Walker?”
The horse snorted.
“You’re right. That name sucks, too. Shall we just stick with Skullthrasher for old time’s sake?”
Skullthrasher tossed her mane back, which he took as a Hell yes.
He led Skullthrasher right, which set them on a trail that was getting more overgrown the deeper they went.
It was all very confusing, to the point where he just wanted to burn away all the forest just so he could get back out again.
But after he counted to seventy-three, the urge finally passed, and he continued on, coaxing his horse forward through the brush until the thicket vanished and he was on a large, paved road that smelled like woodsmoke and baking bread at the end of it.
Someone behind him gasped.
He turned in the saddle.
Bronwen was standing on the road, a bursting-full basket of golden-red apples in her arms. She was in the same sort of forest-dwelling clothes he’d first seen her in over a year ago: a leather bodice over white skirts, simple laced boots.
But her long hair was threaded through with flowers of bright colors: lavender, palest pink, cheery yellow.
On the end of her braid was a green ribbon.
And then he realized what that weekend was. The harvest festival. He must’ve mixed up weeks due to his travels through these blasted woods.
“I got lost,” he finally blurted, scowling, just to fill the silence because she certainly didn’t seem about to. “The signposts in this place are terrible. You better tell your father that. He’s here, I assume?”
She tipped her chin down in a nod, as if still in disbelief he was there.
She was looking him over from head to toe, her gaze unhurried.
He knew he didn’t look much different from before—he’d kept his hair the same length and had only trimmed his beard back a smidge.
The only difference was that he now wore, over what he referred to as his quaint peasant clothing, a white cloak that advertised his service as a necromancer.
He’d even kept the sword she’d gifted him, wearing it more for remembrance than necessity nowadays.
“Well,” he said, suddenly feeling foolish.
“I wasn’t trying to visit during the harvest festival.
I came because Hugh sent me a letter that I couldn’t read.
His spelling is atrocious—for the sake of my eyesight, get him a tutor—and I worried that you, or rather, that the village”—all hells, why couldn’t he stop rambling in front of her?
—“was in some sort of danger.” He shut his mouth, stared at her rising eyebrows and growing smirk, and then added, “He made it indecipherable on purpose, didn’t he? ”
“He’s smarter than he looks.”
“Scarily so.”
He dismounted. Rubbed his neck. Perhaps it was a mistake to come here. Perhaps he should turn back the way he came, or simply follow this new, freshly cobbled road back into the forest.
But he’d traveled a great distance to come here, and he was done fleeing.
So he asked it, the question that had been on his mind since that winter. “Is Arthur around?”
She shook her head, and it was a casual gesture. There was no sign she was hurt or disappointed or wistful about it. “He visited a few months ago, but he went to live with his parents back in Burbenbach.”
Morfran heard the unspoken answer and tried not to show how visibly relieved he felt. Gripping Skullthrasher’s reins like they were a lifeline, he forced himself to approach her. “I also came because I never heard your answer.”
“My answer?” She slid the basket around one arm, shifting her weight to one leg.
“About what I smell like to you,” he replied, as if it were the most natural question in the world. “Please tell me it’s something nice like fresh pine or sparkling ocean tide. Not bratwurst and liver, or pickled herring, or the unwashed socks of your brother—”
At last, Bronwen smiled. “Come on.” She held out her hand, and there was a hint of sparkle in her eyes, the same gleam that Brim had when he was overjoyed. “Beni and the kids have been waiting. And you still owe me a dance.”