Epilogue
The village seems like a retirement village, but it isn’t. It has the same bucolic atmosphere, the same ease of living. But the people there are of all ages and they can come and go as they please.
Standing on the porch of a large cottage, Torver, Lavellin, Bassen, and Winander are watching the sun set over a herd of grazing fell ponies.
Beast snoozes in a nearby tarn, basking as only a dragon can. One nostril is submerged and the water bubbles and boils when she exhales.
Winander is young again, Bassen is round-cheeked and strong.
She weaves aged rowan fibres from Dunmail’s throne into her clothing, wears dried rowanberries around her neck.
Her magic’s brutal thirst has become a suggestion, not a command, and her consequence can now be kept at bay with the simple weeding of her herb garden.
The cottage is beside the garden of rosemaries and thymes, sweetpeas and strawberries—Winander’s new cottage, purchased with the gold that Torver had given him.
Looking back, Torver can’t believe his plan had been to buy fake documents with it.
That even though he was travelling the length of the Kingdom with a fae insurgent to kill the Beast to prevent an invasion…
he still couldn’t imagine a world that didn’t rely on the scraps of paper that had ruled his life.
Now, he and that fae insurgent are regular visitors to Winander and Bassen’s cottage. They stay a few times a month, in the spare bedroom, watched over by the romance novels that Torver is sure Bassen keeps there only for him.
Torver would have loved to have moved out of the Wen too, but after the collapse of the People’s Kingdom, he’s been exceptionally busy.
The surviving Enforcers that had been in the Wen that day had immediately pledged fealty to the dragon rider.
And Torver had let them—if only to command them to pile their armour on the gallows of Citadel Square, to stand in their under-tunics while they watched it all melt and burn with dragonfire.
When the molten heap had cooled, and the gallows had all been burned away, all that remained was an enormous metallic mound in swirling shades of silver and bronze.
After that, the men and women who had once Enforced the laws of the Meddera were sent to the four corners of the Kingdom.
They spread the word: the old ways are dead, there is no dragon beneath the cairn, no more forced obedience, only willing cooperation.
And elections.
Real ones. Not the sham elections of a hand-picked Meddera.
And when the elections were over, when the thrilled volunteers had counted and double-checked every vote, Torver got the shock of his life to learn that he had received an overwhelming majority. He hadn’t even known he’d been nominated.
Some wanted to call him King, to rebuild the Citadel and house him there with Beast. But he’s not their king, just their current leader.
Leader Torver and his fae consort.
As the sun dips below the horizon, Winander and Bassen go inside to prepare them all a supper.
Torver pulls Lavellin down onto the bench on the porch.
He holds it close to him and it slants its mouth over his.
Only a few of the burns from Dunmail’s cage had damaged it permanently, and he touches Lavellin softly where the scars cobweb its skin.
His body comes alive, thrumming with its touch.
Its lips on him still make him new each time, its hungry hands molding him like wet clay. He’ll be any shape it wants.
His face is hot when he reluctantly pulls away, aware that they are guests on this porch.
It settles into his arms, sighing contentedly when he tells it that he loves it.
He plays with a lock of its sunstone hair, running the silken strands through his fingers, over the mottled skin there.
It tells him that it loves him too and his chest could burst.
They spent weeks working through its lies, its omissions.
It told him everything about Rheged, its childhood in the Rath—every magic a fae can possess.
He told it everything, too. And Bassen. Everything he’d ever kept from her—which earned him a thump on the arm and, of course, her forgiveness.
Winander shared too, teaching them what he’d learned from nearly a century of living.
Bassen laughed when Torver took notes, but he’s sure he needs all the help he can get.
He can achieve a lot as the leader of a nation. A leader that is bonded to an immortal dragon, no less. But there was, is, and will be, so much to do.
His first priority had been Rheged. He flew Beast over the border, had her shoot dragonfire in arcs across the air, had her boil a few Rhegedian rivers in sight of the modest army of fae warriors.
The full moons came and went with no invasion, but Lavellin assured him that King Eveling is still a threat, that it’s just biding its time.
But even if he didn’t have that thought looming dark in the back of his mind, it’s still difficult to know how to rebuild a society.
Even despite the help he has—the support of the people, all the uncensored knowledge that Lavellin grew up with, Winander’s aged counsel—there are still loose threads.
Loose threads that, a year ago, would have floored him. Reduced him to a spiralling mess, running to a tavern, to self-inflicted pain, for comfort. Now he only sees jobs to do. Things he wants to achieve.
He wants to rebuild the Wen—houses for all, and freely given. No more slums.
He wants to dismantle the Courts and create new ones. There will be no more job scrolls, no more registration papers, no more obedience keeps the Beast asleep.
He wants to ensure that the fae never steal a borderland child again.
He and Lavellin have spent long evenings discussing if the gods might have a place in the new nation—not least to undercut the value of human children for the fae God Rite.
But when Torver dies, there won’t be another dragon rider born for a generation, and Beast, while intelligent, is a creature.
She will do what comes naturally when Torver is no longer there to instruct otherwise.
Most of all, Torver wants to figure out how to heal a fractured society. The people are tired, families torn apart. Everyone knows someone who ended up on the gallows.
How can ex-Enforcers integrate when there are communities of people who still flinch at clanking, who tremble at the sight of a shire?
Torver sighs heavily, pulls Lavellin closer. Its opal eyes look deep into his and he’s almost hesitant to move when Bassen calls them in for supper.
Before they rise, it kisses his lips one more time and he feels a prickle behind his eyes.
There is so much to do, and so little time to do it in.
He doesn’t know what the future holds, but he knows he has Lavellin by his side. He has Bassen, and Winander. His Beast. He has the people of the nation who all want a better life.
Torver thinks of all that has happened, all that might happen. Lavellin takes his hand and brushes its thumb across his knuckles. Entering the cottage, they share a smile.
Emotion wells inside Torver, bringing tears to his eyes that he has to blink away. He laughs at the absurdity.
Because for the first time in his life, the feeling that threatens to consume him is hope.