Epilogue cont.
I feel my face heat as all the fire in my blood rushed to my cheeks.
Marton did ask me to marry him, two weeks ago when I finally got up the courage to ask him about the ring from my basilisk visions.
A ring which never existed, though Marton did trade one of the dragons of the Trove a limerick in exchange for a ruby the size of a blueberry, which he did use to bribe the knight at the gate.
I don't know how it happened exactly that my admission of the silly dream turned into a question that Marton asked which I apparently answered with a yes.
There are no rings and no plans for a wedding any time soon and nothing at all really as proof of our engagement except for that yes which hangs between us and makes Marton smile like a fool as my mother blinks and opens the door wider to allow us into the house.
The first thing I notice is the young blond girl in the launderer's smock, looking at us with big green eyes where she sits at my mother's worktable, a host of shirts and pants and waistcoats laid out in front of her.
I know just what they've been doing, because I remember my mother teaching me how to do it when I was about this girl's age.
Using lye and lemon juice to get out the trickiest of the stains before doing the washing in the big tub in the backyard.
"This is Lilla," says my mother, a bit of awkwardness in her voice. She wrings her hands around the towel in her grip. "I-I adopted Lilla about four years ago now, after a fever took her parents."
It takes me a minute to process those words.
To feel a sting of hurt as I realize my mother acquired another child in my absence.
A human child who looks pretty and timid and surely has none of my draconic faults.
And then to feel guilty, and selfish, and to tell myself it is good that my mother had someone in her life all these years.
"It's nice to meet you, Lilla," I manage, after too long has passed for it to seem true.
Lilla flushes bright pink and stumbles to her feet to give me a clumsy curtsy. "I—" She shrinks in on herself, hugging her waist and swaying. "I have heard so much about you. Mother says..."
She breaks off with wide eyes at the sound of my involuntary hiss. I try to cover it with a cough.
My mother, for her part, does not seem to notice the tension between us. She is looking at Marton.
"Fiancé?" she repeats.
Marton puffs up with pride, smiling as he confirms it.
"And are you...a dragon too?" my mother asks him.
"He's a human, Mom." I do not mean for the words to sound so defensive.
"Well. That's nice." She tries to smile, then circles around the table to wrap a comforting arm around Lilla, in a gesture that seems almost unconscious. The young girl, probably age ten or eleven if I were estimating, leans into my mother's side gratefully.
We stand for a moment on opposite sides of the table, looking at each other.
My mother breaks the silence. "I was just about to get dinner started.
" She says it in a tone of invitation. And though it is way too early in the day to eat dinner, most people no doubt having just eaten breakfast, Marton responds eagerly, "We would love to stay for a meal. To get to know you both."
And so we do.
"I think that went very well," says Marton that night as we bed down in front of the fire place in my mother's sitting room.
I don't know how we ended up agreeing to stay the night.
I don't know how half of this day has happened, from my mother laughing as Marton regaled her with humorous tales from our adventures to little blond Lilla hugging me goodnight, completely unafraid of me.
I chalk it all up to Marton and the strange peaceable alchemy he seems to work on the people around him.
He is so good at making friends and setting people at ease.
Case in point: when we lay down for the night upon our bedrolls retrieved from our morning campsite, I am curled up in Marton's arms with my head pillowed on his chest.
His fingers play with my hair as we talk over the events of the day.
"Your mother looks just like you," he tells me.
"What? She looks nothing at all like me!
" My mother is tall and slender to my shortness and muscle.
Fair skinned to my olive complexion. Dark eyed to my light.
Straight brown hair to my curly black.
"I don't mean your features necessarily.
But the way she carries herself. Some of the expressions she makes.
And this sort of... toughness to the way she stands, as if she is ready for anything in the world to come at her and she's prepared to face it.
It is so like you, I could almost believe she is you walking around in a different skin.
"
I snort at that, and we are quiet for beat, listening to the crackle of the fireplace—the spring evening still cool enough to warrant a fire—and the sleepy noises of the village winding down.
Doors shutting for the night, friends and neighbors bidding each other farewell.
"I suppose," I break the silence between us, half burying my face against Marton's side to muffle my words, "that I have another sister.
"
Marton laughs outright, fingers tangled in my hair.
"I knew you liked her."
"I didn't say that.
"
"You didn't have to. You had hearts in your eyes at how sweet and caring she acted towards your mother.
And vice versa."
"No," I disagree.
"I hated that."
"You loved it.
"
"I hated it!" I insist, shoving at him.
He tightens his arms around me, rolling us over so half his weight is on top of me.
"Loved it," he whispers in my ear.
"Mm.
" I am distracted by the tingles that travel from his breath at my neck all the way down my spine, tilting my head in the hopes that he will kiss me there.
When he huffs a laugh in my ear instead, I hiss, "I hate you.
"
"You love me."
"I—"
And then I forget what I was going to say because he's kissing me. And he's right, anyway.
I love it all.
We stay with my mother and Lilla for five days, getting to know them both and what their lives have looked like these past few years.
I learn about the dark years my mother had in my absence.
About how, when I had been gone two years, she tried to marshal the funds to travel to the palace and demand my whereabouts from the king.
But she couldn't scrape together enough coin for a horse or a wagon ride or even a decent pair of boots and enough food to last the journey, and she was eventually forced to give up hope, lapsing into a deep depression.
Food was scarce in the village at that time, the king having increased taxes and hiked up the price of grain, making it nearly impossible for peasant farmers and families to stay afloat.
After a few years of living in such poor conditions and struggling to find the will to go on, my mother fell ill with the same fever that later killed Lilla's parents.
My mother pulled through the fever thanks in large part to the water pump in the backyard, which she used to bring up water for her laundering business.
The easy nearness of the water is what made it possible to continue caring for herself, even when she was almost too weak to move.
When my mother awoke from her fevered haze, she discovered that many in the town had not been so lucky.
Lilla was not the only child orphaned, but she was the only one without any living family left to care for her.
My mother took her in, Lilla at that time a sickly, grieving girl of no more than six.
It was not an easy road, but the two of them grew together and eventually became a family, just as Cherry and I had done.
My mother's telling of the story brings tears to my eyes, and my mother husks a laugh at me.
"You've become a crier," she tells me with a wry smile at her lips.
"You used to be a fighter."
I roll my eyes, a gesture that takes me right back to childhood.
"I can be both."
When the time comes for us to part ways, we say goodbye to my mother and Lilla in the field outside of town, just off the eastern road.
Close enough that all of the villagers on the main street can still see us, and some of them even meander close to bid us goodbye.
The villagers have been strangely welcoming these past few days, even after realizing who—and therefore, what—I am.
Some of them have heard of the part I played in vanquishing the old king, and while most seem skeptical about the wild rumors they've heard flying about of the protectorkin and the king's basilisk mind control, they are all glad that he's dead and that the prices of grain have gone down.
And, of course, Marton has won each and every one of the townspeople's hearts with his handsome face, clever mind, and never failing kindness.
"That fiancé of yours is a real catch," say the old man who used to throw horseshoes at me and the other children if he caught us loitering in his yard, now giving me a nudge with his elbow and a grin missing several teeth.
"Thanks," I manage.
I hug my mother goodbye for the fifth time today.
"Promise you'll write to me," she says.
"Promise me it won't be years this time.
Promise you'll come back."
"I promise," I tell her, meaning it with all I have.
She and Lilla stand facing me and Marton once more.
In the days past, I did invite them to come and live at the palace as part of the royal family, which led roundabout to the information that I am, in fact, the Princess of Ithyma, a bit of news which apparently hadn't made it out this far yet.
(In my plain brown dress and bare feet, I doubt anyone here would believe it anyway.)
My mother refused the invitation, explaining that she and Lilla are comfortable where they are, and happy. I respect their feelings, though I have every intention of changing their minds one day.
We embrace again, one last time, and my mother cups my face as we pull away.
"I love you," she tells me seriously, with the gravest expression I have ever seen.
"And I hate that I have missed so much of your life and growing up.
Which is why I mean it when I say that if you get married without me present, I will skin you alive and make a handbag out of your hide.
" I guffaw, and my mother turns her narrowed eyes on Marton. "That goes for you too." He pales.
I give Lilla big goodbye hug, lifting her off of her feet. She squeaks. When I set her down, I ruffle her hair. "Take care of our mom for me, pipsqueak."
Lilla's eyes get huge and round and she nods frantically. "I will!"
"Good."
Soon there is nothing for it. I turn a sardonic look on the villagers waiting nearby. They haven't seen my dragon form since I was a scrawny, adolescent thing, having barely had a full belly a day in my life.
I grab the hem of my dress, and Marton hastily steps in front of me to block the public's view, more concerned with my modesty than I have ever been.
My dress falls to the grass in the time it takes me to shift. There is a rippling of shock, fear, awe, and amazement from the crowd of onlookers. A toddler cries and a young girl feints and everyone holds their loved ones closer. Everyone takes at least half a step back, even my mother and Lilla.
Marton is the only one who takes a step closer to me. He reaches up and I lower my snout to meet him, letting his small human hand caress my scales. It feels nice.
"Beautiful," he whispers to me, and even if I couldn't hear him, I would know that's what he said because that's what he always says.
He ties our packs and supplies to my back, and then he finds his seat between my shoulder blades.
I hear him bid farewell to the watching townspeople, though I don't pay attention to what he says.
My mother and Lilla lift their hands to wave, and some of the braver villagers join in.
I give them all a dragonish smile, and then I launch into the sky.
I circle overhead a few times, giving them all a good look, and then I arrow south where Marton and I have decide we are bound for Rohus and the stories there of the Serpent King who rules the seas and sells the kin into slavery.
Though my heart feels light and happy now, the future wide open and bright as the sky before me, I know there is much ahead that won't be easy.
There are still basilisks and other villains in the Five Kingdoms. There are still people living in fear, in hiding, and in poverty across the realm.
But we have our friends, our allies, and we will make more.
We have all the truth that we have learned, and we will learn more, and share it.
It will be dangerous, I know, and full of complications. Things may not always work out, and we may lose things or people we care about along the way. But I've made up my mind about the life I'm going to have, the world my friends and I are going to make together. And I'd rather die than doubt.
THE END