Epilogue #2
“If only the world agreed,” Elloven said. “Percy is a rare man, Wyat. You both are. Daire and I are sad to lose you and Endeara soon, but you’ve both done so much, and we couldn’t have done it without you.”
Wyat flushed darker. “And about that, Aunt El, I’ve made arrangements with the archminister that when I take over Grandfather’s old assignment at the Reliquary, I’ll only be providing half my time there, so I can still give the trust the other half.”
Elloven squeezed his shoulder. “That’s very thoughtful but unnecessary. You petitioned so hard for them to revive the office of the dealer. That’s your passion.”
“So is this.” When he smiled, he resembled his grandfather, Asterin. “Endy is just straightening up in the back and then we’ll be ready. Mind if I show this one something while we wait?” He gave Alysia a playful bounce in his arms.
“You’re sure it’s the right time?” she asked.
She knew about the black bunny Wyat had rescued from a ditch after the last storm, but she had asked him to wait until he was certain the poor creature would survive before introducing it to the children, who would immediately ask to keep it.
Rabbits were food, not pets, Jesstin had said when she’d told him, but it hadn’t taken much persuasion to change his perspective.
“Sure as I’ll ever be.”
“Go on then,” she said. “I’ll wait here.”
When they were gone, Elloven settled onto her favorite chair by the fire with a contented sigh.
She surveyed the well-worn room, filled with imprints of everyone who had passed through on their way to a better life.
It was a rare moment to be alone anymore, but she no longer feared the silence or the unknown.
Elloven Skylark had been to the netherworld, cheated death, and conquered her demons, but not by herself. She would never truly be alone.
The love surrounding her was all the magic she needed.
In this life and the next.
Oliver went running toward the carriage before it had even stopped. Jesstin had hardly swung the door open before his son leaped in, chattering about the latest language Uncle Sesto and Uncle Asterin were teaching him.
“I’m ready to work, Papa. I told them to put me to work,” Oliver said proudly.
“Are you?” Jesstin waited for the others to exit and jumped onto the dirt. “Don’t want to wait a few years, until you’re done with your toys?”
“Toys are for children,” Oliver said with a stuttered blink he’d learned from Jesstin, who had picked up from Gennady. “Like Aly.”
Elloven stood a few feet away, watching in amusement. Jesstin grinned at her. “Oh, so we can give Alysia all your toys then? You won’t mind?”
“No, because my toys are for boys and her toys are for girls.”
“Do you want to know a secret?”
Oliver nodded exuberantly.
Jesstin shared a quick glance with Elloven and then leaned down to whisper, “They’re the same toys.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is.”
“Mama, is that true?”
Elloven bounced Alysia in her arms with a cheerful laugh that made Jesstin fluttery inside. It happened all the time, and he was certainly not complaining. “I’m afraid so, chipmunk. But you love your toys, and you love your sister, so why should it matter?”
Oliver deliberated that for about two seconds before brightening with another thought. “Mama, they brought babies for Alysia.”
Elloven shared her confusion with Jesstin, who shrugged.
“Dolls?”
“Not dolls, babies. One is called Marsh, one is called Jonah, and one is still cooking.” Oliver rubbed his belly.
Elloven burst out laughing. “Oh! Clarissa’s little ones.”
“Anytime someone asks Clarissant how her love match is working out,” Jesstin said, “she just spits out another child as her answer.”
Elloven gave him a chiding look. “We haven’t seen Marsh since he was in swaddling, and this will be our first time meeting little Jonah.
Why don’t you introduce us, chipmunk?” She gulped when he tugged her hand and started to march them off.
Her dazed glance over her shoulder as they headed toward the main house was one of many about her that left Jesstin thunderstruck in his love and sick with how close he’d come to losing her forever.
“Cousin Clari says she’s cooking a little girl like Aly, but Cousin Griffath says...” Oliver’s chatter faded as they walked off.
“He’s grown up so much.” Rhiain appeared at Jesstin’s side, wrapped in a scarf Elloven had knit for her as a gift at the last Wintertide Jubilee.
For a woman approaching seventy, she looked little older than middle-aged.
Asterin, too, was as healthy as ever. Jesstin had lost so much of both of them, and especially of Emrys, but he tried to think of what he had instead of what he didn’t.
“Aly looks more and more like Elloven every day, Jesstin. You’re going to have your hands full when she gets a little older. ”
“Don’t I know it,” Jesstin said. A shiver tore through him with the breeze. “Some nights, I can’t sleep thinking about the world we brought her into and what will happen one day when I’m no longer here to protect her.”
“All parents feel that way,” Rhiain said. “She’ll have her brother, though, and her cousins. She’s all Oliver ever talks about when he’s here.”
Jesstin laughed at that. “Really?”
Rhiain nodded. “He’s a special boy. As says he’s learning languages so easily, he might be ready for translations in only a couple of years. That’s the youngest of any pupil they’ve had.”
“Sesto told me.” Jesstin had been pondering the matter of his succession, whether it was even necessary.
Unlike Jesstin, Oliver had taken to scholastic endeavors naturally.
Alysia was still so little, but her fire burned a different color than her brother’s, and he could sometimes imagine her behind the bar, sassing everyone around and whipping the place into shape.
But he’d accepted the potential that neither of his children would want to inherit what he’d built.
Whatever they wanted, he would see it done.
“Are you still moving onto the new homestead next week?”
“That’s the plan,” Jesstin said. They’d been living at Nightwood since their wedding, but there were too many ghosts for Elloven.
He’d bought some land between Mythgarde and Riverchapel, a few miles from the Hermitage.
It had been a year since construction began, but the house was finally ready, a place to make their own memories and leave their own ghosts.
“I can’t wait to see it.” She inhaled the wind with a nervous, guarded smile and a shuffle in place. It seemed like a cue for them to head inside with the others, but she didn’t move.
Over the past four years, their interactions had grown less perfunctory, slightly warmer and more familial, but in many ways, their relationship wasn’t any deeper than a casual acquaintance.
Asterin had started dreaming of Jesstin almost immediately after they’d reunited, but not Rhiain.
It was the final piece of unfinished business, the last frayed thread, but Jesstin feared it would never mend and he’d never get his sister back.
“All of you are welcome, Rhiain. Anytime.” He pulled short of adding you’re family because he’d seen how she always struggled with not having recovered any of her memories as others had. “Should we...”
“Jesstin, before we go in, there’s something I need to say.” She did an awkward little shuffle before gesturing toward the nearest bench. “If you’ll indulge me a moment?”
“I’ll indulge you as long as you want.”
She smoothed her skirts and eased onto the bench.
“I’ve been meeting with a magus from the Sepulchre for the past few months.
There’s been some developments in the study of magic’s role in memory, and I thought—I hoped—he might have insight into how to recover ours.
Mine.” She tugged on her scarf. “Unfortunately, he did not have any experience or knowledge of soul fragmentation, but he had worked with people like me and Emrys and... you... who have had memories taken using magic from our world. He was very interested in our story and has studied us, well me, ever since. He was particularly curious about how recovering the past would affect my recollections of you.”
Jesstin frowned. “Even if he could recover them, I’d be a child.”
“But that’s what I wanted to tell you. He has recovered some.
Between my dream memories over the years and his help, I estimate I’m close to halfway in regaining what was lost. Emrys isn’t well enough to participate in the exercises, but you may want to.
..” Rhiain shook her head. “Something unexpected happened during our work together. While the holes of those years began to slowly fill, I saw you.” She twisted her hands in her lap.
“It had to be you, though you were so little. You would have been so young when Mathias stole our memories.”
Although Jesstin had waited a long time for her to have a breakthrough, all he felt was numb. “Ah.”
“I see this sweet little boy, and he’s so familiar yet so foreign and so.
.. shy. He’s shy and he needs me, and when I see him, I know—I don’t feel, I know—I must protect him.
.. from the same horrors no one was there to protect me from.
” Rhiain turned sideways, wearing a somber smile.
“I feel as though I may act standoffish toward you at times. Do you feel that?”
Jesstin cleared his throat and nodded. “But I understand.” It wouldn’t help her to hear how deeply he still, and always would, feel the loss of his sister. “All of this though? More than I could’ve dreamed, Rhiain. I don’t expect more.”