Epilogue #3
“Jesstin, please hear me when I say this. Please.” She sighed deeply.
“I’m jealous of my husband. My children, my grandson.
I ask myself all the time, what’s wrong with me that I can’t see my own little brother in my dreams?
I’ve always felt something was missing. Something.
.. indefinable. It’s not unlike when you know there was a task you needed to complete, but you can’t remember what it was, only that it was important.
.. except this is much, much bigger. If I’ve been standoffish, it’s my own insecurity leading, and I’m sorry. ”
“There’s really no need to apologize.”
“There is. I should have said it a long time ago. Even without those memories, Jesstin... I love you. I know you are kin. I feel it. Here.” She closed a fist against her heart.
“Seeing you as a little boy, confused about all the anger flying around you, surfaced something within me. This magus told me it’s unlikely we’ll ever undo the harm created when that witch stole your soul fragment, but the memories Mathias erased weren’t erased at all.
They were just stored somewhere we couldn’t access.
That’s why you’re returning to me there and why I can only see you as a small child.
I have hope, though, because Asterin and Cat and Tyr and Wyat have found you in their dreams, so there is a way.
” Her moist eyes swept his face. “Be patient with me? I’m trying.
You’re here, with us, and that’s what matters.
You told me you’d been a source of my worries, but I was just as troubled as you were at that age.
You remember when Mathias sent me to train with his assassins? The Riverhelm Revenants?”
“He was punishing you for having a mind of your own.” Jesstin laughed ruefully. “Do you know he told me you wanted to go? Begged him to send you to train? I cried for days when you left. I didn’t understand much, but I knew he was lying.”
“Did you? I’m sorry.” Rhiain sagged. “Lies were all Mathias knew. He may have been a good man once. He wasn’t always terrible. But he won’t be remembered for his occasional kindnesses, nor should he.”
Jesstin had learned to leave certain conversations at the surface. It was how he’d managed most of their interactions over the past four years, taking each moment as it was and not how he wished it could’ve been. But that had been an easier proposition when Rhiain had remembered nothing.
“I love you too,” he said after a pause but had to collect his breath after. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“For not knowing what I’m supposed to do or say.
” Jesstin shrugged and looked down at the house, where so many of his people were gathered.
He’d bonded with them in different ways, but for most of his kin, he was the cousin or uncle who came late into their lives.
Caterina and Tyreste remembered how he’d raised and loved them, but Sianha and Rhydian never would.
He couldn’t turn back time and watch them start their own families.
He’d never know what his great-nieces and nephews looked like as infants or how their personalities had evolved with the seasons.
“I never have. I used to wish I was better with words so I could tell you what your protection and love meant to me, but you wouldn’t remember if I had.
And here we are, and I still don’t know what to say. ”
“There’s nothing to say.” She scooted closer and laid her head on his shoulder. “You’re my brother, and I want you in my life for as long as it’s mine to have. Memories belong to the past, but all we really have is now, and I’ll never again take that for granted.”
Jesstin rested his head atop hers. He wasn’t the inconvenient truth hovering over her family’s life after all.
They’d never reclaim the relationship they’d had when he was younger, but perhaps it was a blessing to them both.
He was no longer self-destructive or bent on dangerous rebellion.
He had the physical body of a twenty-four-year-old man but the wisdom of an elder.
She wasn’t his substitute mother, and he wasn’t the weight around her neck. “Nor will I, Rhiainach.”
Jesstin heard the laughing and hollering echo all the way at the other end of the hall. “How many are here tonight?” he asked.
Rhiain made a silly face. “Uh...” She shrugged, and they both laughed. “Asterin worked with the chef on the menus, so he’d know.”
“Did you ever expect to have a family this large?”
“Not until I started to dream of the future.” Rhiain slowed. “I haven’t yet mentioned to Asterin, what I told you. I was waiting for later, when things are more quiet. The man I was talking about, who helped me with my memory recovery?”
Jesstin nodded.
“His partner is prescient, a soothsayer. He’s predicted a great war just over a decade from now, involving the crown, the Reaches, and the Medvedev.
We’re due for a big one; it’s been many generations since our last. But he said that Clarissant, Wyat, and little Marsh will all play pivotal roles in this war.
They’ll all be on the same side, but Sianha’s husband, Steward Oakenwell, will be on the other, which means she will too.
The Easterlands and the Westerlands are to be the centerpiece of this war.
He wouldn’t say how it all came to be resolved, only that there will be incredible losses on all sides.
” She forced a smile. “Of course, nothing is ever set in stone, is it?”
Jesstin had never trusted soothsayers. They were wily fucks who could say anything, collect their coin, and move onto their next mark, while the people who hired them dealt with the fallout.
He trusted them about as well as he trusted the colorful clowns in those awful mummer’s shows that were meant for children but always scared them away.
Rhiain put her faith in those kinds of things, though, and not without appropriate scrutiny. For her to mention it meant she’d already spent time considering it, and what she’d shared was the result.
“War is a part of life,” he said. “You said it. We’re due. It’s not unreasonable to think we’d all be involved in some way.”
“You’re right.” Her smile was more relaxed. “There’s no need to borrow trouble that isn’t ours yet.”
When they reached the archway into the dining room, Jesstin paused to take it all in.
So many of his kin were sharing food and conversation.
Marsh, Clarissant’s three-year-old son, chased Alysia and Marsh’s little brother, Jonah, around the children’s table.
Sianha’s youngest, named Asterin for his grandfather, demonstrated to an unimpressed Oliver how to use an adult spoon.
Tyreste’s teenage daughters, Rhiain and Kimbra, were engaged in a challenge as to who could roll their eyes at the little ones the hardest, while Anduin’s son, Ossie, covertly launched torn-off pieces of bread at them.
Whenever they’d look his way, he’d pretend to be engrossed in his meal.
Asterin’s older sister, Endeara, sat with the adults, including a very comely young man named Barrington Sylvaine, who was the only living heir to the stewardship of Rushwood. Her beaming smile and blooming cheeks revealed her worries had been for nothing.
Tyreste and his wife, Eliana, were beside a newly pregnant Clarissant and her husband, Griffath, who Jesstin had to admit was a pretty decent fellow, despite being from the Westerlands.
Caterina and Percy had of course brought Wyat, who only recently had graduated to the adult table.
Sianha looked radiant, especially next to her husband Steward Oakenwell, a serious man who seemed more enamored with honor and duty than joyful activities.
Rhydian was there with his new wife, Viola, and their four-year-old son, Rolph.
Emrys’s oldest, Nara, was back from the Sepulchre for a few days, and her brother, Anduin, couldn’t stop watching his wife, Senna—whom he was still besotted with, even after two decades of marriage.
Emrys sat near them so Senna could subtly help him when he dropped a utensil or forgot where he was.
She was always so gentle and kind to her father-in-law.
She’d been the one to insist she and Anduin move back to Skylark Citadel, so Emrys had family seeing to his care and not faceless nurses who had never known the man as he used to be.
Jesstin watched Rhiain take her place across from Asterin.
Their hands connected on her way to her seat, their eyes joining in a private moment.
Elloven had been right after all. He did know how to be a husband and father.
Not from Mathias, and certainly not from Sestinn, but from the mutual adoration and trust Rhiain and Asterin had always lived by.
The unconditional love, founded in structure and consistency, they’d raised their children in.
All of their children, Emrys’s too, were strong and confident, and their rich and flourishing lives reflected it.
And then there was Elloven. He caught himself holding his breath while watching her talk to Endeara and Barrington.
It happened all the time, but there was something even more amazing about watching her interact with others.
She was the light in every circumstance, in every interaction, expression, word, or act of kindness.
Wherever she went, people felt it. She nurtured their children with her indomitable warmth and still had reserves left for Jesstin.
Somewhere along the way, her unselfish love had led to a deep and necessary healing in himself.
Because of her, he understood there were no limits to how much love one person could carry for others if they first loved themselves.
She and the children were the best thing he’d ever done.