But Hafiza’s eyes softened. Grew contemplative. “We will remain for as long as we are needed—until the khagan’s soldiers can be transported home. We’ll leave some behind to tend for any remaining wounded, but in a few weeks, we will go.”
Yrene’s throat tightened. “I know.”
“And you,” Hafiza went on, taking her hand, “will not return with us.”
Her eyes burned, but Yrene whispered, “No, I won’t.”
Hafiza squeezed Yrene’s fingers, her hand warm. Strong as steel. “I shall have to find myself a new heir apparent, then.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Whatever for?” Hafiza chuckled. “You have found love, and happiness, Yrene. There is nothing more that I could ever wish for you.”
Yrene wiped away the tear that slipped out. “I just—I don’t want you to think I wasted your time—”
Hafiza crowed with laughter. “Wasted my time? Yrene Towers—Yrene Westfall.” The ancient woman cupped Yrene’s face with her strong, ancient hands. “You have saved us all.” Yrene closed her eyes as Hafiza pressed a kiss to her brow. A blessing and a farewell.
“You will stay in these lands,” Hafiza said, her smile unwavering. “But even with the ocean dividing us, we will remain linked here.” She touched her chest, right over her heart. “And no matter the years, you will forever have a place at the Torre. Always.”
Yrene put a shaking hand over her own heart and nodded.
Hafiza squeezed her shoulder and made to walk back to her patients.
But Yrene said, “What if—”
Hafiza turned, brows rising. “Yes?”
Yrene swallowed. “What if, once I have settled in Adarlan, and had this babe … When the time is right, what if I established my own Torre here?”
Hafiza cocked her head, as if listening to the cadence of the statement while it echoed into her heart. “A Torre Cesme in the North.”
Yrene went on, “In Adarlan. In Rifthold. A new Torre to replenish what Erawan destroyed. To teach the children who might not realize they have the gift, and those who will be born with it.” Because many of the Fae streaming in from the battlefield were descendants of the healers who had gifted the Torre women with their powers—long ago. Perhaps they would wish to help again.
Hafiza smiled anew. “I like that idea very much, Yrene Westfall.”
With that, the Healer on High walked back into the fray of healing and pain.
But Yrene remained standing there, a hand drifting to the slight swelling in her belly.
And she smiled—broad and unfalteringly—at the future that opened before her, bright as the oncoming dawn.
Sunrise was near, yet Manon could not sleep. Had not bothered to find a place to rest, not while the Crochans and Ironteeth remained injured, and she had not yet finished her count of how many had survived the battle. The war.
There was an empty space inside her where twelve souls had once burned fiercely.
Perhaps that was why she had not found her bed, not even when she knew Dorian had likely procured sleeping arrangements. Why she still lingered in the aerie, Abraxos dozing beside her, and stared out at the silent battlefield.
When the bodies were cleared, when the snows melted, when the spring came, would a blasted bit of earth linger on the plain before the city? Would it forever remain as such, a marker of where they fell?
“We have a final count,” Bronwen said behind her, and Manon found the Crochan and Glennis emerging from the tower stairwell, Petrah at their heels.
Manon braced herself for it as she waved a hand in silent request.
Bad. But not as bad as it could have been.
When Manon opened her eyes, the three of them only stared at her. Ironteeth and Crochan, standing together in peace. As allies.
“We’ll collect the dead tomorrow,” Manon said, her voice low. “And burn them at moonrise.” As both Crochans and Ironteeth did. A full moon tomorrow—the Mother’s Womb. A good moon to be burned. To be returned to the Three-Faced Goddess, and reborn within that womb.
“And after that?” Petrah asked. “What then?”
Manon looked from Petrah to Glennis and Bronwen. “What should you like to do?”
Glennis said softly, “Go home.”
Manon swallowed. “You and the Crochans may leave whenever you—”
“To the Wastes,” Glennis said. “Together.”
Manon and Petrah swapped a glance. Petrah said, “We cannot.”
Bronwen’s lips curved upward. “You can.”
Manon blinked. And blinked again as Bronwen extended a fist toward Manon and opened it.
Inside lay a pale purple flower, small as Manon’s thumbnail. Beautiful and delicate.
“A bastion of Crochans just made it here—a bit late, but they heard the call and came. All the way from the Wastes.”
Manon stared and stared at that purple flower.
“They brought this with them. From the plain before the Witch-City.”
The barren, bloodied plain. The land that had yielded no flowers, no life beyond grass and moss and—
Manon’s sight blurred, and Glennis took her hand, guiding it toward Bronwen’s before the witch tipped the flower into Manon’s palm. “Only together can it be undone,” Glennis whispered. “Be the bridge. Be the light.”
A bridge between their two peoples, as Manon had become.
A light—as the Thirteen had exploded with light, not darkness, in their final moments.
“When iron melts,” Petrah murmured, her blue eyes swimming with tears.
The Thirteen had melted that tower. Melted the Ironteeth within it. And themselves.
“When flowers spring from fields of blood,” Bronwen went on.
Manon’s knees buckled as she stared out at that battlefield. Where countless flowers had been laid atop the blood and ruins where the Thirteen had met their end.
Glennis finished, “Let the land be witness.”
The battlefield where the rulers and citizens of so many kingdoms, so many nations, had come to pay tribute. To witness the sacrifice of the Thirteen and honor them.
Silence fell, and Manon whispered, her voice shaking as she held that small, impossibly precious flower in her palm, “And return home.”
Glennis bowed her head. “And so the curse is broken. And so we shall go home together—as one people.”
The curse was broken.
Manon just stared at them, her breathing turning jagged.
Then she roused Abraxos, and was in the saddle within heartbeats. She did not offer them any explanation, any farewell, as they leaped into the thinning night.
As she guided her wyvern to the bit of blasted earth on the battlefield. Right to its heart.
And smiling through her tears, laughing in joy and sorrow, Manon laid that precious flower from the Wastes upon the ground.
In thanks and in love.
So they would know, so Asterin would know, in the realm where she and her hunter and child walked hand in hand, that they had made it.
That they were going home.
Aelin wanted to, but could not sleep. Had ignored the offers to find her a room, a bed, in the chaos of the castle.
Instead, she and Rowan had gone to the Great Hall, to talk to the wounded, to offer what help they could for those who needed it most.
The lost Fae of Terrasen, their giant wolves and adopted human clan with them, wanted to speak to her as much as the citizens of Orynth. How they had found the Wolf Tribe a decade ago, how they’d fallen in with them in the wilds of the mountains and hinterlands beyond, was a tale she’d soon learn. The world would learn.
Their healers filled the Great Hall, joining the Torre women. All descended from those in the southern continent—and apparently trained by them, too. Dozens of fresh healers, each bearing badly needed supplies. They fell seamlessly into work alongside those from the Torre. As if they had been doing so for centuries.
And when the healers both human and Fae had shooed them out, Aelin had wandered.
Each hallway and floor, peering into the rooms so full of ghosts and memory. Rowan had walked at her side, a quiet, unfaltering presence.
Level by level they went, rising ever higher.
They were nearing the top of the north tower when dawn broke.