Page 169 of A Reign of Roses
“The raven we sent you,” I said.
“I never received a raven.”
My mind emptied. Then emptied again. “Then why did you…” But my words trailed off with deep understanding.
Aleksander was silent, his warrior pride lurking behind that solid-ice exterior. I watched him survey the torchlit scene. The hefting bodies, the prisoners of war chained in lilium. And right alongside all the gore and pain, cries of triumph that rent the air. Cheers of merriment.
“She got to you,” Kane said slowly, such pride brimming in his eyes.
“Don’t paint me as some changed man. I didn’t do it for either of you. I couldn’t have that bigoted bastard taking over Rose.”
Kane continued, unbothered, my hand still held in his. “You know what she said to me once?”
Aleksander said nothing, his mouth a flat line.
“Everyone is capable of redemption.”
My heart swelled at the memory, and I peered up at my husband. He was burned and beaten half to death, his eye nearly swollen shut. His Onyx armor shredded at the sleeve, his long fingers blue with frostbite. But Kane had never looked so beautiful.
I’d said those words to him in the dim midnight light of my bedroom, after Halden’s explosion had forced Kane to tell me more than he’d ever planned to. And he’d remembered, all this time.
“Good luck to you, Aleksander,” I said on a sigh. “I hope we never meet again.”
Inside the great hall, banners were being hammered, hung, and unfurled, and bells jangled in the hands of children. Triumph and bereavement and mourning and celebration poured out in the castle like a chalice overfilled.
My brother found me first. I inhaled the tobacco and snow on hisclothes as he held me before I’d even seen him coming. He pulled back just long enough to examine my face. “I was so scared—”
“I know,” I breathed. “Me, too.”
Leigh found us like that and wedged her way between us easily. I couldn’t stop the tears then, nor did I want to.
We stayed in that embrace for a long time. Holding one another in peaceful silence.
Peace.
That’s what this feeling was. Somewhere in between the clash of blades and the loss of those I loved and the fiery death of my enemy…peace had found me.
Surely the joy would hit me soon. Thereliefthat we had won. But right now, my still-stiff limbs and reeling, foggy mind just needed this. Tangible, unmoving, pleasantly exhausted peace.
I knew Kane had not torn his soft, quicksilver gaze from me one time since I’d awoken.
Eventually I released my family and turned to face him once more.
“Hello,” he said, a crooked grin at his cheeks, tears still in his eyes.
Behind him, the sun crested steadily through the stained-glass windows of the hall and over the snow-draped forest and the peaked mountains beyond. Voices throughout the warmly lit hall rang out, no longer afraid.
“It’s finally over, isn’t it?” I asked, relief flooding me as I grasped his broad, calloused hand. The warmth of his palm simmered through my entire body. Despite being born of ash and snow bare as a newborn, my hand still somehow carried Kane’s signet ring.A gift from my father, I thought.
“For us”—Kane shrugged, thumb dragging softly over my skin—“I think it’s just the beginning.”
Dear Arwen,
I don’t expect, nor see reason, for you to give much credence to the marital counsel of an old, solitary, occasionally cankerous man, but it appears I am compelled to share with you regardless.
It is not news to me that the battle you and Kane plan to wage is unlikely to leave both of you alive. It is a truth that has plagued my thoughts, and I mourn even tonight as I write to you. No man should outlive one child, let alone two.
I was lucky enough to have been married once myself, and we, too, were not given quite as much time as I thought we deserved together. Now, I am no romantic. You know as well as anyone I won’t fuss over the needs of the heart. So this is the only advice I will share with you ahead of your wedding. Cherish one another. Appreciate the moments you are given, ephemeral as they may be. Do not dwell in the past or scurry toward the looming future. And be grateful, each day, for the love that you share. I am grateful to have witnessed it.
