Page 228 of Golden Queen
But mostly, I walked away so that he would not die a bloody, pointless death on the fields of Windemere—in a fight he could not win for a queen who did not deserve the honor of his service.
If I left, he would heal. Even if it took him a hundred years. He had that much time and more. He would find his mate, and the bond would push me from his mind as thoroughly as if I had never been. He would heal because he would be alive to do it.
I knew I never would. I did not have quite so much time as that—and had no interest in ever removing that shattered, jagged piece of me left behind where I tore him free from my soul. It would be the only thing I had to remind me of what had been between us.
Freya flew towards that faint brightening in the sky, where I knew the day would dawn soon enough. The rest of the world lay beyond that sunrise, but I knew I left most of myself under the star-strewn night skies of Darkwatch.
Epilogue
Franca
Franca had been running for months.
First, she had run on foot, racing through the godsgrass with her mother's blood splattered across her face.
But then she fell, rolling into a little depression, drawing her knees up to her chest, holding her hands over her head, waiting.
The sound of the horses’ hooves had been so close. She knew she would never outrun them, so Franca had curled herself tighter into a ball.
She prayed to the Morrigan that the riders would not trample her to death as they passed.
The Royal Guard reached her, the ground rumbling as the horses tore through the godsgrass.
She screwed up her face, waiting for the strike that would do to her what that boot had done to Talia.
Her prayers to Danu were answered. The strike never came. Their shouts and cries of blood lust fell away as they raced across the plains believing they were still in pursuit of her.
The guards should have been her salvation. They should have represented safety.
They had caught up to their caravan just a few days south of Albiyn.
Franca's father received a bird from the Duke of Lithaway with new instructions for where they were to go to wait. Her tall, always stoic papa had read the note with slightly trembling hands, keeping one eye to the sky. He had not wanted them to know how terrified he was of the wyvern legions that were so close to Windemere.
But Franca overheard her parents whispering to each other in their little pallet as they camped that first night in the godsgrass. “If they are sighted, you must take the children into the grass,” her father said, his wife cradled in one of his big arms. “Get as low as you can and do not make a sound.”
They thought Franca was asleep. They had just been doing their usual kissing and cuddling before they turned to talk of Penjan.
“Nanny will take the children,” her mother said stubbornly. “I will stand with you, Bryce. I will always stand with you.”
“Hush, darling. I will not hear of it. The girls need their mother. Talia is just a babe, and even if she does not know it, Franca is still a child. You will do as I say.”
“Have you not learned, Bryce, that I do not do well when given an order?”
Her father laughed. It was a running joke in their family that mother would bristle at even the slightest suggestion of a command.
Franca was prone to bristling herself, especially when her father treated her like a child, as he so often did. She was seventeen, for the gods’ sake. Old enough to marry in most parts of Windemere, well past the age in Castering where her prince was waiting for her.
Franca didn’t bristle at her father calling her a child that night, though. She was too distracted by the fear in his voice—and the terrible thought that he might die. She could not bear the thought of something happening to her papa. He was too big, too infallible to imagine him being taken out by something so mundane as a wyvern. Nothing short of the destruction of the entire world should have been able to bring down the Lord of Mandel.
Franca carried that fear with her as they continued down the Godsway. She could see it clearly in her father’s eyes, the set of his shoulders, the way his eyes tracked across the sky until the sun set each night.
Arkadian’s note had sent some measure of relief through Papa, though, to learn that the Lithaway Fyrd was not far away across the godsgrass. They would meet up with them before they reached the border, if papa’s assessment was correct.
The Lord of Mandel had climbed atop Aelia's big Artaxian horse to lead the caravan just a bit more quickly down the Godsway after that.
They would all be waiting in Athelen when they arrived—the entire Windemerian Fyrd assembled in the fields around the Athelen High Chamberlain's estates, waiting for Aelia to return with her husband's army. Then, the men would take back the kingdom from the Shadowlands, and they could all go home.
A few days later, when a shout came from their guards that another group of Royal Guardsmen were coming down the road from the north, Franca's father probably climbed out of his carriage to greet them eagerly. He would have been hoping for news of the Nightfall Army.
