After the Empire (Complete)

Epilogue - Aelin

The air today is clear and beautiful, the sky a shining blue. And it's quiet. Quiet enough to let us remember. 

We started after the battle, when the dead of both sides stretched farther than we could see. We walked among them, trying to remember their faces, their names, what they had done for us. I was still tired, still so weak from closing the lock, from dying, from coming back. The faces of the gods and the dead fae still burning behind my eyelids whenever I shut my eyes. Elena's parting words to me still sounding in my ears. 

"You have another chance firebringer. Use it well"

We made it a point every year, to walk among the dead and remember. To make sure we never forgot why we were fighting, or the price we payed for freedom and life. 

Then after the years started passing our group began to dwindle, and the path of our yearly trek changed. 

It's always Dorian first. An age old tradition had decreed that he be laid in his family's crypt when he passed, a wasting sickness finally stealing what so many blades had been unable to. The funeral they held was beautiful, 10 thousand people or more teaming in the streets to remember the best king Adarlan had ever had. His daughter Alia had stood beside the procession, her face set against tears she refused to shed. And when all the crowd had returned to their beds and only those who had truly known him remained, we had traded stories of him before his black hair had faded to white, and his perfect skin had begun to crease. stories of the prince who fought and laughed and loved with everything he was. 

Manon had not joined us at the funeral, or in our mourning. She did not leave the castle for another 3 years, the only people allowed to see her her daughter, Asterin, and Elide. When she finally emerged she was never the same. She spoke only in brief, jarring exchanges. she rode Abraxos, she fought like a rabid animal, but she never lead again. When a stray arrow pierced her heart 4 years later, we silently laid her to rest beside her king. A ceremony only for those who knew and loved them both.  

After the Adarlan tomb it's Chaol and Yrene. Despite their fears, and ours, they went together in their sleep when they were both old and tired. To the day I die I will never forget the sight of them, holding hands with their faces frozen in endless peace. The never had children, but when we buried them scores of people came, each with their own story of being fed and clothed and saved by the Westfalls. They are buried together, as close to the royal crypt and we could manage. Their headstone, as per their request, is small and simple. The engravings are faded now, worn away by time and a thousand mournful hands, but two words are still legible. 'Broken, Healed'.

Aedion is next. He went down like a soldier, fighting and laughing. He never ascended, and so he aged, but he would never acknowledge it. He kept thinking he could fight like a young man, well into his 50s. That's what killed him, in the end. He took out and entire band of robber's threatening a forest road, but he fell to one of their dying blows. He's laid in Terrasen's new crypt.  Technically he was the first occupant. Adarlan burned the bodies our past dead, and all we had were plaques to remember them by. 

It was a huge scandal when I decreed that Lysandra be placed beside Aedion when she passed 6 years after, an assassins blade piercing her heart. I'd have killed him myself, except that her adoring people had stoned every assassin in Carraverre in punishment for taking her from them. When people protested that only Terrasen's ruling family should be given a place in it's crypt, I told them that if the bravest woman I had ever known didn't deserve to lie there than I would burn it down and Terrasen's rulers could lie in the dirt like everyone else. 

No one knows what happened to Elide and Lorcan. They disappeared shortly after Manon passed, leaving control of Perranth to their youngest son. It's a nice idea to hope that they're still out there, but there's not way of knowing for certain. 

Last it's Evangeline, her gravestone nearly hidden beneath the mass of roses growing around it. She alone of us  got the chance to live a normal life, marrying her wife Jaina and selling flowers in Rifthold until she died. The roses on her grave were planted by all the girl's whose freedom's she had fought for and bought. By the daughters whose mothers were able to walk away because of her. To this day the laws prohibiting the sale of girl's bodies without their consent in both Adarlan and Terrasen are called the Evangeline proclamations.  

I turn my face up to the sky, and let the tears toll down my cheeks. In this moment every year, I let myself feel the ghost of Lysandra's hand in mine, hear Aedion's laugh on the wind. For one moment the years melt away and they are there beside me again, my family. 

It's been 800 years now since Evangeline, 800 years since we became the only ones left of a court that had laughed and loved and saved each other. 800 years since the last loss that will never stop hurting. 

But the next one is coming. We can both feel it. 

I always knew he would go before me, that he would fade and leave me alone. That doesn't mean I'm ready. I won't ever be ready. 

He slides his hand into mine, a hand slightly less firm that the one I held, all those years ago. But still here. For now he's still here. And so, for now, I hold on tight.

Thank you all.