Volume 11: Epilogue (Patreon)

CECILIA SEVER

The smell of smoke sent alarm bells ringing through my mind, and I dropped the bundle of woolen yarn I was fiddling with before hurrying toward the kitchen. My hip caught the edge of the side table and I turned too late to catch the lamp, which pitched over sideways and cracked against the uneven floor boards.

Heaving a sigh, I resolved to do what I could for the lamp after I rescued the ruins of dinner, and continued into the small, open-air kitchen, where a pot was bubbling violently and issuing black smoke. Careful to wrap my hand first—I’d already learned how it felt to grab the hot iron handle with my bare hands—I lifted the heavy pot off the solar heating element and set it on the table. The iron feet scored little black marks in the surface of the wood.

Biting my lip to keep from sighing again, I grabbed a wooden ladle and stirred the soup, hoping that it hadn’t burned too badly but knowing we’d be eating it one way or the other.

I stirred the soup for another minute or two to keep the still-hot iron from burning it further, then unwrapped my hand and picked up the cracked lamp. Regarding it with regret, I headed out the door but stopped in the frame to turn and look back at the small home.

“Home,” I said, the word strange on my lips. Nowhere else had ever fit the word before, but the little cabin, well outside of the city, with its finicky power and endless maintenance issues, just felt like a home.

I smiled as I took the three brick steps down to the ground and marched around the outer wall of the cabin along a worn gravel path that was more dirt than rock.

The cabin overlooked a bend in one of the many simulated rivers that encircled the city, its constant flow of fresh water the product of pumps and gates instead of gravity. A thin row of evergreens lined the bank of the river. A disused dock poked out from the edge of our property into the moving water, but we’d never managed to acquire the license for a rowboat to take advantage of it.

Between me and the river, on his hands and knees in the rocky soil we’d cleared grass and weeds from, was Nico. For a moment, I saw him not as he was, but as he had been—both the boy I remembered and the dark face he’d worn in that other life.

The thought made me shake my head dizzily, as if I’d stood up too quickly and seen stars. It was difficult to keep it all straight. Much easier not to try and remember. But sometimes the thoughts came back to me, and I couldn’t help but think about it. I’d had a life here on Earth, as the Legacy. That version of me had lived a short and tortured existence before it was snuffed out by my own actions.

My eyes drifted closed, and I had to take care not to breathe too rapidly. In danger of sinking below the waves of the memories that came after, I bit the side of my cheek hard and forced my eyes open again, then began jogging down the gentle slope toward Nico. The vision of those other Nico’s had faded. He was himself again. Although his hair was still dark, his face was soft and kind, his eyes gentle. Just looking at him made my anxiety ease.

He looked up. There was a smudge of dark soil—or maybe fertilizer—across the bridge of his nose and his cheek. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight.

“It’s just like I was afraid of,” he said, smiling at my smile. When he glanced back at the ground, though, the expression fell away to be replaced by a thoughtful frown. “This soil is horrible. The river here hasn’t been in place long enough to truly irrigate the surrounding earth, and it’s really rocky.” He ran his fingers through the dirt, biting his lip. “Still, we should be able to make it work.”

“Dinner’s ready,” I said stiffly. I knew he wouldn’t say anything about it being burnt, but I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it. “Unless…well, we could go into the city? Get something nice? The soup will keep for a few days.”

Nico stood and brushed his hands off on his filthy trousers. “You burned it, didn’t you?”

I burst out with a dismayed groan. “I don’t know what happened. The pot was on and I just kind of got lost…”

“I know,” he said consolingly. Suddenly he was right in front of me, and his strong arms pulled me effortlessly to him.

I pressed my face into the curve of his shoulder and began to tremble.

“I know,” he repeated, his hand running down the back of my long, ashen-brown hair. The detail stuck in my head. Ash brown, not silver-gray. “It’s been happening to me, too,” Nico murmured, holding me tight. “I’ll think about something, and the next thing I know an hour has passed and I haven’t moved. I think…” He swallowed heavily, and his hands ran down my arms until his fingers entwined with my own. “I think it’s whatever Grey did.”

Whatever Grey did.

Forcing on a bright smile, I squeezed his hands and pulled him away from the struggling garden. “Come on, let’s go into the city.”

He regarded me suspiciously. “It’s your one weekend off a month, Cecilia. You know if we go into the city that—”

“I promise that I won’t drag you there, okay?” I batted my eyes at him pleadingly.

Chuckling, he pulled me around until his arm was draped over my shoulders, our fingers still entwined. “I better wash up and put my city suit on then.”

I leaned against him, smiling brightly.

Once we were both ready, it was a twenty-minute hike to the train station, where we could catch a ride into the activity district. We chatted about where to eat and whether we could afford tickets to an old movie at the retro cinema or maybe even check the licensing office for a car or boat permit, but it was only talk. We both knew the finances simply weren’t there for anything aside from the train ride and an economical dinner for two.

Once we’d boarded the maglev and took our seats, we fell silent. I could tell Nico was slipping away into some troubling memory by the way his smile faltered and his unfocused eyes filled with sadness. I wanted to know what he was thinking about, but I didn’t want to interrupt. No, that was not quite it. The truth was, I didn’t want to share in whatever dark memory had surfaced. I had my own fair share of those moments and memories, and sometimes the smells of blood and burning flesh would swallow everything else. It felt cowardly, but I lacked the strength to shoulder any part of Nico’s burden.

Still, I squeezed his hand and rested my head on his shoulder, there for him when he came back.

“How long have we been here?” he asked suddenly, his cheek leaning against the top of my head.

“What do you mean?”

“Here.” He gestured vaguely around us. “This life. This world.”

“Nico, we’ve been…” Trailing off, I leaned away and cocked one leg up on the seat so I could turn and face him. “We were both born on this world. We’ve known each other since we were children in the orphanage. We—we have a whole life of memories together…”

He nodded distractedly, his focus still somewhere else. “I know. I remember everything, but I…don’t feel like it happened to me. Other stuff, I can barely remember, like my childhood in Alacrya”—I flinched at his mention of the other world—“but that still feels real. Here, my memory of everything that happened before we bought the property and finally moved in together, the wedding, everything…it’s all so clear, but feels…”

“Like a life someone else lived,” I finished for him, feathering my fingers through his dark hair.

He stole the briefest glance at my expression, then stared down at his hands fidgeting in his lap. “I just wish I understood what happened. I remember the cave, Agrona, my—” He swallowed heavily and closed his eyes. His breath came out in a tense shudder. “I died, Cecil.”

“No,” I said firmly, gripping his hands and pulling them into my lap, forcing him to turn and meet my eye. “And even if you did, it doesn’t matter. I died too, remember? All that matters is that we’re here, together. There is no Legacy, no fight to be kings, no crushing weight of destiny on our shoulders. We can just live. Together. Whatever Grey did, however he did it, he cut that fate away and put us here.”

A small, sad smile bloomed on Nico’s serious face. “I don’t think it was Grey. Well, maybe his power, but I don’t think he chose this life for us.” When I regarded him blankly, he rolled his eyes. “It was you. This life, this picture we’ve been placed into with all these perfect memories, it is just the way you’ve always wanted it to be. That can’t be a coincidence. It had to be you.”

“I don’t know…”

Some part of me knew that I hadn’t lived through all the memories I had of this life. It was a new reincarnation, but instead of being placed into a vessel—a whole new body that would require us to take over someone else—Grey had somehow placed us into our own lives, our own bodies. I had looked up previous events and confirmed that my duel with Grey had still taken place and that version of me had died there. That hadn’t been unwritten. His time as king, the wars that he had overseen, his sudden and unexpected demise in this world, everything was just as it had been.

I didn’t understand it, but the power he had wielded had written us into existence as if we’d always been here. We picked up right where I had pictured us: in a little cabin by the river, just normal people getting by the best we could. No Legacy, no mana, no ki even. We were just…plain.

Perfect and plain.

There was a ding, and the maglev train began to slow noticeably. I startled, realizing we had been sitting in silence for quite some time. “I’m sorry, I…”

“I know,” Nico said, squeezing my leg in understanding.

We got off in the activity district and walked the length of several city streets, where we sat quietly at one of our favorite restaurants and enjoyed a simple but delicious—and unburnt—meal. As we were finishing, my communicator dinged, informing me that someone was trying to reach me. It had been a splurge to get fitted with a mobile communication device, but with my job, it had felt necessary.

Looking guiltily at Nico, I pressed the button on the wrist-worn control band to answer the call.

“Headmaster, I’m so sorry to bother you,” my assistant, Evie, said immediately. She sounded frazzled. “There was apparently a problem with one of the bills, and there are two officials here from the city office.”

“At dinner time on a Saturday?” I asked incredulously, but I didn’t wait for a response. “As luck would have it, I’m already in the city. I can be there in twenty minutes.”

Nico was watching me closely, his expression carefully blank. He wouldn’t be upset at my failure to uphold my promise, but I knew he would tease me mercilessly about it.

“Oh, thank you, headmaster,” Evie said, letting out a breath of relief. I heard her relay the information to the officials.

“See you soon.” I disconnected the call and gave Nico my best apologetic pout. “I’m sorry, it’s an official thing, I have to—”

He raised one hand to forestall the rest of my unnecessary apology. “You know how I feel about what you do. Those kids—everyone at that orphanage—are lucky to have you, and, to be honest, you need them almost as much. You’re the best headmaster they could hope for.”

“Except for Headmaster Wilbeck,” we said simultaneously. We were still laughing lightly as we asked for the check.

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