Aeralis (25 page)

“You’re up. Are you strong enough to be outside in the cold?”

“They couldn’t keep me in bed any longer,” he said. His voice was rusty from disuse, but it was strong. The dark shadows under his eyes were fading, and his color was returning.

“How are things in Aeralis?” he asked quietly.

“Progressing.” I thought about the complexities of what would happen next for Gabe, for all of them. “They’re looking for the heir now, but if he isn’t found...” I sighed. “Gabe will be king.”

Jonn nodded thoughtfully, and we were both silent for a moment.

“Ivy told me,” he said finally. “About Aaron. About who our da really was.”

I rubbed my forehead. I didn’t have much to say on the subject.

“What about Borde?” he asked after the silence grew almost too strong. “Is he planning to stay?”

“Borde leaves soon,” I said. “He’s planning to travel back to his time before nightfall.”

“Our father...?”

I swallowed hard. “I have no idea what he’s planning to do.”

“No.” Jonn leaned forward in the chair, straining to see. “Look. I think it’s our father. He looks like us.”

I turned.

Aaron stood at the entrance to the front garden, his hand on the fence. The wind stirred his hair and made the ends of his Aeralian-styled coat flutter in the wind.

“Yes, that’s him.” A mixture of emotions filled me. He was here. He’d come.

When he saw that we’d noticed him, Aaron approached the house.

“Aaron,” I said, greeting him and warning him at the same time, but he didn’t seem to hear me. He stared at Jonn as if seeing color for the first time. “You look like my father,” he managed after an unbearably long pause.

“And clearly, I look like my father,” Jonn replied evenly.

Aaron blanched at hearing the word
father
from his son’s mouth. His gaze flicked over Jonn, taking in the chair, the blanket. “You are well?”

“I’m recovering,” Jonn said. His tone was more cautious than cool.

The door opened, and Ivy emerged. “Lia!” She caught sight of Aaron and paused. “Who are you?”

Aaron was speechless.

“Aaron,” I said. “This is Ivy. Ivy, this is, well, this is Aaron.”

“You’re our father,” she guessed.

He nodded.

They looked at each other, father and daughter, neither quite able to find anything to say. Finally, Aaron stammered, “You look so much like her.”

“My mother?” Ivy asked.

“Your sister,” he said.

Ivy’s face blossomed in a shy smile.

We were all quiet. Jonn looked torn between wanting to interrogate Aaron and embrace him. Aaron shifted his feet.

“How did you find us here?” I asked, interrupting the uncomfortable pause.

Aaron glanced at me, looking relieved to have a question asked that he could easily answer. “I did not come alone. Some of the others accompanied me...Adam, Ann, Gabe.”

I needed to see them, and I was not sorry to escape this scene either.

“I’ll be back later,” I murmured, and slipped away, leaving them to their stilted conversation. My heart was still torn. I didn’t want a replacement for the da I’d known. But Aaron was here, he was my father, and that mattered to me more than I’d realized. I had many other things to parcel out at the moment. I’d make peace with my father’s presence in time, as would my siblings.

I wandered through Iceliss, looking for the others. I saw no sign of them.

I realized where they must be, and I passed through the gate and headed for my family’s farm. The sound of my feet was just a whisper against the path. The wind caught my cloak and flung it behind me, and I ran. Snowflakes drifted around me, bits of white like a shower of petals at a wedding. The sky glowed above me, blue as hope and bright as love, the same color as the snow blossoms that lined the trail through the wilderness of silver and white. Here and there, green punctuated the snow where plants pushed through the crust of ice and reached for the sun.

I reached the hill that looked down over the farm, and I caught my breath. There were the charred remains of the house and the barn, there were the paddock and the yard. There was the tree where I’d hung the lantern for Adam. The sight of the blackened boards was somehow cleansing. The old was gone, but I would build it again. I would make something new, something better.

Footprints led though the yard. I followed them.

The old Watcher ward clattered in the wind above the door as I knocked my boots against the remains of the threshold and stepped onto the charred foundation of the house. I caught sight of Ann at the fireplace, waiting.

“Ann,” I breathed.

She ran to me, and I hugged her as she clung to me fiercely and sobbed. I ached to be able to take even a sliver of her pain and hold it in my heart instead, but all I could do was stand with her. She was hot and damp from weeping, and as she held onto me, something deep uncorked inside me, and I cried, too. I wept for my parents, for the burned farm, for all the people we’d lost during the past year. We swayed together, our shared grief a dance of friendship.

Finally, Ann drew back and wiped her eyes. “It’s good to be back home,” she said. “It’s easier to process it here, somehow.”

“The Frost does that,” I said. “It’s clean and uncluttered.”

Ann nodded and gazed at the open sky above us, where snowflakes were fluttering in the wind. “This house...” she said. “I’m so sorry, Lia.”

“I’ll rebuild it,” I said firmly.

She nodded and rubbed her hand over my arm. “Gabe is looking for you,” she said. “He and Adam came with me, and they both wanted to speak with you. Did you see them?”

“I did not.” I bit my lip and looked toward the door.

“You should go find Gabe,” she said. “Borde is going to close the gate soon, and there isn’t much time.”

“I’ll be back,” I promised her, and then I left the house.

I knew where he was.

One wall of the barn still stood, and near it, the secret door to the room below the barn floor gaped like an open mouth. I descended into the darkness, and it was quiet and warm inside. Sunlight striped the floor where it leaked through the cracks. The air smelled of ash and soot. Most of the things inside were burned.

“Gabe?”

He stepped out of the darkness. His hands found me, and I embraced him back, holding him in his pain. I rubbed his back with my hands, and he sighed.

“Look at this place,” he muttered.

I said nothing. I just put my head on his shoulder.

“He’s dead,” Gabe said, speaking of Korr.

I nodded against his shoulder.

“I miss him,” he said. “How absurd. We were barely civil to each other, and yet now that he’s dead I’m breaking apart inside.”

“You were brothers,” I said.

“Half-brothers.” He laughed, low and sad, and shook his head. “No, just brothers.”

“You loved him,” I said. “You can’t help but love family.” I thought of Aaron, and was quiet.

Gabe pulled away and looked into my face as if just remembering at the word
family
. “How is Jonn? Ivy?”

“They are well,” I said. “Recovering. The Healers say Jonn will not get his health back as he’d hoped, though, not since he had intervention to cure the Sickness rather than mutation from the Sickness changing his body. He’ll still have a withered leg.”

“He’s no less of a man for it,” Gabe said. “It doesn’t weaken him or strengthen him. It is simply part of who he is.”

I nodded. But would Jonn see it that way? I hoped so.

“What about Cat?” I asked.

Gabe winced at the mention of his friend. “He is currently in prison with the rest of the Dictator’s men. I don’t know what to do with him. Nothing hurts like the prospect of punishing those you care about, but he betrayed us. Not just of me, but of our country.”

“And Clara?”

“You used her name,” he said, with a hint of a smile.

I shrugged.

“She is well. She sends her regards.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Lia,” Gabe said, and his voice changed into something half hopeful, half fearful. “I must go soon. I have duties in Aeralis, many duties, but I wanted to speak with you.”

My stomach knotted. I was still as I listened.

Gabe twisted his hands together. “Much has happened between us over the last few months,” he continued. “We have been forced apart, brought back together. Things have changed. I...I know we have not always agreed, and we have not always had the same ideas about things. We’ve both changed. But...”

I couldn’t breathe as I waited for him to continue.

“I want you to come back with me,” he said.

“Come back with you?”

“To Aeralis. I want you to stay there for good,” Gabe said.

“I am done working for causes—”

“You misunderstand me,” he interrupted. “I’m asking you to marry me, Lia.” His voice softened. “Marry me? I want your answer now. I need it now. Lia, please.”

Silence hummed through the bark, broken only by the flutter of chicken wings.

I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.

His eyes darkened at my hesitation. “Don’t spare my feelings because of my brother’s recent passing,” he said.

I took a deep breath. “I can’t.”

Gabe shoved one hand through his hair. His mouth twisted with pain. “Why not? Is it
him
?” He didn’t say Adam.

“No. The Frost is my home,” I said. “I cannot leave it. Not now. You have duties in Aeralis, as you said. I have duties here. I’m a Weaver, and I’m woven into the history and future of this place as deeply as it is in me. I have Jonn, Ivy, Ann, and yes, Adam.”

He made a slight gesture with his hand, almost as if he wanted to touch me but he lacked the courage. When he raised his eyes to mine, they brimmed with regret. “I loved you, Lia. How did I let you slip away from me?”

“That isn’t what happened.” I said it gently, yet every word felt like broken glass on my tongue.

“I love you still.” His face was drawn with hurt, confusion.

“I know,” I said. “I don’t think you believe it, but I love you still, too.”

“And yet you love him.”

It wasn’t a question, and I couldn’t deny it.

“I do.”

He made a sound of pain deep in his throat.

“Wait. Please listen.” I considered my words. I’d thought about them a great deal. “It is possible to love two people. In fact, I love many people. I love Jonn and Ann and Ivy, and many others. Romantic love is different in some ways, but in many, many other ways, it is much the same. I loved you, Gabe. I love you still. You must know that. I didn’t mean it to happen this way, but it did.”

He laughed, low and sad. “You may love me, but you didn’t choose me.”

I winced.
Choose
. As if he were a spoon on a shelf, and I had picked him up and examined his merits and flaws before putting him back. Were the beauty and terror of living and loving as crass as that? Could it be that simple?

“Gabe.” I touched his hand, and his fingers were cold against mine. “You were the one who inspired me to put myself back together when I thought I was broken. You were the one who challenged me to look beyond my fear and insularity to see a world outside my own. Love makes weavers of us all—and you’re sewn into the tapestry of my life.”

Gabe’s shoulders rose and fell as he sighed. “So this is goodbye.”

“It is,” I said. “But I will see you again.”

It was a promise.

Our final embrace was too short, and then he was gone, leaving me alone in the room beneath barn floor, hurting and whole at the same time, filled with sadness and assurance that I’d made the right choice.

I climbed out and stepped into the snow. The air smelled of snow blossoms. I walked into the wild without direction, following the sound of bluewings singing songs of comfort to the wind, thinking.

A branch snapped to my left, and I stopped.

Adam.

His expression was guarded. “Lia.”

“I’ve just been speaking to Gabe,” I said.

Something flickered in his dark eyes. He turned his head to the side, hiding his expression, but not before I caught a glimpse of his pain. “I’m glad you found him. He was looking for you. It seemed urgent.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “He had something to ask me.”

Adam looked at me again.

“He asked me to marry him,” I admitted.

He lowered his head. “When do you leave for Astralux?”

“Adam,” I said.

He looked at me.

I look a deep breath. “When you are with me,” I said. “I feel as though I can breathe again.”

Adam stilled.

“I don’t have any polished poetry to recite for you,” I continued, and took a step toward him. “I just want to see you safe and happy...everything and everyone you love safe and happy.”

“Lia,” Adam said, his voice strained. He took one of my hands and pulled me to him.

I put a finger to his lips. “Don’t try to explain yourself,” I whispered. “Not yet. I only wanted to communicate my own position on the matter.”

Then I kissed him, and he tasted like home and goodness and everything that was beautiful.

EPILOGUE

BORDE LEFT US that evening, after congratulating Adam and I on our engagement. He said he was heading into the past to fix something that had gone awry. I slipped Ivy’s journal in among his things, and I suppose he threw it into a garbage bin accidentally, where he would find it later in his own future. I didn’t tell him, because some things make beautiful secrets.

Adam and I were married several months later, in the height of summer, when the snow blossoms covered the forest in blue and the snow melted into muddy patches along the paths. Adam took my name—Weaver—and we reclaimed my family’s farm and made our home there. Gabe broke his silence with me to send a wedding present—materials for a greenhouse. We built it in the yard behind the house, and I filled it with flowers. It soon became my favorite place to me, for in it I felt close to Gabe and Aeralis, but I could still see my beloved Frost through the glass.

The Wanderers chose to stay in Aeralis, and they left the Frost for good and were welcomed for their part in the revolution. Stone and I still saw each other occasionally, though, as he came to visit the wilderness from time to time.