“Thank you for this pleasant meeting.” Rawn motioned, and the doors swung open. “Kindly see yourselves out.”
The chairs screeched and boots skidded over the floors as the lords promptly departed. Varden’s guardsmen helped him stand, quickly leading him out. Leaving Rawn and his family alone.
Once they were gone, Aerina took his offered hand and laughed as he spun her into his arms. “If I did not already love you as much as I do, that display would have left me irrevocably besotted, Lord Norrlen.”
Smiling, he dipped his wife back and kissed her. That earned them whistles and cheering from the alcove and the second-floor landings. But he glanced over in time to see Raiden slip outside.
There was still one more matter to attend to. Perhaps the most important one.
Excusing himself, Rawn went in search of his son. He had lived a long life and lived through many experiences. None could tell him how to be a father, but he did know what it felt like to lack the affection of one.
Rawn found Raiden leaning against the fence of the horse pen. He came to stand by him, both merely watching a white stallion gallop through it. Soft whinnying carried on the wind.
“You did in one hour what I could not accomplish in years,” Raiden muttered. “They fear you, and yet they respect you. All of Greenwood knows your name. I can only presume that is why she named me after you.”
“It was not your mother who named you,” Rawn said. “I did.”
“Oh, how presumptuous of you. Even in name I am to stand in your shadow.”
Rawn met his son’s glower and couldn’t help but chuckle. So stubborn. So free to speak his mind in ways he hadn’t been able to at his age. As if his son could fulfill everything he couldn’t. And that alone made him smile. With wonder. With love. With elation to be here to see it.
Raiden frowned. “Does that amuse you?”
“I did not name you after myself. In Old Elvish, your name would bereydoner. It means miracle. The first of many. A miracle we have prayed for with such yearning, the fates sought to grant it.”
Raiden stared at him, his breath trembling.
“You are our miracle. There are many regrets I have in my life, but never would you be one of them.” Rawn cupped Raiden’s cheek, warming the spot where he was struck. “I chose to continue my journey, for I cannot put that responsibility on the shoulders of another. Especially my son’s, who I love so much. There is no burden I would not carry for you and your mother. No mountain I would not cross to find my way home again.”
His son looked at the Anduir peaks, his eyes growing wet. There was no longer any resistance as Rawn pulled Raiden to him and held his child for the second time.
CHAPTER 95
Zev
That evening, Rawn held a feast as his thanks and to celebrate a second chance at life with his family. He had dressed finely in an elegant coat worthy of a duke, a brooch in the shape of a horse pinning his silken cloak. By some blessing of the Gods, Lucenna was in a pleasant mood for once, though Zev guessed it had something to do with Klyde’s hand in hers. Von and Tavin laughed as Keena threw grapes at them for teasing her. Everyone cheered when Cassiel and Dyna arrived.
It warmed Zev to see his friends together again.
He soaked in their cheerful faces glowing in the candlelight and the sound of their laughter. Secretly, he prayed it would last this time.
Aerina gave them colorful pieces of paper and ink to hold their own Hail of Embers. But burning away the past had dimmed the little merriment Cassiel could manage. He slipped away into the garden when he thought no one was watching. Zev could tell Dyna wanted to follow, but she looked at him pleadingly instead.
Zev didn’t know what he could say to him. They hadn’t really spoken since he woke.
But he knew what Cassiel needed right now.
The scent of moss and rain greeted Zev as he followed Cassiel’s trail to the far reaches of the estate. He found him sitting by the edge of a pond, staring down at the crumbled green paper in his hand.
“Working up the courage to fill it?”
Cassiel glanced up at him. “More so wondering if I have the strength to do it.”
Zev sat down beside him with his own paper. His was blue. He hadn’t been able to write down what ill memories and past hardships he wished to burn away either. Because they would all be about losing his father.
Both quietly watched the silhouette of their friends on the roof of the estate. Flickers of fire flashed, and a shower of colorful embers rose into the sky.
“There is no strength for loss,” Zev murmured, and his chest tightened with a familiar ache. “We’re never prepared when it comes. Our lives are constructed of moments with them, that we couldn’t ever imagine there would be moments without them. Then you’re living in those moments, and it dawns on you that a part of you died with them.”
