Chapter forty-three
Epilogue
Marco: Six Months Later
Our escape from Victora was the easiest part of our journey.
Robin said it took them a week to transport him from Atrea to the city gates. Three months on, and we were all beginning to wonder if we’d ever make it home. If there was even anything left of home.
Esme, sweet and smart like her brother, had decided to try to save me from the worst of what she’d seen when they took her. But a fortnight into our journey, one quiet night huddling for warmth in a midnight desert, she told me the truth. The last thing she saw of our island home was fire. Everything alight. The beach stained red, bodies everywhere.
She said there might be nothing to return to.
But there was no turning back either.
Even if my heart was heavier, knowing now that all those familiar buildings, the town square, shop doorways where I played as a child—all the memories I meditated on to survive—were gone, Atrea must still stand. It could be nothing but rock and sand, but it would still be my home.
Our transport broke down shortly after escape. There is no fuel to be had in the wastelands, and anyway, it’s smarter not to draw attention with the noise of an engine unless you’re heavily armed, like Victoran soldiers. So webecame quiet things. Creeping things. It could be a week before finding a new civilization, then a day to decide whether it was smarter to approach or avoid.
Once or twice, we almost stayed with some of the people we found. Drinkable water and beds, however basic, were hard to pass up.
But Victora’s arms reach wide and cruel, and we never met a person who wasn’t touched by their might.
Some communities had made vast networks underground to avoid capture should the soldiers come again. So many had crawled from one settlement to another, just hoping to survive. So many were lost, if not to the Emperor’s men, then to the infected, picked off easily, out in the wastelands alone.
But we kept on, one goal in mind, determined that we would make it home. We walked by day, beneath the blazing sun. We followed the stars by night. Stars that grew brighter the further we went from our prison. Stars that seemed to hold so much promise.
When we finally found the edge of the mainland, I recognized it. Years ago, I’d organized dozens of raiding parties, arriving there in search of the very materials Victora burned to the ground. It was there that I was taken. And it was there, once again, that I prepared to set sail.
We built a raft. It took days to gather the supplies. We kept a vigilant watch, praying Victora hadn’t decided to turn our island into an outpost, the fertile soil a commodity worth commanding.
But they were bent only on destruction—only on assuring no fledgling city would rise up and challenge their authority.
Well, they were wrong. Both to underestimate the people of Atrea and to leave me a place to draw my plans.
The fog that perpetually lies low in that strait was both reassuring and terrifying when we made the crossing. I knew all the riches that had once thrived, enshrouded by it, were gone. The first glimpse I’d dreamed of must be changed. Into what, I couldn’t imagine.
But the very first thing I saw, strong and black, emerging from shadow, was a sight that made my heart pound with pride. Sentinel Rock, reachingup out of the darkness like a flag. A symbol of the unbreakable will of a people. A civilization that would go on, forever fighting, no matter what came for it.
Before the beach even came into view, I heard a familiar whistle and knew then that my people weren’t all gone. That we would arrive on that shore to drawn weapons and ready bodies, warriors, set to defend what’s ours.
But they knew Robin. And they knew Esme. And some of them recognized me on sight.
I think of all the things that affected me so strongly along the way—the fight for survival, the many times we almost died, battles with wastelands and the infected, thirst, hunger, the times we almost lost it all—nothing affected me quite like the discovery that Robin and I shared friends. Kinsmen. People who knew us both, all that time. Who held us both in their minds at the same moment when we, a world away, were becoming each other’s lifeline.
That first touch of my foot to my own sand sent such a wave of sadness through me, such grief for everything I’d lost—my family, my home, all those years—that I fell to my knees. I lay on that beach and I cried. And I don’t know how long it was that Robin sat by my side and held me. All I know is that it was dark when Maria and Esme brought us hot food. The flavors of home. Food I ate with intense gratitude, and guilt that I was taking what belonged to someone else, even if it was given with full heart and in kindness.
I, at that time, felt no need for shelter. I wanted nothing but the open sky, the roar of the sea, and the sand still warm beneath me.
But that kind gift brought me to my feet. Took me into what was once my town to see the destruction wrought.
They’d burned it all, every last bit.
The houses that had since been erected were built anew from blackened bricks. The people who lived there were those left for dead, or inhabitants from the south who got warning in time that it was useless to fight. They hid in their shelters. They hid in the ocean. And they were ashamed of it. But no one could tell them better than Robin and I, when it comes to Victora, you need to know when to fight, and you need to know when to run.
Survival isn’t a simple matter. Nothing you do to survive is ever wrong.
Our first day home, Robin and I determined to start work on a house of our own.
