Brie
I wake up the next morning curled in Logan’s arms. I doubt we got more than a few hours of sleep, but my mind won’t shut off, and I doubt his has either.
We lay there in silence for several minutes. Logan draws lazy circles on my arm while staring up at the ceiling. I want to ask him what he’s feeling right now. I’ve never seen him this quiet, this at a loss for words.
So, I’m the one who talks instead.
“Do you remember me as a kid?” I ask, and he nods, then shrugs one shoulder.
“I suppose. You’re seven years younger than me, though. You would have been playing with dolls while I was out hunting or training to be a warrior.”
“Maeve mentioned last night, when I told her I could speak your language, that I spent a summer in Silverhide while Aviva was teaching you how to read and write. Apparently, I picked up your language back then, and just… forgot about it.”
His fingers stop moving for a moment, but then he chuckles low in his throat, rolling over to face me. “I actually remember that. How does Maeve remember that summer? She was a toddler.”
“She’s a witch. I have no idea. But I have no memories of it whatsoever.”
“You came to stay for a few weeks leading up to the harvest festival, I remember that. It was chaos, actually. I was… thirteen, so you would have been six, I think. Misty brought her kids down too, and Sydney and Sarah were there for a week with all of their kids. Sarah was pregnant with their last kid, but I can’t remember his name off the top of my head–”
“Noah.” I laugh, trying to dig up the memory of what must have been a large family reunion of some kind.
“Everyone came down to see Nora for the first time,” he says, laying his head against the rolled up fur we’d been sharing as a pillow. “Aviva had her about a week prior. That's why you came to visit, but your mom stayed longer than the rest of the family to help Aviva.”
“But how did I end up learning the language of Emberfyll?”
“Aviva wouldn’t give me a break from my lessons even after having a baby. She threatened to not let me go to the Harvest Festival if I didn’t buckle down and focus, and when I balked, she sat you down at the kitchen table to babysit me, essentially. You were a total brat, you know.”
I scoff, swatting him on the chest, but he tugs me close.
“Not a brat, really. I don’t think there’s a word in either language to describe what you were like as a kid. Bossy? Yeah, that works. You were… justice oriented.”
“Justice oriented? You mean I was a tattle-tale?”
“You were a snitch, Brie. The second I took my eyes off my textbooks, you’d run and tell Aviva. So, I had to come up with a way to keep you busy. I gave you some paper, a pen, and you’d scribble little pictures and hand them back to me, telling me what they were in your language, and I’d tell you what they were in mine.”
“We taught each other how to read and write.”
“We did,” he breathes, a nostalgic smile touching his lips. “I’m… I’m kind of sad I forgot about that, knowing what I know now.”
“That we’re mates?”
He nods, but his lips thin, and that heavy silence seeps between us again.
I nestle close, resting my cheek in the crook of his shoulder. “Do you… do you regret coming here?”
“No,” he replies. “I think I thought I’d feel differently when I did get here, though. I’m struggling with–with how I feel about being back. I feel guilty that I didn't come back sooner.”
“You didn’t have a way to get here.”
“I know. There’s nothing I could have changed, but they suffered for so long, and seeing this place….” He sighs heavily, looking up at the vaulted ceiling and the graying rafters ten or so feet above our heads. “This used to be where I lived. My home. Where I spent my childhood, but when I think back on being a little boy, I think of Silverhide, not here. The only thing I remember is war. I only remember my parents' faces from the boat when we went into the water. I hate to admit it, but part of me wants to just go back to Eastonia and pretend this never happened, but we can’t. I can’t.” He takes another heavy breath. “If you want to go–”
“I’m staying here with you. That’s final.”
“It’s going to be a lot of work. Years of work, Brie.”
“And those are years we’ll have together. We’re going to figure this out together.”
He briefly squeezes me, closing his eyes as his body presses into mine. He smells like everything I love. All those warm scents heightened by sleep and being in a cozy little nest of furs with him all night.
But he’s right. We have work to do. We have a lot of work to do.
For the next week, we find out just how much needs to change, needs to be mended and healed.
Each day passes in startling clarity instead of a hazy rush of time. Maeve recovers–but slowly. A healer from the nearest village just beyond the castle walls comes to stay with her, feeding her tonics and smoothing tingling lotion over her skin to try to speed up the recovery process. Maeve doesn’t object to the stranger's touch, but she’s quieter than usual. I think she’s mentally preparing for what she promised she’d do.
I’ll never know what it’s like to be her–to have that much power in her body begging to be released on the world. I do know the crushing weight of the responsibility of being a future ruler, however. As I go through the motions of helping my mate find his footing with his born pack, I realize the training and studying I’d put myself through to help Maeve ascend her throne was actually… meant for me. I’ll be a queen before her. I’m a queen now, even if that hasn’t hit me yet.
And on the eighth day in Emberfyll, the future Queen of Eastonia finally gets out of bed and walks outside. Maeve spends hours walking up and down the beach with me, looking at rocks and shells, sliding some in our pockets to take back to the castle to decorate the window sills with, as silly as it sounds.
And on the ninth day, I miss my monthly cycle. I admit that I wasn’t ready to tell Logan until I knew for sure, that I thought Maeve might have been out of her mind when she told me in the middle of a power haze… but she was right.
And on the tenth day, while Maeve walks up and down the beach at sunset in preparation to bring down the veil, I sit with Logan on a large rock just big enough for the two of us to watch the show. In fact, the entire population of Emberfyll is on the beach or perched on the cliff. Small warming fires burn along the coarse, rocky sand and the smell of mead and roasting meat is heavy in the air as Maeve’s body fades into the glare of the setting sun.
“She’s nervous,” Logan says as Maeve turns into nothing but a shadow and slips out of sight. The sun dips below the horizon, painting the sky in strips of gold and crimson.
“She shouldn’t be.”
He smiles softly to himself. “I know. I’ve never doubted her powers. Her being able to control them, to wield them… that’s another story.”
“She’ll learn. She has to. She has… she has two more years until she ascends, and that’s enough time.”
“Do you think she wants to be queen?”
“I do,” I say, knitting my fingers in his.
When Maeve doesn’t return, the conversation drifts from her to our plans. Logan says, “Once the colony is built, and we have warriors stationed here to help, to start rebuilding, I want to go back to Silverhide for a while. Ryan will be able to help us gather supplies–crops, livestock, whatever we think we’ll need to get fields of grain going, a few farms. I think a month is plenty of time to be away. It would give us a chance to see your parents and try to talk ourselves out of whatever punishment your dad has planned for me.”
I smirk. “He’s not going to punish you, Logan. I think you’re the only man he would have been okay with when it comes to me finding my mate. I see it in his eyes. My grandpa, too. They hated what they thought they had to do to us.”
He grits his teeth but nods like he’s trying to convince himself that’s really how they feel. But he says, “We’ll come back in early fall with enough supplies to get us through the winter. The winters here aren’t bad at all. It’s stormy and wet, mostly. Like Maatua, but not nearly as warm. But we’ll make it. Come spring, we’ll plant crops and try to rebuild. I’ll put out a notice, have it sent through Eastonia and Crescent Falls, about territory up for grabs if any Alphas want to move here.”
“That worked for Ryan.”
“It did, didn’t it?”
I smile up at him. He’s so much calmer and at ease now. He spends a lot of his time with Seamus lately, catching up, telling him all about the land beyond the veil. At first, we offered the people here a way out, the option to go to Eastonia and set up a new pack, but every single one of them refused. This is their home.
This is my home now.
Several gasps bounce down the beach as a ripple of energy makes the pebbles along the water rattle. The waves retreat, simmering like the water is boiling. Logan and I look down the beach to where we can just make out Maeve. She raises her hands to the sky, her fingertips glowing like embers in the creeping darkness.
“Logan,” I say as the first glimmers of her powers streak across the sky like shooting stars.
“Yeah?”
I reach for his hand, lacing my fingers with his, and slowly bring his hand to rest on my stomach. A shockwave rushes down the beach at the same moment he looks down at me, his brows furrowed as he searches my eyes for silent confirmation about what I’m trying to tell him, even if the words seem impossible.
It should be easy to tell him I’m pregnant. I should be able to shout it to the rooftops, but the only thing my mouth manages to do is smile deliriously as tears prick the corners of my eyes. Another shockwave booms across the beach, carrying excited gasps and shouts as the entire island trembles under the wake of Maeve’s enormous, unimaginable powers, but Logan’s eyes remain locked on mine, glowing like polished, imperfect emeralds.
“Are you pregnant, Brie?”
“I am,” I answer tearfully.
“Oh–” He sucks in a breath before dragging me into his lap and kissing me wildly, laughing against my lips. “Oh, my. Thank the Goddess. I love you. I love you–”
I can barely get the words out when I echo, “I love you!”
Crimson shimmers race across the sky over our heads like fireworks, tearing down the ancient veil, cutting through the misty and perpetual storms that lock Emberfyll away from the rest of the world.
Maybe one day I’ll wonder why Emberfyll was hidden. Whatever old god who did this was either trying to keep something out or lock something in.
But it doesn’t matter now.
I found my Alpha, and he loves me more than life itself.
The shouts of awe abruptly turn to eerie silence as the last of the veil falls like burning pieces of parchment, spiraling toward the water. Logan and I look toward the water at the same time, and his grip on my body goes slack.
Several large boats bob in the distance, distinguishable by their blinking lights. But three in particular zoom ahead of the rest, passing through what used to be the veil, but is now open.
Apparently, Emberfyll was quite close to Tarsian after all. A ten day journey. That’s all.
My cheeks burn with a smile as the Artemis, Asteria, and Atropos race into view, their sails stretched wide against the wind, their wooden bodies leaving the fleet of high-tech Ghost naval cruisers in their wake.