We were home, at my house in Cainsville. Gabriel was with me in the yard, bundled up against the cold dawn. Ricky hung back with Lloergan at the pond, both giving us space as he treated the hound’s injuries. Lloergan had fled when the throng of minor sluagh attacked—she’d remembered the first time she’d met its kind, the attack that took so much from her. But she hadn’t run far before she circled back and fought, saving her pack sister and making the minor sluagh decide they had better things to do than battle a couple of cŵn.

As for Helia…

When Helia and Alexios asked me for a favor, I’d waited for something momentous, like Ida’s request. They deserved it, after all, for everything they’d done. But what they asked for…

Gabriel and I stood in the back corner of my yard, in a particularly untended patch, one that had been empty of everything but brambles and weeds. Now there was a tree, a strong young linden. Alexios crouched at its base, his hands against it, whispering to it. Then he rose and turned to us.

“That was Helia’s request,” he said. “To root here in her death. Now I’ll make mine. I’m asking for the same. To root here, with her.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Whenever you think the end is close—”

“I’m not waiting for the end. I’m bringing it to me.” A faint smile. “Which is why I didn’t dare ask while she lived. We’d have argued. We hated it when we argued. But if she’s done, so am I. There’s no place in this world that won’t remind me of her, and I don’t want to be anyplace that she isn’t. May I go now? Here?”

I opened my mouth to protest. I had to protest, had to try to talk him out of it, but Gabriel said, “Of course,” and Alexios nodded, and he stood, one hand on the linden tree, leaning toward it and whispering as we walked away to give him privacy.

When we came back, I had two lindens in my yard, one straight and true, the other leaning toward it, a branch wrapped around its trunk. And I cried. I’d managed to stifle my tears with Ida, but now I cried—for Ida, for the dryads, for everyone we’d lost, everyone who’d given themselves in that final battle.

I stood in that yard with Gabriel’s arms around me, holding me against him as I cried.

—