Chained To Him [Editing]

Epilogue

Pale grey washed the sky when they set out across the moor, only the sound of their horses stamping and snorting to break the stillness of the cool morning. Autumn had come early this year, threatening to frost over fields before the farmers had a chance to harvest, and it would take most able-bodied people in the city to harvest and store food for the winter. There was no commerce, no organization to it—it was a desperate sort of collectivism that drove the people of Aésadel to band together with the former Imperial soldiers and servants to manage the fields over the summer, and during those long days beneath the burning sun, Aésadel's newest residents had begun to merge into the community.

Jayde watched Luther's eyes scan across the fields of broken soil where already potatoes, carrots, and beets had been pulled from the ground. She wondered if he understood the transformation as she did, if he realized that this mutual dependence had helped to smother the anger that had burned within her people. She wondered if it had helped to ease his anger as well. In the silence of the morning, Jayde prayed that this was true.

By the time the sun began to rise, the first hunched shapes of farm houses and a windmill became visible on the horizon. Soon, the rough path beneath their horses merged with a wider road that led past fog-shrouded cropland and sloughs that sank beneath stands of oak and willow.

"Luther?"

"I'm fine," he said quietly, though his knuckles were white where they gripped the reins. He'd barely spoken since they met in the square that morning, and he remained quiet, contemplative, through their journey. Jayde wanted to push him to say what he was thinking, but there was little she could do to ease the tension in him now. He was going to see his son for the first time in six years.

When the inn came into view, Jayde and Luther gave their horses to a stableboy with cropped brown curls and continued on foot. It was good to see some life coming back into the town since the Empire was driven out of it—it was a different place without the fear.

"Jayde?" Marlyn's voice made such a strange mixture of joy and grief well in her throat, and she fell into the older woman's arms when she opened the front door of the inn. "It really is you. We've missed you here, dear, you have no idea. This must be Luther?" Marlyn released her and held her at arm's length, glancing quickly at Luther and then past both of them to where the soft thud of hay bales could be heard near the barn.

Luther followed her gaze and swallowed hard, and Jayde took his hand gently in hers. "I'll go to him first."

Smiling softly, Marlyn's eyes wandered his face and she shook her head. "You look just like him. He talks about you, you know."

"Does he?"

Had she ever seen such fear in his eyes before? Jayde squeezed his hand and stepped from the door, where Luther was still motionless. He glanced longingly after her but made no move to follow. He had seemed so eager to know Luc again, until Jayde had told him the truth of who he was. It was a hard thing to swallow, and after that day he didn't ask about him as much, a quiet fear gripping him. Perhaps it was because he realized how little he knew Luc now, or perhaps there was more to it, an inability to separate his son from the man who had imprisoned him and his city. She had expected him to be angry at her for keeping it a secret for so long, but he had forgiven her quickly, though he wouldn't agree to come with her to visit. Jayde had left it alone until last night, when Luther admitted that he needed to see him again.

As the quiet thump of hay against the barn wall grew louder, Jayde felt her own nervousness grow. She'd only seen him twice since the spring, and his mind was still reeling in darkness, a shadow of either of his former selves. It was hard to see him so lost. If he blamed her for it, he never said, but Jayde let her guilt follow her into dreams and through the day. It was too early to know if she'd done right by him—and by Aésadel—by convincing him to stay hidden. Maybe those were two different things, and maybe she had followed her selfish heart. When she saw him in the barn, heaving a hay bale from a wagon onto a large stack, she found that she couldn't care as much. His chest was bare, and sweat glistened over muscles that came from the hard labor he insisted on doing for Marlyn and Marcus. He'd poured his penance into this inn, and he had changed because of it.