Page 228 of Fallen Nocturne

The sword falls from her hand and clatters to the ground. She crashes into me. All the strength and desperate will that kept her standing are gone.

I catch her and lower us both to the ground. Rhianelle is sobbing now. Great, heaving sobs that shake her entire frame. Her hands clutch at my cloak and she presses her face against my chest.

“I was so scared,” she gasps between sobs. “I was so scared, Svenn. I thought Finnbheara was going to kill me.”

He would have.

“I’m so tired,” she whispers. “Svenn, I’m so, so tired.”

“I know,” I say again. “I know, my love. You can rest now.”

Around us, I hear footsteps. Our friends are approaching. Aelfric. Rainer. Bas. Garrett. Shade. Blaire. Hrolf. All of them coming to help, to support and carry their queen home.

But in this brief moment, it’s just us. Two people who crossed death itself to be together.

I hold her as the sun climbs higher above the ravine. Its light spills across the ruined battlefield, touching broken weapons and abandoned banners. The shadows of war retreat beneath the new morning. Rhianelle lifts her tear-streaked face toward the warmth. Her eyes close and her body softens against mine.

Against all odds, my little fawn did it.

Chapter 34 Svenn

The war is over.

I keep telling myself that as I walk through the streets of Völundr. I repeat it while I watch the city rebuild, while people gather the shattered pieces of their lives and try to make them whole again.

It’s been a month since the battle with the fae ended. But the scars remain.

I walk through the main square. It’s bustling with activity.

Elven workers clear rubble from the streets and haul stone toward the damaged buildings. Masons rebuild the walls while smiths repair gates rusted from the seawater. The steady rhythm of hammers rings across the square.

I recognize Hrolf’s distinctive style in the new metalwork. Golden vines curl around the repaired hinges, and tiny runes have been etched into every bracket for strength. He stayed, the old dwarf.

Hrolf’s pardon was one of Finnbheara’s conditions for peace. He demanded that the dwarf be released and allowed to return to his people. But when Rhianelle told Hrolf he was free to go, he looked at her like she’d said something absurd, then went back to work.

“I cannot repay the elven lives I took,” he told her. “But I can help rebuild what was destroyed.”

So he remains in Völundr, helping create a future from the ashes of the past. One stone at a time.

As I continue across the square, Lady Deirdre passes through with Siofra and Darstan’s son sleeping in her arms. The baby is wrapped in a pale blue blanket, one tiny fist tucked beneath his chin.

She has cared for him since his parents died, loving him as fiercely as if he were her own.

Hrolf usually accompanies them on their evening walks. He walks beside her with his hands behind his back, not talking much, just there.

The rebuilding is slow, painful, and exhausting, but it is happening. Every day brings a little more progress. A little more hope and a little less despair.

A bakery catches my eye. The sign is new, painted by an inexperienced hand. There is fresh bread in the window. The smell carries on the breeze and I know Rhianelle would love this place. She’d probably spend hours talking to the baker about one of her strange recipes. But for now she is busy being the queen her people need.

At night, she collapses into our bed and sleeps like the dead. When she doesn’t have nightmares.

Rhianelle visits the wounded every week. I accompany her sometimes. She kneels in the mud beside the children and listens to every story they want to tell her. Some show her their healing wounds. Others ask when their parents are coming home.

I walk past a group of children playing in the rubble. The kids are using broken stones as building blocks, creating castles and towers from the debris of war. They’re laughing and playing, being children despite everything.

Hope.

That’s what I see everywhere in Völundr and all of Aelfheim. In the people who refuse to give up. Hope that tomorrow might be better than today.