Page 251 of Fallen Nocturne

I wake screaming.

Again.

The nightmare fades slowly. Fire and blood blur together behind my eyes. Bodies cover the battlefield while Siofra and Darstan fall among them. Everywhere I look, someone else is dying.

“Shh,” Svenn murmurs as his arms close around me. “You’re safe. It’s just a dream. You’re safe.”

I can’t stop shaking or crying.

“I saw them,” I gasp. “I saw them dying. All of them. Everyone we lost.”

“I know,” Svenn murmurs, holding me tighter. “I know, sweetheart.”

I press my face against his chest and listen to the steady beat of his heart, using it to pull myself back into the present. I try to remember where I am and how much time has passed.

The war is over. We won. We’re safe.

But the ghosts still visit. In my dreams and in the quiet moments when I’m not distracted enough to keep them out.

Lady Siofra and Darstan return most often. Then Lenna, my handmaiden and my friend, who was too young and too kind to die. Alys and Lord Wesley too. Rainer follows them, holding on through impossible pain from the Nevrin poison.

They are all gone, yet I am still here.

“They’d want you to move forward,” Svenn says softly, reading my thoughts like he always does. “They’d want you to live and be happy.”

“I know,” I whisper.

I know they would. Most days I’m all right and I can function. I can even be happy sometimes. But some days the grief is so heavy I can’t breathe. It feels like it’s sitting on my chest, crushing me. I don’t know how to carry it. How to keep going when it hurts this much.

“You’re not alone,” Svenn says. “I’m here. Coral too.”

As if summoned, Coral’s giant head appears over the edge of the bed. Her pale snout nudges my arm, gentle and concerned. She makes a soft chirp that sounds like a question.

Are you all right?

I reach out, touch her scales, and feel the love.

“I’m all right,” I tell her. “It’s just a bad dream.”

Coral chirps again, then climbs onto the bed. Svenn built it wide and sturdy for reasons that have nothing to do with accommodating an overgrown wyvern, but Coral has claimed her share of it regardless. It serves both purposes remarkably well. The wyvern has gotten too big for this, really, but she does it anyway. She drapes herself across both of us. A living blanket of scales and warmth.

We stay like that. The three of us. In the dark and in the quiet, breathing together. Slowly, so slowly, the grief loosens its grip and becomes bearable again.

“Thank you,” I whisper to both of them. “For being here. For everything.”

“Always,” Svenn says.

Coral just purrs.

Eventually, exhaustion pulls me back to sleep. When I wake again, soft morning light filters through the cottage windows and the last traces of the nightmare have faded.

I slip out of bed, wash my face, and begin the morning bread while Svenn works nearby. By the time the dough is in the oven, the cottage feels safe and familiar again.

Bread bakes in one of my two ovens while Coral snores in the corner, one wing covering her face.

Everything around me is ordinary and peaceful.

Home.