Chains of Moonlight Epilogue

A wicked wave of relief crashed over Heimir, and as he stood over the last dead body, he breathed for the first time in days.

Heimir pulled the sheet back over the last body, whispering, “Lady Fate sees your sacrifice. May the wind carry you home, Tofa.”

The Sun Elves had thankfully already closed her eyes, so Heimir didn’t have to. He was already going to be haunted by the sight already. She was so young. Younger than Aesira.

She never should have been on this mission.

Not that Heimir was going to remind Aesira he’d told her that when he saw her. His sister was likely already tearing herself to pieces for what happened.

He let out a long sigh as he turned back to the Sun Elf captain and said, “Thank you for not letting them rot out there.”

“You’d do the same if it was the other way around, I imagine.”

Heimir swallowed and nodded. “How long will it take for us to burn them? And to collect the ashes?”

The Sun Elf looked up at the sky. “We can be done by dawn if we don’t stop.”

Heimir glanced at the six bodies’ wrapped in sheets laid out on the floor of a spare room in the fortress.

Did he leave his men here to handle it and meet him in Auror later so he could reach Aesira and Ragna faster? Or did he stay so he could show proper respect to the men and women who’d sacrificed their lives for his sister and his princess?

When King Baror had summoned him, a missive written in Ragna’s hand—albeit shaky—telling them the Moon Elves had struck while they’d been traveling, and several of her guard had sacrificed themselves to ensure her escape, Heimir hadn’t heard another word out of King Baror’s mouth other than “go.”

Heimir hadn’t wasted a moment, rounding up the best of the guards and ignoring his captain’s insistence he couldn’t have them. It was for Princess Ragna, like King Baror would take his captain’s side.

They were off, and Heimir made them fly a brutal pace to the fortress Ragna said had the bodies. Heimir had barreled through the Sun Elves, demanding to see the bodies.

Why had Ragna written the letter?

That was the only question that had plagued Heimir as the wind whipped around him in the air. He didn’t like any of the answers. But it was either turn that question over and over again in his mind or be stuck falling through his own memories of his sister. Every time he blinked he saw her smile and heard her laugh as she’d pulled out of their hug. “Try not to worry too much. I don’t want to come home to see you’ve stress molted half your wingspan away. You really can’t afford to lose one of the only things going for you.”

Or how the last thing he’d said to her had involved him playfully shoving her away and saying, “Do me a favor and get in the air already, The best six months of my life were when you were out of my hair and Tyre’s problem. The next four months are going to be complete bliss without you. Maybe the Sun Elves will like you so much they’ll convince Ragna to let them keep you, and then I’ll finally be free.”

The last words he ever said to her couldn’t be a stupid joke.

He’d already stress molted two primaries, a secondary, and three tertiary feathers since the day King Baror received the letter.

The last day before they arrived at the fortress, he’d jerked awake to see he’d molted two more secondaries.

His dreams had been haunted by little cream and tawny wings, big, brown eyes, and a lullaby he hadn’t sung in years. He still knew it by heart even though it had been a long time since she’d been small enough for him to carry her to bed and rock her to sleep after she had a nightmare.

If Ragna wrote the letter, that meant…

Heimir had pulled back each sheet, holding his breath and waiting for the pit in his stomach to drop when he came face to face with his worst nightmare.

And then he’d reached Tofa. And Aesira wasn’t under any of the sheets.

She was fine.

He’d panicked for nothing.

As soon as he got his girls back home, he was going to barricade Aesira in their rooms, wrap her up in blankets, and never let her leave his sight again. Maybe in five years he could be convinced to let her take a walk, under his supervision, of course.

Their scheme had died with Tofa, and Heimir was grateful. Now Aesira would have no choice but to think about what she wanted for her future and not what would salvage the mess he’d made of his.

Aesira was going to be safe and happy if it was the last thing Heimir did.

But… why had Ragna written the letter and not Aesira?

His stomach swooped again as he watched two of his men carry Tofa out the door and down to the courtyard where the pyre was being constructed.

Maybe Aesira had been injured. His wings rustled and he had to resist the urge to run out the door and take off into the sky.

If it was severe, Ragna would have mentioned it so Heimir could come directly to them. It was minor. It had to be.

He took a deep breath and followed his men out into the courtyard. He’d stay. It would be foolish to go alone, and Aesira wouldn’t forgive him for not being present at Tofa’s burning when she couldn’t be.

He watched as the fire caught on the branches. How was he going to break the news to Ivorr and his parents?

* * *

Heimir liked the Sun Elves, but he didn’t like their buildings. He pressed his wings uncomfortably tight to his back to keep them out of the way as he followed the servant escorting him to Princess Ragna’s rooms. He’d sent his other men with another servant to convene with the other guards, telling them if they saw Aesira was with them instead of Ragna to send her his way.

They turned the corner in the too-small hallway—how did the elves handle how cramped it was?—and Heimir spotted Lieuntenant Stigr outside what he presumed was Princess Ragna’s door. Stigr’s black wings rustled as his face lost all its color as the sight of Heimir coming down the hall. He snapped to attention as the Sun Elf servant bowed and silently took his leave.

Heimir gaze Stigr a polite nod and gestured to the door. “I presume they’re inside?”

“Princess… Princess Ragna is. She… She was… She’s trying to write a letter to you,” Stigr stumbled over each word, eyes darting up and down Heimir as if he was seeing a ghost.

Heimir had always like Stigr, he’d been the one to recommend him as Aesira’s lieutenant, mostly because he knew he could be counted on to follow orders and was a faster flier than both of them. If he’d known about these sort of… oddities in behavior, he might have thought twice. Well, at least Heimir was here now to get his girls home safely.

“She didn’t really think His Majesty wouldn’t send me?” Heimir shook his head and reached for the door. “Never mind, I’ll speak to her myself.”

“Wait—Heimir—”

But he ignored his protests as he pushed open the door, expecting to see Ragna sitting at a desk with Aesira perched on something nearby or peering over her shoulder, a teasing remark on her lips while Ragna told her she’d write faster if Aesira would stop hovering.

But instead all he saw was Ragna’s beautiful white wings draped behind her as she sat on an ottoman that didn’t seem to belong to any of the other furniture in the room as she stared down at sheet after sheet of paper before her, all letters started and none of them finished.

She had a hand in her hair, her quill crushed and mangled beyond use in her other hand, pressed to her mouth as her shoulders violently shook. Ink was spilled out of an overturned inkwell, ruining a letter that hadn’t gotten past a greeting.

Heimir rushed across the room, kneeling at her side the way he’d been born to and whispered, “Princess, what is it? What’s wrong?”

Ragna startled, jerking back and nearly falling off her seat as her red-rimmed eyes widened at the sight of him. She whispered, “Heimir?”

“Who else? I came as fast as I could. You didn’t think I would stay in Laerad after hearing you’d been attacked? Even if your brother hadn’t commanded me to go, I would have been in the air like that.” Heimir snapped his fingers before reaching forward and gently uncurling her fingers from the mangled quill and tossing it onto the desk. “No need for a letter. I’m right here.”

But instead of the soft, reassured smile he’d been expecting, a sob tore from her throat and she collapsed in on herself. “Heimir—”

Now he was getting worried.

Ragna crying always worried him, but this was more. What could she have been trying to write to him about that would have her in such a state?

“Where’s Aesira?” Heimir looked over his shoulder to see Stigr hovering in the doorway, a grim expression having wiped away his shock from before.

Another agonized wail left Ragna as she tried to cover her mouth, eyes spilling over. She choked out, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Stigr whispered, “Captain Aesira ensured Her Highness made it here safely.”

Heimir pushed himself to his feet. If they wouldn’t tell him where she was, he’d search this palace inch by inch until he found wherever their infirmary was. “What have the healers said? What are her injuries?”

“Heimir, the Sun Elves have—” Stigr started but was quickly cut off.

“She’s gone!” Ragna’s words ripped through the air, roughened from her sobs. “She’s gone.”

“What do you mean gone?”

Ragna gasped for air as she fought valiantly to try to steady herself enough to deliver the message. “She told me to tell you she loves you and she’s sorry.”

“I don’t care if she’s sorry! I care if she’s safe! Where is she?”

Stigr spoke over Ragna as her words devolved into another sob. “If you wanted her safe, you shouldn’t have let her become captain then.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Heimir’s voice went low and dangerous.

“She signed up to protect Princess Ragna with her life. That’s exactly what she did.” Stigr closed his eyes before taking a slow breath and saying, “The Sun Elves have collected the fallen and have their bodies so we can properly—”

“I know!” Heimir shouted over both of them. “I just came from there after we burned the six bodies. So tell me right now, where my sister is.”

Ragna’s cries came to a stuttering stop as Stigr’s eyes widened. She whispered, “S—Six?”

Heimir looked down at her and then back a Stigr. “Yes. I went to the Sun Elves’ fortress first so we could burn the bodies before they deteriorated even worse before being able to be burned. I identified all of them.”

Stigr shook his head. “That’s not possible. Captain Aesira—” Ragna winced and stared down at her hands in her lap, smudged with ink and tears. “When the Moon Elves appeared, Captain Aesira selected six guards to join her and buy time for me and the rest to escort Her Highness to safety. We all felt the Death Knells the moment she did. With seven, I’m surprised none of us felt it even sooner, but that’s not the point. Captain Aesira led the charge herself. Her fate was on that field.”

No. No. That wasn’t possible.

Heimir ran a hand through his hair, nails scratching his skin. “Something is missing. That can’t be it. There were only six bodies. Aesira wasn’t there.”

“The Sun Elves must have missed her body. We can—” Stigr took a step toward Heimir, and then immediately stepped back when Heimir glared at him. “We can go back to the battlefield and find her body so we can give her a proper pyre.”

“The Sun Elves didn’t see a bloody, dying valkyrie in the middle of a battlefield on the plains?”

Not a chance.

At Heimir’s biting question, Stigr snapped his mouth shut and shook his head.

Another low, painful noise left Ragna as her wings rustled. She buried her head into her hands, shaking her head.

“She could have gotten away, maybe she managed to make it to the forest and hid—” Heimir was rambling now, the words spilling out of his mouth as soon as they entered his head.

“Captain Aesira would never have left before the battle was over,” Stigr said.

“But maybe after—”

“If she managed to get away after the battle, we would have heard by now. She would have gotten help, met us in Auror,” Stigr said. He sighed. “Maybe her injuries were too great and—”

“Don’t you dare—she’s not dead. Aesira isn’t—” Heimir was ready to throttle Stigr for even suggesting it.

“They took her,” Ragna’s whisper cut through Heimir and Stigr’s voices. He whipped around to see Ragna’s hand clenched over her heart, nails digging into the fabric. She swallowed. “They must have seen her badge and taken her.”

Of course. The Captain of the Guard, if she wasn’t dead during the battle, why wouldn’t they take her?

Aesira was still alive.

Heimir immediately scanned the room. There. He snatched up the maps and started throwing them open across the low table by the couch.

“Heimir, no—stop! Please—” Ragna grabbed at his arm, trying to pull him back, but he nudged her with his wings, bringing them up around him to keep Stigr or Ragna from taking the maps from him.

“If the Moon Elves took her, they took her for a reason, they want to know about your visit here or her knowledge of our military. So it’s been, about a month since the attack?” Heimir didn’t look over his shoulder for confirmation. He focused only on the map in front of him, mentally calculating the distance. “Assuming they’re only traveling at night—”

A hand slammed onto paper, right on the border between Iubar and Lunheim. Stigr stood on the other side of the table, black wings spreading behind him, filling the room. “Heimir. If—if the Moon Elves took her, then they took her to interrogate, torture, and then dump her body in a shallow grave. If you care about her, you better hope she’s dead.”

Like Heimir didn’t know that.

He shoved Stigr’s arm, forcing him to move it out of the way and ignoring his last sentence. “Which means, she’s still alive. Aesira underwent training to be able to resist interrogation and torture before becoming captain, the same way I did. She’s good at it, so I know they have not gotten whatever information they want out of her. If they’ve even tried interrogating her. They probably won’t until they’re back in Lunheim which—”

Heimir’s voice died as he look at the spot the Moon Elves likely were by now.

Already across the border into Lunheim.

Already well behind all the fighting.

He could still…

“Don’t be foolish. You have no idea where they would even take her to be interrogated. All we know is she’s behind their borders by now.”

“Then I’ll search every fate-forsaken inch until I find her!”

“And get yourself shot out of the sky and killed the second you cross the border.” Stigr grabbed the map and ripped it off the table. “It’s suicide.”

“I don’t care,” Heimir whispered. “She’s my sister.”

Ragna was now on her knees next to him, grabbing at his arm. “Don’t! Please don’t—”

Heimir shot her a glare, hardening his heart not to crack at her flushed cheeks and watery eyes as she pleaded with him. “Don’t try to rescue her? My sister, who stayed behind so you could live? You want me to leave her in the hands of those monsters?”

“Aesira might not be left to be rescued! I’ve—” Ragna’s voice cracked, her hands shaking against him. “I’ve been talking to the Sun Elves. I wanted… I wanted to know what would have happened if Aesira hadn’t sacrificed herself. What would have happened to me if they had succeeded. They told me… Heimir, either Aesira breaks and tells them everything they want to know and they kill her, or they realize she won’t talk and kill her anyway.”

“Which means I have to get to her before they do!”

“You’re not listening! Please, Heimir, listen to me!” Ragna’s nails dug into his skin, the sharp sensation anchoring him. “You can’t go. You just can’t—as much as I want you to, I can’t let you. You won’t save her. You’ll just get yourself killed and you can’t do that to me. She’d never forgive me, and I can’t lose you too!”

“And I can’t lose her!” Heimir snapped.

“I’m sorry, Heimir, please—” Ragna took another deep breath, trying to keep her voice steady.

“I have to try. She’s all I have left, and she needs me! Fate-forsake me, this is all my fault, I have to fix it. I have to find her—”

“Heimir, just because we haven’t found the body doesn’t mean there isn’t one.” Stigr’s cold voice pulled Heimir’s gaze back to him as he rolled up the map. “They’ve been back in Lunheim for at least a week, if not three, depending on which route and how conservative we are in estimating their speed. Aesira’s body wasn’t on that battlefield because it’s already rotting in a shallow grave under their cursed moon. And that’s where you will be if you try to go after her.”

The horrific image flashed before his eyes, immediately threatening to upheave his stomach.

He could see her, lying in the dirt where she didn’t belong, her tawny and cream wings twisted and bent all the wrong ways, her brown eyes open and staring at the moon that killed her. Had she called for him?

Heimir had thought there could be nothing worse than hearing Aesira scream when she’d been trained to resist interrogation. He’d been on the other side of the door, refusing to take everyone’s advice that he leave and let them handle this. He’d heard her when she finally broke, her voice leaving her for the first time in hours as she screamed his name and begged him to make it stop.

The other guards had to hold him back as a crack echoed on the other side of the door and Aesira started swearing, realizing she’d failed.

She had set a record for how long she’d lasted on her first time.

When Heimir had pulled her up off the ground, cradling her face while a healer began to work on cleaning her wounds, her instructor had repeated to her the same thing he’d told Heimir.

“Everyone breaks eventually.” He held out a glass of water. “But some of us can hold on longer than others.”

But stubborn, strong, loyal Aesira… she could hold on longer than anyone he’d ever met.

He should have put an end to it all that day. He should have locked her up in their rooms and told them all he wouldn’t retire and Aesira would never be captain. She would never need to know how to endure torture.

But that night as he’d changed her bandages, she read his mind before he could even speak it. She’d leaned her head against his shoulder and whispered, “It’s worth it, Heimir. You’re worth it.”

No. He wasn’t.

“After everything you’ve done for me since the moment I was born, doubly so after mother and father died, and you want to put up a fuss about a little torture endurance training? Besides, you heard him. I set a record for a skill I’ll never need. Ragna gets into trouble, but she’s not that much trouble. Don’t worry about me, just go be King Baror’s favorite guard. I’ll take take of your princess the way you’ve always taken care of me.”

Selfish, heartsick creature he was, he’d let her talk him down.

“If I quit now, I prove everyone who thinks I didn’t earn this job right. Come on, don’t try and take away the one thing I have a natural talent for.”

It wouldn’t save her. That was the worst part of it all. Her endurance would just put her through more agony before the Moon Elves got what they wanted or it didn’t matter to them anymore.

His voice came out in a cracked whisper, “I can’t leave her.”

Stigr’s hardened expression softened as he put the map back. “You’re not. Aesira left first. She knew what she was doing. She could have commanded me to lead the charge. She could have ordered the six of them to die on their own. But she didn’t. She chose to sacrifice herself. Don’t spit on her sacrifice by trying to follow her into death. And for what? Her dead body? You know she wouldn’t want you to see that and be tormented by it the rest of your life. She was a guard, she wouldn’t want anyone, least of all her brother, to risk their life for her.”

Stigr was right, but Heimir couldn’t let him be right.

Because if he was right, Heimir stayed where he was.

So did Aesira.

She went into a shallow grave underneath a cold moon.

Heimir never saw her again.

The pieces of his heart would always be scattered beneath her wings wherever she was. He couldn’t lose her. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Stigr whispered, “Lady Fate has her now. Have faith she will be well rewarded for her sacrifice and let the wind carry her home.”

Heimir’s voice broke as the first sob finally ripped through, half-fury and half-anguish. “How? There won’t be any ashes.”

Ragna buried her head into Heimir’s shoulder, arm pressed across his chest as she clutched at him, but Heimir couldn’t feel any of it.

Stigr just looked over his shoulder at the balcony doors, the sun long gone from the sky, and the cursed moon rising in its place.

Heimir’s wings dropped, spreading out behind him as Ragna just tried to hold him even tighter, her tears soaking his shirt and her apologies pressing against his skin.

The moon’s etherial glow taunted him in the dark sky.

“She’s all alone,” he whispered, the water spilling over from his eyes blurring the darkness ahead of him. “She left me all alone.”

Ragna whispered, “You’re not alone. I promise you, you’re not alone.”

Aesira was going to die all alone, in utter agony, bleeding and broken, and crying out the name of the brother that had condemned her to her fate.

He should never have given up his position as captain. If he hadn’t been so selfish… If he’d done his fate-forsaken job right and protected his sister…

He was never going to forgive himself.

He couldn’t feel anything but little hands clutching his shirt as their owner realized he was all she had left in the world.

If only she had pulled away and looked up to see the truth; he was a selfish coward who was going to get her killed. Maybe then she would be going home and he’d be going into the grave.

* * *

You’ve made it to the end! Thank you so much for reading Chains of Moonlight and seeing the beginning of Aesira and Veremund’s story! There is a lot more to come and a lot to discover in Bride of Moonbeams and Betrayal, the first book of the upcoming trilogy as we jump ahead several years, after Aesira has returned to the valkyries… without her wings or any of her memories, including the events of this book.

Find all the chapters here!

Pre-order a paperback of Chains of Moonlight here!

Pre-order book 1, Bride of Moonbeams and Betrayal here!