When Mother stepped back, her gold eyes were lined with silver. A deep and unsettling sense of dread filled Herrick as his parents stood with their backs to the door that led back to the fighting.
"You were both right," she said thickly as she grabbed his and Hakon's hand. "You were both right about us and how we've treated you. Along the way, I had forgotten you were more than just our Heirs. We only wanted to shape you for your roles, but we see now that what we did instead was create a cage. WhatIdid was smother you both until you became who I wanted you to be and not who you are."
Herrick could feel his chest caving in at where he knew this conversation was going.
"I was wrong," she whispered as a tear tracked down her flushed cheek. Herrick swiped it away with his fingers as he felt his soul shrink back into the youngling he had been before. "You both have the chance to do so much for this kingdom, for Ahland. That's why you need to run now and not look back. Go find Maude, bring her back to herself, and end this war for once and for all."
His eyes widened— how did she know?
"Bryn told me before we came to get you," Mother explained, a half smile in place. Such deep sorrow radiated from her words that it paralyzed Herrick. "She needs you right now, so go get her."
He tried to swallow past the lump in his throat as his brother said with a shaky voice, "We'll wait for you."
Despite all the hardship they had faced as a family, Herrick and his brother knew they had been so deeply loved by their parents. The painful blows of their goodbye were already starting to carve wounds into them that would never heal.
Father pulled them all into his arms, and Herrick couldn't help but feel like a youngling again as tears leaked from the corner of his eye. Beside him, Hakon shuddered once as he seemingly swallowed a sob.
"We understand our fate now, my loves," Mother whispered. "It was always to bring you into this world so that you can make it a better place. That is a parent's job, isn't it? To guide their children to be the best that they can be, to leave this world a better place than they found it?"
His mother gripped either side of his face as her eyes swept over his features. Golden irises traced over every line and curve, her thumb sweeping over his cheek as she searched for whatever it was she was looking for. A sense of finality seemed to settle over her as she smiled softly.
"Leave this place. Fight another day, and know you were right."
"You are our greatest accomplishments," Father said quietly, his resilient strength that they had both inherited shining as he tried to mask his sorrow at their goodbye. "So go now and do what we could not."
"Until we meet again in Odin's hall," Mother breathed before she and Father ushered them backward into the tunnel.
Herrick shot forward to stop them from going back into the fight, but his father lifted his arm in a sweeping motion. A wall of dirt covered the opening, locking them in with nowhere to go but out the other side of this escape route to freedom. Hakon pounded on the dirt wall, just like Herrick did, but silence greeted them from the other side. Their parents had gone back to the fighting, leaving their legacy and the fate of their kingdom in their son's hands.
Alva's chest cracked open another inch as she took another step closer to the battlefield.
She was not afraid to die— she had lived, after all. Her sons had not had enough time. And even as she tried to forget that she would never see them with families of their own and never get to hold them again, she knew she had done the right thing. With Njal at her side, she was ready to meet her ending if it meant their children would get to go on fighting. They could do what she and Njal had failed to do allthese years: lead their people to a life without restrictions and without threats from rival kingdoms.
As they reached the edge of the battle, their guards still fighting off the Flame Soldiers who had advanced further into their city, Alva looked at her husband and memorized his face. She watched as he withdrew his axe and saw how his royal blue eyes focused on the enemy.
She reached out her hand and slipped it into his, drawing his attention to her where his gaze softened.
"I'll see you in the afterlife, my love," she whispered. "My friend."
"In this life and all the next," Njal said softly as he pressed his lips against her sweat-coated forehead. "Together."
"Together."
Blinding sunlight greeted Herrick as he followed Hakon and Bryn, who had slung their arms around Dahlia's waist so they could support her weight as she cradled her shoulder.
The dark tunnels that had been carved underneath the city and then through the mountain the palace sat on had been dimly lit by torches every few yards. Though Herrick had known of their existence, he had never walked through them before. The walls had quickly gone from the packed dirt that smelled of earth and minerals to the sulfuric scent that clung to the walkways that led to the dungeons.
The same shining veins of black that Herrick had always known to be part of the dungeons were present in these tunnels. He had run his fingers over one of the strands of onyx, trying to discern if he was familiar with the ore, but the only thing it reminded him of were the twin daggers and twin axes that Dahlia and Aeric carried.
The soft waves of the ocean crashing on sand seemed wrong compared to the sounds of the dying that had been flooding his hearing. Even after his parents hadpulled them from the fight, the sounds of battle still clanged and crashed in his ears until they'd pushed him and his brother into the tunnel and sealed them in.
He may have understood why they did it, but Herrick was infuriated. They were sending themselves into a fight they would not walk away from, expecting them to follow their orders and leave them behind. Hakon spoke true— they would wait for them.
A small longboat had been brought ashore, and as they got closer to the vessel, Herrick could see that Liv and Gunnar were waiting for them. They were antsy; Liv paced in front of the water while Gunnar flung his axe into the sand just to pull it back into his hands with his vines. He rushed forward to help Hakon with Dahlia as Liv sprinted toward Bryn, wrapping the battle worn woman in her arms for a moment before hastily letting go. Bryn surged forward into Liv's embrace, however, as her shoulders began to shake.
Liv's gray eyes scanned the rest of their group as she held a shaking Brynna, and when they came up empty for who she had been looking for, her mouth dropped open.
"Maude?" she asked Herrick, weariness in her tone.
