From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 212
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
"How much longer do we have to be here?" she asked with one hand on her diaphragm to make sure it was still working. "My armour is going to pop out in self-defence before long."
"As long as we need to. We have powerful friends, now, we must be seen with them."
"Why? I don't plan on asking them for anything."
Elise set a hand on Millie's arm in a way that could be interpreted innocently enough by people who didn't see what they didn't want to. The Bond spoke true. "Not for us. For them. Being seen with the little people makes them less scary. Being seen with witches makes them more legitimate."
All of the diplomatic double-speak was going to Millie's head faster than the champagne constantly being thrown at her. "They are witches."
The most powerful to ever live.
In the centre of the hall, Alex and Helga were the lake into which all tributaries flowed, world leaders in every sense of the term. Sveta was there, mediating the attentions heaped on them on behalf of millions, while Kat did her Kat thing, flashing her charm and intelligence like a diamond blade to cut away the last tendrils of resistance to such an historic day.
The Framework had been ratified by all nations present, and thanks to Anastasia, Russia could be next.
The war over.
For good.
Many years earlier, Selene had told them that the original three Manifests had helped save the world, and that she'd hoped the same would be the case for witches during the World War. Though a bit later and in a different form than she had envisioned, that's exactly what had happened.
And somehow, some way, Millie had been a part of it.
Whatever the Framework meant to Europe and the wider world, the most personal for Millie was that virtually everything that had driven ADAM, then EVE, together had been undone. That day so long ago when she, Elise and Vickie had stepped off that lorry in the middle of The Shed and had been told their new purpose, Millie never imagined that it would end up with them in such a place on such an occasion. In that giant space, the three of them had felt so small, unable to fill it with much more than hope and aspiration.
Little had they known that they had more than enough of both to fill considerably more than an airship hangar.
They had filled the world.
And now they had to live in it.
Or, more appropriately, they got to live in it.
It was theirs now, after all.
A corner table was perhaps not one fit for queens in the traditional sense, but for the one seated with Katya and Sveta, the only thing that mattered was that it was isolated and relatively quiet. And that it let them be together, probably for the last time in a very long while.
"When I was young, this was always my favourite part of official events. All the people, the food, the costumes, it always felt like a kind of fairy tale. It got less fun as we got older, and people were jockeying for my sisters' hands in marriage. Now they're a new kind of exhausting," Alex said as she bounced an olive around the bottom of her martini glass.
"But worth it," Sveta said, placing her tea back down on its saucer. "You've made so much more progress than I'd thought would have been possible in three days. I'm proud of you, Alex."
"Thank you, but we're not done yet. Not anywhere close."
"But much further than you were. You have concrete proposals to bring back to the people. Answers. Exactly what you came here for," Katya said.
"I know. It's a good exhausted." Alex fished out the olive and popped it in her mouth. "What are you going to do now, Sveta?"
"Keep working. There are still a lot of back-end details to work out, other countries to bring on board, or at least make less hostile. I am also being made chief liaison between the Framework Commission and your government, Your Majesty," said professional Sveta. "You won't be rid of me by retreating to the Winter Palace," added the sister and Coven-mate.
"I know all the secret passageways and I can turn invisible, so don't be so sure."
Katya's smile didn't quite reach her eyes. For all she had accomplished, a pang still rang through her. Alex and Sveta were going to be in regular contact, which was more than she could have hoped only a few weeks earlier. Katya had much to look forward to at home, but there was a tiny part of her that wanted to follow up on what Nadezhda had said when they'd parted. But if Katya ever returned to Russia, it would be as a tourist. Home was Longstown, and now she couldn't wait to go back.
There were a few surprises waiting.
"I thought I would spend a week or two at EVE to rest and recuperate before I get on with it though," Sveta said. "That is, if there's a place for me, Headmistress."
"I'm sure we can find one for you somewhere—we have a lot to choose from now. Anything you'd like to do while you're home?" Katya asked.
It had been a reach to presume to call it that, but Sveta didn't object, especially when Vita stopped by to tell them she was going to get some air.
Gold briefly washed over Sveta's eyes, and they followed Vita all the way to the door. "I know of one thing I'm looking forward to."
The twilight sky was as resplendent above as it was below. Looking into Lake Geneva was like looking through a portal into another world, slightly off from the one Victoria knew. The stars were all there, only mirrored and more diffuse. She could still name them and find which way was north, just without the assurance of knowing what she would find when she got there.
In the immediate aftermath of triumph, it was natural to wonder what the alternative looked like—how things would have turned out if they hadn't gone as they had. Was there another Victoria looking down at her and wondering how it had all gone wrong? Was there a Victoria to look down at her?
Thankfully, what had gone very right interrupted.
"Last call," Kiska said, handing Victoria a glass of champagne and holding up her own. "To peace."
Swallowing a reminder that she'd given up alcohol, Victoria took it with thanks and clinked her glass against Kiska's. "To peace."
It had been so long since she'd had champagne that the bubbles felt particularly effervescent, the taste extra sharp. She savoured it all the same.
She'd earned it.
"What were you thinking about?" Kiska's every word was visible in the wintery mountain air.
"I was conducting my usual over-examination of simple things," Victoria answered. She moved closer to Kiska. "I don't think I've fully accepted all that we accomplished. I wonder if I ever will."
"Give it time, darling. And a night in our own bed. We're not back to real life yet," Kiska said with another sip of champagne. "Whatever that means anymore."
Victoria stared out over the lake with her beloved, Manifest working to heat their clothes just enough to keep the chill from setting in. The bite in the air was pleasant after being inside with hundreds of others all day, particularly as there wasn't even a breeze enough to ruffle the fur collar on Kiska's coat.
In the light of the waning moon she was ethereally captivating, and Victoria was caught out staring.
"What is it, my shadow?"
The answer came to Victoria with a smile. "Moonlight becomes you."
Wan and white went slightly pink, and Kiska found her champagne.
"It is a beautiful night, following a momentous day. One that has prompted a great deal of contemplation, of the past and future. I am no exception—I can now. I want to, because of all you have given me." Relieving Kiska of her glass, Victoria set both on the ground. "In the years we have known each other, no force has transformed me more profoundly than you. I am better in every measurable way. A different person altogether." She held out her hand, and Kiska's settled onto it. "Since the day we met, you have pushed me, forced me out of my shell, to grow and adapt; dared me to spread my wings. And together we have flown. Beyond boundaries, beyond limits. Into places unknown and wondrous."
Victoria raised Kiska's hand to her lips and kissed it. "You and I have accomplished miracles together. Tonight I would ask you to join me in one more."
From her pocket she produced a ring of mirror black, polished down to the molecule. Across its surface curved a flawless arc of shining stars on a backdrop darker than space itself. A slice of night as warm as her blood, she imbued it with her magic and it lifted from her palm.
She fell to one knee.
"If my choices are to be my immortality, then let history show that I chose you, Yekaterina Gurevich. Will you Bond yourself to me and become my wife?"
"Oh…" It was more sound than word, as Kiska gazed down on the ring held in suspension between them. Within its depths was nothing but the two of them and eternity, without beginning and without end. "I would be both honoured and grateful."
Victoria let out the breath she'd been holding, and the smile that followed was so broad she feared she might never stop. "Truly?"
More than stars danced in Kiska's eyes. "Are you giving me cause to reconsider?"
"Not in the least." Before either of them could say anything else, Victoria slipped the ring on and sealed the decision with a kiss. Their fingers twined, the ring's presence unfamiliar but welcome, and Kiska held it up to marvel.
"It fits perfectly. How did you know?"
Seeing Kiska actually wearing it drove home the reality of what Victoria had just done, instantly silencing any lingering doubts she might have had. "I know your every dimension to the width of an atom. It was no challenge creating something to fit only you."
"You made it yourself?" Kiska asked, the shine of her eyes shifting with the hitch in her voice.
"Yes. I thought obsidian poetic—a kind of frozen fire, from the heart of the earth. With your recent predilection for black jewellery, it won't look out of place—"
Kiska pressed two fingers to Victoria's lips with a delicate laugh. "You needn't explain. Those who know will know."
It was an unfortunate and aggravating consideration, but one that couldn't be helped.
Yet.
"It's perfect." Kiska threw her arms around Victoria, and their first hug as betrothed was all the warmer for it. "My Vityusha, I am even happier than I imagined this moment would make me. Not so long ago I would have thought it impossible. Now it feels inevitable. I love you."
"I love you, too."
Kiska stared down at the ring on her finger as all that it represented filled her eyes to overflowing. "Elise was right. This is a gift. And a chance."
"For what?"
"To be even more than we are. Look what we've done together as individuals. Together, as one…" Kiska laid a gentle kiss on the ring and held her palm to Victoria's face. "Did you have a date in mind?"
"The next new moon is a week from now. Life is too short to wait," Victoria said. Like Millie and Elise before her, she saw no purpose in long engagements, and there was not a force in existence capable of dissuading her from her decision.
After a life of isolation and denial, she was ready.
And so was Kiska.
After three weeks, five countries and the end of the world as Millie had known it for the last 15 years, arriving back in Longstown was like stepping back in time. So much had changed while they were away, but home had remained mercifully the same.
Almost.
From the air, she would have been hard-pressed to tell the differences, but from the ground, the biggest one became apparent almost immediately.
Getting into a cab with Elise wasn't unusual, especially with the amount of luggage they had with them.
The gate they left from was.
And that they turned the wrong direction.
Behind them, Kat and Vickie had taken the route Millie was used to, and were probably already home by the time her cab crossed the first bridge.
At the sight of the river below, Elise took Millie's hand.
Atlas or Juno, no matter how fast or how far, her heart had never done the things it did as the cab trundled out of Longstown and into Bedford.
The trees grew thicker, the roads newer, until they pulled onto a stone path so new it wasn't even completely flat yet.
At the end of it was home.
Stepping out of the cab, she almost knocked her head against the roof from looking up at it instead of ahead. Thankfully she didn't, allowing her to clearly see the detached house they had pulled up to, hand-in-hand with the woman she would be sharing it with.
The rust-red hanging tiles cladding the outside were completely unweathered, the chimneys without a wisp of black or grey. A hedge had been planted all along the sleepy lane out front, but still had quite a bit of growing to do before it blocked off windows that didn't have any curtains yet. Upstairs, dark green shutters accomplished the task admirably. Downstairs a pair of white-trimmed bay windows bulged out over empty flower beds. Above the front door was an archway finished in glass.
It beckoned, but there was more to see first. Once Millie went inside, she wasn't convinced she would ever leave again.
So they walked around the side and unlatched a white wooden gate that swung open freely and soundlessly, admitting them into a garden that stretched from a cozy covered porch right up to the edge of the river.
Millie wafted around the garden as if in a dream, looking from the river on which she had proposed to Elise and back. Through the windows on the porch she could see into the kitchen.
Their kitchen.
"It's real," Millie heard herself say. "All of it."
Elise held out the keys; bright, completely untarnished. Unmarred metal that would unlock the next stage of their lives together. "Would you like to do the honour?"
Millie closed Elise's fingers around the keys. "That belongs to you."
The key slipped into the lock with a satisfying mechanical noise and they each set their hands on the knob. A pulse of confirmation flowed across the Bond, and they turned it as one.
As soon as the door swung open, the smell of new washed over them; wood, paint, wallpaper glue, metal polish, the labour of dozens solidified in an instant into a home for two.
Before Elise could take a single step, Millie swept her off her feet and looked into her eyes. "Welcome home, my angel."
She carried her over the threshold and past the point of no return.
They laughed all the way to the sitting room, where Millie finally set Elise down again. Spinning on her toes, she kissed Millie directly in front of the windows, their features bathed only in natural light. "Welcome home. Your place to rest, finally."
Smiling, Millie gave the room a look around. Other than a few boxes stacked in the corner, it was completely empty. The brick fireplace was spotless, without a splinter of wood in it. "Not quite yet."
The kitchen was similarly bare, but Millie's imagination was eager to fill it. To many, it would seem a modest dream to look forward to cooking, but it was something she hadn't done for herself—let alone Elise—in ages, and the simple prospect of having dinner ready when Elise got home from work filled Millie with a kind of joy she had longed to experience.
All the little tips and tricks she had picked up from Ivy over the years were going straight into the garden outside. Their garden, to grow whatever they wanted. Flowers, herbs, vegetables, it was their choice, and theirs alone. She was going to build a fence! She had no idea how to build a fence, but she couldn't wait to start. Chopping firewood, having to remember to buy milk, all the basic things so many took for granted and even resented, she was looking forward to. Because she could.
From Aberdeen to Nottingham to ADAM to EVE to ten years with Niamh scattered across half of Europe, transformed by love, tragedy and triumph, it was time for Millie to take a tip from Ivy's book and plant her roots. Some might have considered the life she'd led over the past fifteen years or so absurd, but looking back on it, what she had lived before was absurd. A life of denial, of one continuous lie… she was done with it. She had worked too hard, risked and lost too much to ever go back to what she was supposed to be.
Millie had that freedom. It had been hard-won, by herself and her sisters, and it was her turn to taste the fruits of that labour.
The world had changed. Was changing.
There would always be danger, the Red Knight would be needed again, but Millie didn't have to live as the Red Knight.
She could just live.
With her wife, on the river. As a teacher first, a listener. A shield only when it was necessary. The time in between was hers, to do with as she wished.
The house, as it stood, was empty of possessions and physical things, but like The Shed all those years ago, filled to overflowing with possibility and promise. It gushed from every window, pooled in every corner, blossomed in the garden and burbled in the river.
The Bond rang with the pure harmony of shared thoughts, the pitch of their emotions perfectly in tune. Come spring, there would be flowers. Birds in the trees and frogs on the shore. New life was coming to them, and they to their new life.
They would be ready.
"We've barely been home an hour, Kiska. Can't this wait?" Victoria asked as their new, shared bedroom went dark. It was lovely, finished exactly as they had specified in bright colours produced by Russian dyes. The bed was enormous and criminally soft, and all she wanted to do was roll around in it until the next century. Their clothing still smelt of travel and petrol fumes; it was hard to see—literally—what the urgency was.
"Knowing you as I do, you'll figure it out in your sleep, so no." Kiska cinched the blindfold tighter. "Don't peek with magic, either!" she implored and began guiding Victoria into the living room. "I'll know."
Victoria scoffed. "I am capable of extremely subtle—"
"I meant by the look on your face, Doctor," Kiska said.
"Ah." Naive Victoria might still be in certain arenas, she knew not to antagonise her soon-to-be wife. Especially because she'd been smiling when she'd put the blindfold on.
The bed had to wait. And so did Victoria when they arrived at what she estimated must have been the bathroom. Her mind immediately went to thoughts of candles and scented bathwater, but when the door opened, the air that followed was cold and smelled only of bleach.
