In which I fervently praise God that this is over. 

It was a tsunami of drinking water. When Elowyn broke open the door, she may as well have released all the levees of the world. A churning, screaming monster descended, its foamy white arms extended to engulf her in its roaring rage. It was more powerful than anything Elowyn had previously imagined. She was swept hopelessly with the stinging current, battered by the stone floor below the surface. Desperately she jerked up for air and cracked her head on the roof. She and Ren and the Bellicans were just fish in a stream, pushed down six flights of stairs. The tower door was knocked from its hinges. Out on the rooftop, where the water had the freedom to spread, people and animals and furniture were whisked into the mix. The wild flood waterfalled straight over the edge of the roof and to the ground, taking everything with it. The world was spinning. The noise was deafening. The city quickly became a lake and bobbing around in it were the contents of Leida Castle, and the water kept coming violently. There was no difference between terrorist and civilian anymore. There was only a struggle for oxygen.

For Gabriel and Wescott, on the castle grounds, the flood was not something they saw coming until it was overtaking everything. They lost their swords. Gabriel saw nothing but dense, foaming water as his lungs became burning columns of inhaled liquid. Choking and hacking, he broke to the surface and saw Wescott ripping off his armor, struggling to stay afloat. The tide kept carrying them, slamming them into every obstruction.

Gabriel was swept straight past the border of the city and into the ocean. A bubbly wave crashed over him. Finally he felt ground, but his boots foundered in the sandy current and he tore them off his feet. The ocean was alive, civilians and Bellicans regaining their footing and resuming the fight as if nothing had happened. A dresser glided past Gabriel and washed into the waves. With the division between land and sea gone, Gabriel splashed down the road knee-deep, passed on both sides by people and animals carried beyond their control. He fell into his older brother.

Dale held Gabriel with both hands to steady himself. "What happened? Where's Ren?"

"Where's Caper?" Gabriel yelled back.

A brand-new rank of Bellicans charged up out of the ocean with weaponry pointed. Dale and Gabriel ran side by side. They found the girls, torn and bruised all over, and found Wescott brawling and half-drowning in an alley. For the rest of the day, they did not lost sight of one another. Dale, who earlier would not call himself a fighter, who said he would have nothing to do with a battle, fought unfalteringly. They were a unit, a prophecy revealed, the company of the Huntians, making a name for themselves for themselves to be told for centuries. Gabriel's whole body burned and begged for relief, his muscles to the point of tearing, and he relished it, wide awake.

An outlet for his senseless anger, I guess. 

There were rumors of a relief army from the Eastern Shore coming into help now that the battle had touched their land. As it was, the Terradonians were exhausted. Men and woman alike dropped in the streets. Wescott had recovered his horse and he and Gabriel rode double on him in the places were the water only reached Riser's fetlocks. Running from the flood, refugees filled every wet street of the Eastern Shore. Gabriel and Wescott rode down the center of the street, hunting for Bellicans, but with the battle dwindling, the terrorists began to feast their eyes on the refugees.

Wescott and Gabriel were caught in a new attack on the streets. Arrows flew so rapidly they had to throw themselves from the horse. An arrow caught a refugee man in the knee. His wife and child were pummeled to the pavement. With a spear he had snagged out of the flood water, Gabriel fought back with all that was left in him. More Bellicans and civilians added themselves to the fight, giving Gabriel a moment to step back.

The little boy who had been attacked was nearly trampled by a horse. He ran to the other end of the street. Gabriel saw his black-haired head dematerialize through a barn door. "Get him!" yelled Wescott, sword-fighting up on Riser.

"No, leave him! He's just a refugee!"

A knife was lobbed in Gabriel's direction. He chopped down the Bellican who had thrown it. More were coming steadily, angry but weakening. Wescott pulled Gabriel along and they rode fast out of sight, to the other side of the barn. "He's just a kid! We have to get him," said Wescott.

Gabriel placed his bare foot on the hay-covered floor, the first piece of dry ground he had felt in hours. In the barn was a blessed silence, as if it had been detached from the rest of the mad world. Silently he ventured in behind Wescott.

The barn was abandoned. The hay was flat and limp, the stall doors hung empty, the feeding troughs held nothing but dust. The boys crept in with their weapons extended and their eyes trained watchfully on the barn loft. It was barren and quiet. A frayed rope, tied to a rafter, swung lightly in the sea breeze. Up in the loft was the only window, a tiny square in the middle of the wall. It shot rays of late sunlight into Gabriel's face. He searched the building and found the little boy flattened against the back of a stall.

He looked like Patch when Patch was three or four years younger. His shirt was off. Gabriel could see every bone in his tiny, quivering body. He crouched to his heels and the boy backed further away.

"Come on," Gabriel whispered with his hand out. "Hurry."

The fight on the street was growing closer but in the barn, the noise was muted. Gabriel began to inch forward on his hands and knees, scared of drawing outside attention. He took the boy into his arms, not breathing but feeling the child breathe hard against him.

As he came out of the stall into the dusty beam of light, everything happened quicker than he could think. A violent cry sounded from the barn loft. A shower of arrows rained down onto Gabriel and he had time to do nothing but fling himself as a shield over the little boy. A shadow landed on him. The sun was darkened. Blood that was not his began to creep down his hand.

Wescott stood over Gabriel, paling and pierced by every arrow. "You got lucky," he said, and fell.

From outdoors came the trumpeting of the arrival of the Eastern Shore mounted army, hundreds of them, sweeping clean the streets. They rode into the barn and finished off everyone in the loft. Somewhere in the commotion the refugee woman ran in for her child. And Wescott Huntian, the boy, the rightful king of Carpathia, lay dead in the bloodstained hay.

There was a moment when Gabriel's mind would not accept what his eyes had just witnessed. It felt like a dream he could barely remember, or a hallucination brought on by this reckless fear and exhaustion. Then he took hold of Wescott's still-warm arms and dragged him out into the flood, onto a high, dry rock beneath the coconut trees. The daylight was ending. The sky was a cobalt blue with clouds of orange striped across the middle. The wind moved the heavy palm leaves. Gabriel listened as the first bird began again to sing after the destruction.

He was still sitting there as the land began to settle down and grow quiet, as far away, at the docks, the surviving Bellicans retreated in their ships or in leaky lifeboats. People were picking themselves up, taking stock of their losses, carrying the injured. Gabriel remained beneath the trees and watched the whitecaps on the ocean. He felt as if a hole had been cut into his soul and drained him of everything but the oxygen he kept drawing into his lungs.

Dale came when the light was nothing but a yellow horizon. Leading his borrowed horse through the water, he stumbled upon Gabriel.

"There you are," he said in a voice full of undisguised relief. His hand brushed Gabriel's head.

Gabriel made no acknowledgement. He stared vacantly out at the water.

Is Gabriel feeling a twinge of emotion that isn't anger? I'm so touched. Can you hear the pathos in my voice? 

Dale's appearance was as haggard as Gabriel's. He was bleeding from his mouth. His attention went from Gabriel to Wescott and for a long moment, he paused, the understanding and sorrow slowly seeping into his eyes.

"Let's go," he said. "People are looking for you."

Gabriel did not move. Dale sank his own aching body to the rock and they sat together, breathing the death-filled air as the sunlight left the world.

It had been the Dravens' first taste of war, and it would be anything but their last. But for all any of them cared, they were forever retired from fighting. Darius Draven returned from his extraordinarily unsuccessful naval mission, and he and his children trudged back to the castle. The northern and western wings of the castle had been mostly spared and now the residents of the palace took shelter there. Hollis and Patch were damp and bruised. Hollis ran to his injured sister and she dropped her head onto his and nearly went to sleep standing up.

"Are they gone?" Hollis asked, drawing back. He was shaking. "Or are they coming back?"

"It doesn't matter!" said Darius. He was holding a trembling Patch. Into his other arm he took Hollis. "We're going home."

It was some days before the roads were passable again. The Dravens stayed in the castle and helped with a few futile repair efforts, the air heavy with the darkness of a seventeen-year-old boy who was to be buried. Gabriel did not speak a word the whole time. He was often seen in the distance down by the bay, alone, standing on the shore and staring. Just staring.

For Winter and Elowyn, all the world's light was lost. As the castle grounds dried, Wescott Huntian was buried on the hill over the Oyster Bay. It was a gloriously hot, sunny day. They released lanterns, as Elowyn and Wescott had done together upon the death of their father, and this time the only thought in Elowyn's head was that it was over, all of it, all their many days of fighting, talking, laughing, racing Quill and Riser, taking their sailboats out on the bay, everything. There would never be anything else.

The Dravens stood lost in the crowd as Conrad Daley gave a benediction he could not care less about. Patch whispered to Ren, "Who's going to be king if Wescott's dead?"

"Conrad is still the king," she said back.

She was thinking of Elowyn, who was fatherless, and had lost her brother, the only kind of love Ren truly understood, while Ren, still deeply black and blue from being banged down six flights of stairs, stood with father and brothers alive. She could not look Elowyn in the eye. On the morning of the Dravens' departure, they did not bid one another farewell. Ren just went out to ready her horse.

Darius kept his castle job, but, fearing another terrorist attack, sent his children home. He was going to escort them safely all the way home and then travel back. At their parting, no one from the castle came to see them off except for Winter. She insisted they keep the borrowed horses. For Ren she prepared a large pack of flour, sugar, cocoa, oil and spices, and jars of fruits, vegetables, and olives. "No one else deserves it more," she insisted when Ren tried to give it back. "You're a soldier and a cook."

Look, there is a time and place for cook characters. I adore Remy with all my heart. I love the film The Hundred-Foot Journey. This is just NOT THE TIME OR THE PLACE. 

She tried to smile. The look in her eyes filled Ren with a depth of pity she had never felt before. She did not say another word.

It was a weary ride home. Even Hollis was quiet. Having come out of all the trouble unscathed, Sable trotted along steadfastly with a white, smiling face. The refugees, pushed out of town by the flood, occupied either side of the road all the way into the Low Country. The Dravens camped overnight on the bank of the Smoky River while their horses grazed in the moonlight.

In the dewy morning they built a fire and their father fried bacon. Patch wanted to pick some blackberries he had seen growing along the edge of the woods, a woods full of refugees. They all watched him closely as he crossed the meadow.

Hollis sat in the grass, holding his bacon out of Sable's reach. He was not smiling. Since the battle and Wescott's funeral, he had seemed older, more troubled. "Will it be safe to be home by ourselves? Or will the Bellicans come there, too?"

"You've been home by yourself all your life and the Bellicans have never come," said Dale. "Not like that."

"But there had never been a battle before."

"Hollis, forget it. Forget it ever happened. They're not going to attack us out in the country. They have no need to," said Gabriel.

They sat and crunched thoughtfully into their bacon.

"The flood was neat, though," Hollis said.

"Gabriel, go tell Patch to hurry up," said Darius.

Gabriel, still stiff from the fight, limped out to where his little brother was standing still as a stone with a fistful of berries. His hand smacked Gabriel in the stomach, stopping him.

"There's a bear," he whispered.

Gabriel heard a growl. People screamed. And then in a far corner of the woods he saw it, a refugee family, carless about where they left food, now backed into a corner by a famished black bear.

"Go back to the campsite right now," Gabriel whispered without moving.

Patch backed away one slow step at a time. When he was halfway across the field Gabriel motioned at him and he ran.

Gabriel whipped out an arrow and scaled a tree. From there he stepped into another tree and then another, getting closer. The family had four children and no weapons. The father held a stick. The bear rose, smelling Gabriel, but when two of the children tried to run, the bear dropped to four legs to pursue them.

He jammed an arrow into his bow string and drew back hard. But before he could let it fly, there came a spear, flung hard out of thin air. The bear was felled before it could make a noise. Its chest rose once and then ceased to move.

The refugee family stood breathing hard. Gabriel turned slowly to see Ren on the ground, looking up at him.

"My bear," she said.

On the way home they rode side by side, Gabriel thinking heavily of many things. Patch rode with his father, leaning back on him and holding the reigns. Gabriel yearned to be that young, to ride a horse smiling, feeling his father's paw-like hand caress his hair.

"Do you remember the forts we built out of fish crates?" he asked.

Ren looked at him, as surprised as she ever became. "I remember. Do you remember?"

"Yes. And we had that game where we survived in the woods and set pretend traps." He guided Caper around a fallen tree. "We were playing that game the day of the huge storm. Mom called us home and she was rushing to bring everything inside. Clothes flying off the line."

Ren grew typically quiet. She rode along and stroked Silverwood's mane.

"And we made rafts for the river. I broke yours."

"It's all right," said Ren.

"On purpose."

She shrugged.

"There's not a day I don't want to go back and play like that," she admitted.

"Me, too," said Gabriel.

-----------------------------------------

In the days to follow, as the damage in Terradon was repaired, as people began to regrow their shaky faith in their security, a sadness roosted in Leida Castle. At night, Elowyn could not sleep, yet she was angry at the sun when it rose. She got nothing done. Winter locked herself into her room and did not eat. After a week of it, when Elowyn had had quite enough, when what she really wanted was a second battle into which she could pour all her shock and horror and malice, she went out to the bay and stood with Edem. They had not even seen each other since the funeral.

It was a June evening, the type of day the old version of Elowyn loved. Now her soul was shut to all the beauty, bleeding from its eternal scars. The sun hit the oysters. They looked at the sandy shore.

"The prophecy is over," said Elowyn in a hollow voice.

"No." Edem smiled at her. It looked painful. "It's just beginning."

"Did you see this?" Elowyn snapped. "Did you see him dead in the future?"

"I know it the moment it happened. Not a second sooner."

Elowyn stared out into the blinding water. It made her eyes burn. She felt world-weary.

"I want nothing to do with your prophecy," she said.

Edem turned to her and took her face in his hands and pressed his lined forehead into hers. She smelled his familiar smell, ink and vanilla and tobacco. "Don't give up your old self," he said. "Not now. We need you."

Long after he had gone Elowyn stood still on the bank. A wave propelled by the day's hard wind rolled over her shoes.

The bones out of their graves shall rise, she said in her head.

The mere thought of it gave her the dimmest flame of hope, an energy she had not felt in a week. She turned for home, wondering for a passing moment where Wescott was. She expected to see him climbing out of the bay. That would take time to grow accustomed to. It would take her whole life.

As the humid night deepened in Terradon, the Toasted Monkey was busy with its doors thrown open to the streets. The last of the fisherman trudged home with lanterns bobbing. In the windows of the towering apartments, candlelight appeared one by one and the waning moon was glazed with clouds among the stars. Children slept in their beds. Out of the shadows of the pub came an old man in a purple cloak, his face obscured. On one arm he carried a homing owl.

He released it outside of the castle and the owl flew right through the wall and its inner embankments, swooping above chandeliers and low over polished floors. It reached Edem's room, where Edem slept lightly with his knife in his hand, and onto the bed it deposited the note it clutched in its claws. The paper rustled and remained there to be discovered in the morning.

Find the two remaining medallions. They are discovering your plan to kill their king.

WAR. IS. COMING!

And it was signed,

Brim 

-----------------

Well PRAISE THE LORD THAT'S OVER 

If you're still here I feel sorry for your brain. 

Please get out of here and go read the Book of Secrets if you actually want to read something of mine