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When Aretia was sacked and burned, everyone fled to the beaches.
There had been nowhere else to run. The dragons scorched the surrounding forests, barring access from the city into the lush foothills and then the rugged ranges beyond that. The harbour heaved with navy ships bearing battalions of Navarrian infantry and artillery, ejecting their contents into the ports. Tyrrish cobblestone could withstand their summer wildfires and their winter ice-blizzards, it seemed, but it couldn’t hold up against the ungodly inferno of targeted dragon fire, as residential and commercial dwellings alike were razed to molten puddles on the earth. In frenzied droves, the Aretians evacuated to the narrow coves and beaches, striding out into the tide until they were up to their necks, trying to evade the blades of the enemy and the blaze of their beasts.
The only blessing was the fact that it was early summer, so the waves weren’t capped with ice as they were prone to do in the glacial stretches of the Tyrrish winters, and they didn’t freeze to death as they watched their city burn to the ground.
The last time Xaden had stood on this particular beach, he’d known that the Apostasy had failed, even if he couldn’t then predict the full extent of the horror and tragedy still to come. He’d paced the wet sand with his back to the ocean, putting himself between the enemy and the people that he’d herded here from Riorson House — the staff and their families, the wounded rebels who’d been recovering in the barracks’ infirmary, the other kids of Apostasy officers who’d been sent to Fen Riorson’s residence in their parents’ absence, whoever else he’d swept up along the way. He’d brought no worldly possessions, only the clothes on his back and the twin swords that had been a gift from his father on his seventeenth birthday. A flock of Apostasy kids followed him on the sand, also armed hastily, kids whose accountability would be shortly carved into the skin of his back.
Zihnal’s Cove, they’d called that beach before Aretia burned.
Riorson’s Last Stand, the locals call it now.
It’s been eighteen years since that night, and yet this is the first time that Xaden finds himself back on these sands.
This time, there is no screaming, no tears, no utterances to unhearing gods. The gleaming city in the distance stands tall and proud, prosperous, thriving with language and culture that hasn’t been permitted in six hundred years. There are dragons present, but they have no interest in burning down cities or incinerating hundreds of men and women before their terrified children; Andarna is boisterously investigating the rock pools at the end of the cove, as much as her commanding size will allow, whilst Tairn and Sgaeyl soak out in the deeper water, trying to evade the afternoon’s heat.
Aretians are children of salt and stone, born in the cradle where the mountains reach to the sea. It’s not uncommon for many children to learn their first laps in the seawater at the same age they can take their first steps. Xaden can’t recall the memory himself, of course, but he knows that he could paddle in the shallows of a beach before his first birthday, from his father’s fond recollections and his aunt’s charcoal sketches tucked away safely in yellowed drawing pads.
His own children are no different; he and Violet make a sort of pilgrimage out of it, once the babe is crawling and the weather is reasonable enough to justify bringing an infant into the water. He’s done this twice before, but he avoided Zihnal’s Cove on both occasions; they were in Braevick for a diplomatic summit when they first taught Aisling how to swim, and one of the few beaches without rock pools when they brought the twins, not trusting them to avoid any trouble. Violet knows about the significance of this particular beach, has never pushed when he and Bodhi and the other Apostasy kids who once stood here, now avoid coming to the cove like it’s a house overflowing with plague.
Xaden had suggested it the evening before, when they’d planned to bring their youngest for her first swimming lesson. Kiiva is eight months old: huge owlish eyes, wild masses of dark curls, just like her older siblings, skin gleaming like honey in the light of the afternoon sun. Kiiva’s a sweet little thing; quiet, far too curious for her own good, and could rival her older brothers on the days when she does decide to get herself into trouble. As much as he’s looking forward to her first steps, Xaden’s also dreading the day she’s physically capable of getting herself into every last nook and cranny of Riorson House. She’s currently perched up on Xaden’s shoulders as he carefully makes the ascent into the cove from the terrain that transitions into the Cliffs of Dralor further up the coastline, his shadows coiling around her legs and back so that her weight doesn’t tip, her pudgy little hands digging tight into his hair.
Uninterrupted afternoons are rare for Tyrrendor’s royal family; often he or Violet are called across the kingdom or even beyond their borders, if not quickly weighed down with the standard administration and running of their people. The work is endless no matter how many tasks they delegate, but if there’s one principle about their authority, it’s the fact that they won’t sit back on their asses like other monarchs, getting fatter and stupider whilst everyone else runs around like headless chickens. In other words, they won’t be like the fucking Tauri dynasty, thank you very much. They’ve never been a family set on ceremony, but it’s common enough for everyone to be wearing armour or leathers or other practical finery indicative of their station. This evening is an exception.
They finally make it down to the soft, pale grey silt of the beach; Xaden’s breath catches in his throat and suddenly he has difficulty breathing, despite the easy navigation of the land and Kiiva’s light weight settled firmly on his shoulders. He closes his eyes, and the night that Aretia burned is all he can see; he can still smell the smoke of dragon fire, the echo of his people’s terrified sobs and cries. His lips twitch with the memory of prayers to gods that never bothered intervening —
“Last one to the water is scale rot!”
It’s one of his boys, of course; Liam and Connan are twins, four years old next week, and every ounce of trouble that their gene pool implies, which isn’t helped when they’re already enormous for their age. Out of the Riorson siblings, the twins are the only ones to be named specifically after other people; Liam’s namesake is self explanatory enough, but Connan’s similarly honoured, having received his paternal grandfather’s middle name.
At the outcry, the three oldest Riorson children charge from their parents’ range, eagerly towards the ocean. Aisling quickly takes the lead, taller and longer-legged, dark curls flying behind her like a flag, the boys hot on her heels. She’s only nine, but well on track to grow taller than her mother in the next few years, and already far wiser than her years. For Xaden, no matter how clever she is or how tall she becomes, she’ll always be his baby girl; he’ll never forget the absurd joy and terror of holding his newborn so soon after the war, when he never expected to live long enough to experience either.
”Do you want to take Kiiva or should I?” Violet nudges against his side; it’s been thirteen years but his wife never fails to take his breath away, just as she had on that very first encounter on the Parapet. Her hair is out, she’s donned simply in a white shift dress, and she looks like a goddess in the blaze of the setting sun, one that he would rebuild Aretia for, just to prioritise a central temple in her dedication.
Xaden stares hard at the waves slapping rhymically against the bank. “I’ll do it,” he decides quietly, kicking out of his soft shoes, managing to shuck out of his tunic without disturbing Kiiva, before hoisting his youngest down from his shoulders and propping her on his hip. It always feels odd, to leave the House without boots on his feet, weapons loaded on his back. He keeps the dagger sheathed at his thigh and checks in on Kiiva. “Ready to go, sweetheart?”
“Yuh!” Kiiva bounces in his embrace, already grinning wide with anticipation.
Smiling, despite his mood and the barrage of flashbacks still assaulting the back of his eyelids, Xaden makes his way down to the sea, wading out until he’s up to his waist, Violet following suit to stand opposite him. The water is cooler than he anticipated; Kiiva squawks indignantly at the temperature as he carefully lowers her into it, her chubby legs kicking.
“I know,” he assures gently. “Stay calm for me. Just get used to it.”
Kiiva continues to babble, more panickedly than he’d like for her first lesson, so he pulls her closer to his chest so that the body heat will warm her.
Summon your eldest, Sgaeyl inputs.
It’s not a half-bad suggestion, considering that Kiiva worships her older sister like you wouldn’t believe. He tilts his head towards the shallows, where Aisling’s spectating a wrestling match that has already broken out between the boys. “Ais, can you swim out here?”
Aisling nods, striding out confidently into the water before dropping forward into a strong paddle, clinging to Violet once she’s reached them. She’s truly the best of himself and his wife. “What do you need, Dad?”
”Just stay out here with Kii,” Violet soothes. “Your technique looks wonderful.”
”Not wonderful enough ,” Aisling grumbles, competitive as ever. “Uncle Garrick is still a faster swimmer than me.”
”Uncle Garrick is four times your size, poppet,” Xaden reminds her, using Aisling’s presence as a distraction to slowly lower Kiiva into the water, still stabilising her close to his chest. Her kicking legs pump furiously through the water, but her hazel eyes are locked onto his so trustingly that it simultaneously melts and shatters his fucking heart; he’s immediately vaulted to eight months prior, when he’d held his daughter for the first time after Vi had nursed her, and she’d opened her eyes, met his gaze steadily.
The lesson goes well, all things considered, before the sun sinks too low and the water is far too cold to justify keeping Kiiva in it. Xaden and Violet retreat back to the sand, still warmed by sun, where Andarna’s slunk back from the rock pools to say hello to the children. Out of their dragons, she’s easily the most tolerant; Tairn will begrudgingly allow the kids to ride him if they’re strapped in with Vi, and Sgaeyl’s marginally more friendly than he is, but Andarna’s always been the one to allow the children to crawl all over her, using her as their own personal playground.
They busy themselves with settling down back by their belongings, focusing on warming Kiiva up, drying her off before quickly bundling her in one of his furs. She’s perfectly fine, but like the rest of the Riorsons, Kiiva will soon have too much energy to possibly sit still long enough to cuddle into his chest exactly as she does now.
On the very same sand that he’d once paced, dreading his country’s fate, Xaden now gets to sit with his wife, cradling their youngest daughter in his lap. Their older children play in the same waves where terrified Aretians had once hid from the invaders, their laughter and bickering carried by the wind, lobbing chunks of seaweed at one another and improvising sword fights with spare driftwood.
It’s picturesque, almost too good to be true.
Often Xaden will open his eyes, convinced it was all a wonderful dream and he’ll awake to the cold reality of his life, some indiscernible period in the dark years between his father’s execution and the fall of the venin — only to be relieved by Violet’s sleepy smile or the patter of small feet or an indignant shriek in the dialect he was never permitted to use himself as a boy, outside of closed doors.
It’s a hallucination he killed for; it’s a life his father died for.