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After everything happens, Emilio stacks rocks.
He remembers reading a story about cairns in one of those books his father never liked him reading. The ones about the gods before they came, the gods of Ma— of her childhood, dancing and cleaving and long-lived bursts of colour. They say priests would build cairns for the fallen after a battle.
He burned the palace down and he didn’t stick around to hear her screams.
He’d disappeared into the woods as soon as he was able, leaving Joseph and Bea far behind with a muttered “back in a bit”. It’s not as if they need him around. Emilio is fairly certain Joseph could be king if he tried, and Bea’s already proven her prowess as general.
He’s growing used to being the spare.
He finds solace in soft running water, in flat stones, in a small pile. They ran far enough away that what’s left of the smoke just clings to his clothes, and they can’t hear the wailing of the sirens.
With each stone he stacks, he leaves behind a memory.
Their first meeting at a high-end store, a red dress, the sudden jolt of charisma and confidence that flowed through him at the sight of the mischievous girl with the red hair.
Their first kiss — she’d been laughing at something he’d said, a gross mispronunciation of some nearby kingdom, and he’d been so sure that if he could bottle that laugh and get drunk on it every night, it would be all he would ever need. He’d looked at her, eyes wide, and asked to kiss her. And she’d said yes.
The day she left for the front lines, fraught with terror and elation, a kiss on each cheek, a jingling bracelet for luck, her hair tied back into a severe braid to keep out of her face.
The day she came back, the feeling of his feet slapping bare earth and his arms full of her after so long hanging loose. The medals fixed to her shoulder and the fear with which her soldiers called her General Novikov.
Their wedding day — unasked for, unwanted, unintelligible nonsense. And yet his breath caught all the same at the sight of her, wrapped in silk and crowned in a veil which she had ripped off the moment she reached him.
The coronation, her shaking hands as she grasped the sceptre and the orb, her fevered glance to where he stood at her right. The sudden straightening of her back as the heavy weight of the crown was placed upon her head. The ferocity with which she corrected the priest as he crowned her queen — “King”, she’d said. “I am no queen.”
Every moment after, for months. Court proceedings, the long hall lined with windows, the thick velvet carpet running the length of the floor which Emilio remembers running barefoot on as a little boy. The ambassadors from visiting kingdoms she didn’t want to see, every moment she looked over her shoulder to where he stood, steadfast and kind, the perfect consort.
He catalogues each one and the tiny towers grow.
It’s been hours by the time he thinks he can stop. There’s one stone left, a smooth, unblemished piece of grey rock. He places it on the last cairn and with it, he leaves his last perfect memory, preserved in amber, unchanging and wonderful. Emilio Lavenz and Max Novikov, sharing space. She’s sitting on their bed, watching him with warmth in her eyes and not a trace of gold on her brow. She’s braiding her hair and he loves her desperately. They have no idea what is coming, and they believe the night will go on forever.
He leaves it beside the creek with everything else.