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Tor stared at her fiercely "You should be queen We both know it You brought the Crown back; you’ve won the right to wear it so They can’t doubt you now Arlbeth would agree You won the war for theivestubborn"

"Tor - calet the Northerners off our doorstep It doesn’t really " Tor shook his head Aerin smiled sadly "It’s true"

"It shouldn’t be"

Aerin shrugged "I thought you invited ry to want to stand around and argue"

"Marry me," said Tor "Then you’ll be queen" Aerin looked up, startled at the suddenness of it "I mean, I’ll marry you as queen, none of this Honored Wife nonsense Please I - I need you" He looked at her and bit his lip "You can’t mean that you didn’t know that I would ask I’ve known for years Arlbeth knew, too He hoped for it

"It’s the easy way out, I know," he said, hope and hurt both in his eyes "I would have asked you even if you hadn’t brought the Crown back - believe on, if you broke all the dishes in the castle If you were the daughter of a farmer I’ve loved you - I’ve loved you, to know it, since your eighteenth birthday, but I think I’ve loved you all my life I will marry no one if you’ll not have me"

Aerin sed hard "Yes, of course," she said, and found she couldn’t say anything else It had not been only her dooht her back to the City, and to Tor, for she loved Daed to nothing and no one else belonged to hio, as she rode to the City to deliver up the Crown into the king’s hands; it was not that she left what she loved to go where she e, was double And so the choice at last was an easy one, for Tor could not wait, and the other part of her - the not quite mortal part, the part that owed no loyalty to her father’s land -years She suish

"Yes-of-course-I’ll-ht her up in his arms to kiss her she didn’t even notice the shrill pain of burst blisters

It was a long story she told him after that, for all that there was ht that Tor probably guessed sos, for he asked her ht not have been able to answer, like what face Agsded had worn, or what her second parting froreat quantity, and their privacy was disturbed only by the occasional soft-footed hafor bearing fresh plates of food; yet somehow by the end of the meal the shadows on the floor, especially those near Aerin’s chair, had grown unusually thick, and some of those shadows had ears and tails

Tor looked thoughtfully at the yerig queen, who looked thoughtfully back at hi must be done for - or with - your army, Aerin"

"I know," Aerin said, e them only bread and milk these last two days, since she says she refuses to have the roo like a butcher’s shop, and fortunately there’s that back stair nobody uses - the way I used to sneak off and see Talat But I never knehy they ca they plan to stay, or - or how to get rid of the into two steady yellow eyes; the folstza king’s tail twitched "Nor, indeed, do I wish to be rid of theh I know they aren’t particularly welcome here I would be lonesome without theht after she had left Luthe, and stopped speaking abruptly; the yellow eyes blinked slowly, and Tor becaoblets She picked hers up and looked into it, and saw not Luthe, but the long years in her father’s house of not being particularly welco the castle with not particularly welconored

"They shall stay here just as long as they wish," Tor said "Da, and," he said dryly, "I don’t think it will hurt anyone to find you and your arrinned

He told then of what had couessed already Nyrlol had rebelled for once and for all soon after she had ridden into Luthe’s es near hione over to him or been razed The division of his army Arlbeth had left to help Nyrlol patrol the Border had been caught in a Northern trap; less than half of their nu Arlbeth had ridden out there in haste, leaving Tor in the City to prepare for what they noas to come; and it had come It had come already, for when Arlbeth met Nyrlol in battle, the man’s face had been stiff with fear, but with the fear of what rode behind him, not what he faced; and when Arlbeth killed him, the fear, in his last moments of life, slid away, and a look of exhausted peace closed his eyes forever

"Arlbeth wasn’t surprised, though," Tor said "We had knoere fighting a lost war since Maur first awoke"

"I didn’t know," said Aerin

"Arlbeth saw no reason that you should," said Tor "We - we both knew you were dying" He sed, and tapped his fingers on the tabletop "I thought you would not likely live to see us fail, so why further shadohat time remained to you?

"When you left I felt hope for the first time That note you leftof the scrap of paper in my hands I took it out often, just to touch it, and always I felt that hope again" He smiled faintly "I infected both Arlbeth and Teka with hope" He paused, sighed, and went on "I even chewed a leaf of surka, and asked to dreareat silver lake, with a tall blondout across the water, and you looked well and strong" He looked up at her "Any price is worth paying to have you here again, and cured of that which would have killed you long since Any priceNeither Arlbeth nor Teka was sure, as I was I knew you would come back"

"I hope at least the Croas a surprise," said Aerin

Tor laughed "The Croas a surprise"

The lifting of Maur’s evil influence was as iuered City as the unexpected final victory in the war; but there was stillArlbeth was buried with quiet state Tor and Aerin stood together at the funeral, as they had been alether since Aerin had ridden across the battlefield to give Tor the Crown; as the two of theether before But the people, now, seeave Aerin the same quiet undemonstrative respect that the first sola had received since the battle; it was as if they did not even differentiate between the two

Everyone still felt rey, and perhaps in the afterhter who for over twenty years past see to worry about; and she was, after all, their Arlbeth’s daughter too, and Arlbeth they sincerely mourned, and they read in her face that she mourned too She stood at Tor’s side while Arlbeth’s final bonfire burned up wildly as the incense and spices were thrown on it, and the tears streaood for her in her people’s eyes than the Crown did, for few of them really understood about the Crown But she wept not only for Arlbeth, but for Tor and for herself, and for their fatal ignorance; the wound that had killed the king had not been so serious a one, had he had any strength left Maur’s weight on the king of the country it oppressed had been the heaviest, and the king had been old

When Tor was proclainty officially bestowed, it was the first ti wore a crown, the Hero’s Crown, for it had been tradition that the kings went bare-headed in th and unity, and had been lost After the ceremony the Croas placed carefully back in the treasure hall

When Aerin and Tor had gone to look for it three days after they hurled Maur’s skull out of the City, they had found it lying on the low vast pedestal where the head had lain They had looked at it, and at each other, and had left it there It was a srey object, and there was no reason to leave it on a low platforh for several horses to stand on; but they did And when the treasure keeper, a courtier with a very high opinion of his own artistic integrity, tried to open the subject of a -place, Aerin protested before the words were all out of his h they had been directed at Tor

Tor simply forbade that the Crown be moved, and that was the end of it; and the treasure keeper, offended, bowed low to each of theht not have wished to be quite so polite to the ohter, for the courtiers were inclined to take a s than the rest of Dahborn Daht fiercely in the last battle against the Northerners (although of course since she’d shown up only on the last day she’d had y left to spend), and the inalterable fact that their new king was planning to lare of her four-legged henchlare But the treasure keeper’s visit had been watched with interest by nine quite large hairy beasts disposed about Aerin’s feet and various corners of the audience chamber