Above: The Battle of Austerlitz, 1805.

Emmeline

We buried Josiah and Peggy on the same day Rosina was christened, in the Haywood family plot. None of us thought it strange that we were wearing black to a christening, nor did anyone question the reason why we were commemorating birth and death in the same day. Tom and I knew, standing graveside with our daughter wrapped up snugly in blankets and gently dozing in his arms. I sensed our sons knew, one clinging to my dress and the other to the hem of Tom's coat. It was what life was, losing some you loved but gaining others, and knowing you would all be reunited in the end when it was your time.

"She seems to understand the solemnity of the occasion, at any rate," Tom said as we walked back, the late November wind whipping at us. "I think she gets the discipline from her mother."

"No doubt she gets the impulsiveness from her father." I slid my hand through Tom's elbow, reaching over and giving Rosina's tiny hand a gentle squeeze. She gripped my finger tightly, with surprising strength.

Tom smiled, but said nothing. What more was there, after what we had been through?

We were greeted by Lord Radford and Lady Violet the moment we arrived back home. He was pale, his eyes slightly dulled, and his movements slower. He even had a cane, leaning on it with a white-knuckled grip. Yet he still smiled and shook Tom's hand, and kissed mine like the gentleman he was.

"How has he been?" I asked Lady Violet when the men left us alone, taking Rosina with them. She carried her own newborn child, Ursula, who had entered the world during her father's convalescence.

"His recovery is slow," she said with a sigh. "But the prognosis is good. He should be back to normal by December."

"Having the Essence nearly ripped from you will do that." I thought of our own recovery, which Dr Granby had mentioned would be slow. There was a lingering weakness, so deep within it was easy to ignore most of the time, that I knew was from the strange golden metal. I saw it in Tom sometimes — when he dismounted from Thor and his legs wobbled, or if he tried to hoist one of our children up too quickly and his grip slipped. I felt it in myself as well, sometimes in the middle of something important, and at that point I would have to take a moment to sit down and recollect myself.

"Ray says the captures have stopped," she said after a while, when I'd begun to think we weren't going to speak at all and she was gently stroking Ursula's soft, sparse hair. "Now that their leader's dead, I suppose there's no point."

"He is right." No one but our household knew what had truly happened that night, and for the time being we were willing to let it remain that way. Someday, perhaps, we would disclose the whole story. But all anyone knew right now was that Blanchard was dead and the terror that had gripped us for so long was gone.

"I am glad our children will not have to grow up fearing for their lives," she said, and I felt her grip tighten on my elbow when I listed sideways for a moment. "And it is all thanks to the bravery of people such as you and your husband."

"It is, isn't it?" I let her support me. We never would have been able to do it alone. Had it not been for her, Lord Radford, even all those men at Elemental Advancement and Charles Ashbury, I didn't know where we would be now. Certainly not here.

||

We passed a quiet holiday season, through Christmas, Boxing Day, and the coming of the new year. It was hard to believe that a year ago, Tom and I had been at odds, our collective secrets threatening to break us apart. This time, I was thankful it was not the same. Perhaps it was our desire for some quiet simplicity.

It wasn't until late summer of that year that Arabella Burke finally succeeded in taking her own life. We were out in the garden the day we found out, Rosina dozing on a blanket in the grass while Phil and Eddie play-fenced with twigs. I saw the courier, hurriedly dismounting from his horse and dashing up to Johnny with a sealed letter held aloft. Johnny took it, unfolded it, and the moment he read it his knees gave way. I dropped what I was doing and ran to him, kneeling down by his side to grasp his shoulder. He looked up at me, his expression bereft, and without a word I pulled him into my arms. He wrapped his arms around my middle and buried his face in my chest, his body shaking.

Soon enough, our home became the Burke siblings' home as well. They kept to themselves, Johnny being the man of the family now. The only child, in fact, who needed any real mothering was Jennie, and she quickly assimilated herself into our family. She even treated Rosina as her own sister.

"I wish Bella could have found some happiness," Tom said late one evening, when our sons had fallen asleep on the hearth and our daughter in Jennie's lap. The girl was only five years old, with the same thick dark hair and gentle bearing as her mother, but she seemed much more mature than the one I had carried along the river. There would come a day where we would have to ask what she had witnessed after her mother had first attempted suicide. That, however, was still a long way into the future.

"You always did care for her, didn't you?" I leaned into Tom's side and he slid an arm around me.

"Her husband was the closest I ever came to a friend in the war," he said, with a sigh. "I felt I owed her some comfort, if nothing else. She had no one left to care about her."

"I hope she did get to see him, in the end."

He kissed my forehead and pulled me closer. "So do I."

We spoke no more about it after that. All we could do was raise the children as our own, although I never became as close to them as I did with my own children. It seemed there was a mutual understanding that I would never replace their mother.

Our fourth — and as it turned out, our last — child came to us in October of 1793, another son. For lack of relatives to lend their names, we called him Walter. By then Eddie was a wiry, active six years old and Phil right behind him, at five. Rosina toddled around after them but has never, even now, managed to get any closer to her brothers. They were thick as thieves, the two of them, a bond that I know will never be broken.

Walt was a sweet, timid boy, and I found myself scolding Eddie for making fun of his brother's soft-spoken ways. I learned soon enough that it was the nature of the Water-Elemental he came to be, with none of the sharp tongue or acerbic temperament of Fire. Tom said sometimes that he reminded him of Francis in every way except for his Elemental bent.

As for our only daughter, sandy-haired and grey-eyed like the uncle she would never meet, she appeared to have inherited his mental state as well. Her changes in mood, when they happened, swung from mild-mannered and polite to combative bordering on violent in seconds. They intensified as she grew, and needless to say Tom and I were alarmed and it was everything we could do to keep her from harming herself or her siblings. It pained us to have to take her to London to visit a doctor, specialising in psychiatric disorders, and to discover she should have been committed a long time ago. It breaks my heart, even now, to have had to send our only daughter away, and to have to hide her from the world in an institution.

By the first years of the new century, with war brewing once again in mainland Europe, my sons were coming of age and venturing out on their own. They seemed to have no desire to fight, although from time to time I remembered Johnny Burke teaching them how to fire their "muh-coots." As for Johnny, he followed in his father's footsteps and bought some colours to fight in the Battle of Trafalgar. He rose to the rank of Captain and became a decorated war hero in no time.

On the eve of Eddie's marriage to Georgianna in late 1802, Lord Radford's daughter, the four of us managed to steal a few quiet moments together. Lord Radford was nearly all grey, and so was Lady Violet. Tom had gone grey overnight, after Phil went out riding and was thrown by his horse, rendering him unconscious for three days. I too found myself aging, my hands dotted with age spots and the wrinkles around my eyes deepening every day.

"I say, I was never expecting this turn of events," said Lord Radford, leaning heavily on his cane as he sat. His foot had been crushed by a carriage wheel and pained him all the time now as a result. "Your son and my daughter."

"Don't be ridiculous, Ray, he's been infatuated with her for years," Tom said around his pipe, resembling his father more all the time.

"It is a fine match, at any rate," said Lady Violet, with a smile. "I would not have wanted any other man to marry my daughter."

She was right, of course, as always. Georgianna and Ursula were both growing into beautiful young women, with the fair complexions and sandy golden hair of the Kingsleys and the steady silvery eyes of Air-Elementals. Eddie, for his part, had had all the debutantes of Society throwing themselves at him – I suspected it was because of his height and his appearance, from Tom, and his mismatched eyes, from both of us.

"Unless it were Phil," I said with a wink. She'd always preferred him, and insisted he call her Aunt Violet. He was certainly the more desirable of the two, with his gentlemanly manners, his intelligence, and his dishevelled handsomeness. And yet he had his own object of affection, Charles Ashbury's youngest daughter Katrina. She was all he talked about.

"Nonsense," she scoffed. "Edward is an agreeable boy."

"Is he? Just agreeable?" I smiled, thinking of Eddie's expression of scandalised hurt if he ever heard it. He wanted to be reckless and daring like his father. He was itching to fight for his country against France more and more every day, although Tom kept refusing him. I worried that eventually, he would defy us and buy colours without our knowledge. And then we would have to let him go, whether we wanted him to or not.

"Well, what did you expect? The boy tries, but a Captain Haywood he is not."

Tom grinned. "And we would like it to stay that way."

I leaned against him, and he slid his arm around me as he always did. There was nothing in the world that I would exchange for this. We had found each other, neither of us with a family to call our own. But inexplicably, Fate had seen to it that we would find it in one another. I had never understood it and I knew I never would, but it didn't matter anymore. Now that I had it, there was no use pondering it any further. There were too many other things that were far more important to think of.

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That's a wrap, the second time around! And this'll be the third time proceeding through the main trilogy, with the hope that a fourth book will be amended onto it at the end. Hope you'll join me for that, and then I think that'll be the end of the Elemental saga for good. And I hope you'll keep liking and sharing the stories that you enjoy!

Also please note: None of the story drafts on my profile are considered final. They are always subject to change. Thanks for your understanding!