He took her hand and kissed it. “We will build it in the new land. It will look the same. Someday, our Family will return and claim it once more. We will rebuild it, Lia. We will rebuild them all.”
She squeezed his hand. “Make it thus so,” she whispered.
Epilogue
My dearest daughter. This tome is my only opportunity to speak to you with my own voice. If all has happened as I have foreseen, you are on a ship bound to a new land. I provided instructions that this portion should not be read to you, but that you must learn to read it yourself as you have always longed to be able to do. I have watched you from afar, from the very shores of Idumea. It is there that your mother and I await your return. You have been tasked to open the gates that bind the worlds together and you have set in motion the destruction of the hetaera. You have been faithful, obedient, and courageous. I am so proud of you.
In this tome, you will learn about your future and the future of our Family. Your work is not yet done. You and your husband and your children and their wives and husbands will be kings and queens in the new land. I have left you my tome to aid you that you may rule in wisdom and humility. When I sent you to Muirwood, I trusted you would learn the pains and feelings of common people. Their tears and pains and sorrows weigh more on the Medium than the whims and greed and beauty of the rich and the powerful.
I have seen deeply into the future, my darling girl. Our Family will play a great role in events to come. Your writings and wisdom will be added to this tome, helping save generations yet unborn. In the future I have seen your posterity will chain and shackle Ereshkigal for all time and bind her in prison under irrevocare sigil. She knows this is her destiny, which is why she has persecuted our Family. Teach your children to be strong for she will always seek to subvert them. Some will fall under her sway.
Cold aurichalcum and shavings is a poor medium in which to express a father’s love. Clasp this tome in your hands, my child, and think of me. Through the true Medium, you will feel my love for you, stronger than death and deeper than the depths of Sheol. We await you, beloved daughter. We offered up our lives that you might live and fulfill and begin the destiny of our Family.
Your servant,
Alluwyn Lleu-Iselin
Father