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Epilogue
Firian knew he was born in the last cold stretch before spring, so that meant he had just turned twenty-three. When he had first come to the Academy, they told him he would have to work until he was twenty-four before he became a Tanyuin Master. Even with his exile, he beat their estimate.
It had been almost three and a half years—eighteen missions—since he received his judgment.
Everyone called it the Autumn War now. He’d heard his sister and her husband call it that more than once. Giving the battle a name made it sound like it should be written down in the Scroll. But his memory of the pain and cold and death couldn’t congeal into a simple fact to be memorized. It was the life in his veins, more wholesome than the pure fiery liquor of the Tanyuin Academy. He belonged now
