Author's Note:

Thanks for sticking with us through Arc Seven of the TLD saga! As you probably all know by now, the end of an arc means a short story! The next one on the docket is sort of a logical successor to Love Letter, my most popular short story to date. It's another Elsa-Odette romance, titled Union. This one will occur after the events of Arc Seven, and it launches next Monday, December 3rd.

I'm pretty excited to share it with you all, so get ready! :)

xxx

Interlude – Odette

Sometimes, I wonder what mother and father would think about all this, were they still alive to see it. Would they be proud of what we've built?

Elsa's diary

The Imperial Palace,

Arendelle

December 19th, 1843

Odette leaned over the recumbent young man from her position seated on the side of his bed. His eyes were closed, his breathing even but shallow. Odette returned the damp cloth to its basin and placed her hand against his forehead, looking inside herself to see the magic. She closed her eyes and breathed out slowly. There was light. A few thin strands of light in the room; one connecting herself and the man, and one more for each of them, leading off into the ground. The bond between them, weak and tenuous. She didn't know this injured soldier. A stronger bond, between herself and the earth. She was young, and healthy. The energy which bound her to the earth was strong. Thin, but not as thin as the bond between them, the one between the man and the earth. He was injured, and without Odette's help, he would probably expire, eventually.

She wasn't in the practice of healing everyone who came through Arendelle's hospitals; for one, there were far too many for Odette to help, and secondly, there were more effective uses of her time. Odette absently remembered words that the Watcher had spoken to her once. Many who have walked your path in ages past have been driven mad dwelling on the lives of those who they could not save. Odette used to feel more guilt about the people who would die while she held the power to save them. But she had come to realize that it was a fool's game, trying to save them all.

This man, however, was something different. Odette reached out with her mind's eye and touched the string binding them together. She used to actually reach out to physically tug at the threads she saw, but as her skill with her powers grew, she found that it wasn't necessary. She still felt the sensation of the world, something vast and great, just beyond the edge of her awareness. She felt the warmness that accompanied the power. Odette took a deep breath, drawing the power into herself. She began to glow, emitting soft little trails of golden light.

In fact, this business with the gossamer strands of light that bound things together was relatively new to her. Odette had healed her mother without really understanding what she was doing since she five or six, and even after spending several years afterwards without using her abilities, she'd been able to call upon the same instincts to save Elsa's life after her battle with Namar Sadden. For some time after that, even, she hadn't seen the truth of the world. She was a blind woman in a room full of exciting things, and she only knew the way to one of them. It wasn't until relatively recently, when she'd Mended Ceristo Siguror's locket and learned the truth about how Hythirion had created wargates, that she'd learned more about her powers.

Hythirion was remarkably helpful, Odette mused to herself as she let the energy flow from herself into the bond that connected her to the soldier. The ancient Mender had, in several of Odette's visions, explained at length the process that she used to access some of her abilities. She explained what it was like to view the Worldsoul, and the bonds that connected all life. Without her explanation, Odette would not have seen the leylines of the world, great and powerful deposits of magic that bound the elements of the earth together.

Odette let out a held breath, golden light streaming from her and flowing across an invisible thread into the fallen man's body.

It's almost as if she knows, somehow, Odette thought to herself. It was almost too helpful, almost as if the ancient Mender was aware that she was leaving behind teachings to her successor. Combined with the way that Hythirion seemed to look at her sometimes, during the visions, gave Odette much to wonder about.

The man's breathing deepened, and the pair of bullet wounds in the man's abdomen began to reknit themselves. Odette tended to think of all the men who served the Unified Empire abroad as soldiers, but really it wasn't exactly appropriate to think of this man as one. He was a spy, an agent of the Empire who until recently had been in sub-Saharan Africa, doing his best to covertly sabotage Everdark's advance there. His eyelids fluttered, and then flickered open. He looked surprised.

For a moment, Odette considered reaching out for his other bond, the one that connected him to the earth. It was suddenly much stronger, now thick and vibrant like her own. Odette knew that this man wasn't a wizard, and part of her wanted to try to awaken him. But she restrained herself.

Ever since she'd learned from Hythirion's indirect commentary that Menders might be able to turn ordinary people into wizards, she'd done her best to try to replicate that in most of the ordinary people that she was with long enough to reach into the aether. Unsurprisingly, it hadn't worked yet. Odette figured that if it was easy, she'd probably have figured out how to do it without being told. She'd tried to bring on another vision with Ceristo's locket, hoping to be lucky enough to end up in one where Hythirion demonstrated or at least explained this power, but in the two nights since she hadn't been able to enter a vision. She and Elsa still didn't know if there was a way to encourage them to come or not.

"Where am I?" The man asked, brow furrowed. Odette stepped away from the bed and turned back around to sit in a chair beside the man's head.

"Back in Arendelle," she said soothingly, reaching to the wall and pulling a cord that would ring a bell and alert the others that he'd awoken. "You had quite the brush with danger there."

The man tried to sit up, and then seemed to get dizzy, and he slumped down again.

"I was shot."

"Twice," Odette agreed. "From what I understand, you must have had quite the return journey."

The man frowned, then gingerly palpated at his abdomen. His eyes widened when he found that his wounds were gone.

"You're her," he said, looking up with wonder. "The one who can heal people. I've heard of you before."

Odette nodded. "I am. Now, Mr. Duvier, we have your family outside. I'm sure you'll be very excited to see them."

The man looked towards the door. "They're here?"

Odette nodded. "Yes, Mr. Duvier. I'm going to step out now. I should mention to you, however, that after you've had some time with your family, some people from the Empire are going to want to speak to you about what you managed to learn in Africa."

The man nodded. "Yeah, okay."

"Have a nice day, Mr. Duvier," Odette said as she excused herself from the chamber.

Elsa stepped away from the wall outside the room and fell into step beside Odette. They turned out of the hallway onto a set of switchback stairs that led them down the side of the hospital building.

"They're back," she said, grinning.

Odette's brain whirled for a moment. "You mean Anna and Hans and Kariena?"

"Yes!" Elsa said, lacing an arm through Odette's. "And what's more, they actually did it! There are still some bureaucratic technicalities to work through, but for all intents and purposes, Great Britain is now part of the Unified Empire. They even sent some administrative people back with Anna and the others."

"That's fantastic!" Odette said, feeling her spirits soar. They'd begun to worry about Anna and Hans and Kariena; they hadn't had an update from them in a fair bit of time, now. But this was really great news. They were doing it. They really were building something cohesive out of all of this.

"Are we going to meet them now?" Odette asked.

"You bet we are," Elsa said. "Oh, uh, how'd that go?"

She gestured behind them, towards the hospital room they'd left behind.

"Well," Odette said. "He healed up fine."

"Did you try it?" Elsa asked.

"No," Odette said, shaking her head. She didn't need to ask what Elsa meant. "I don't even really know how to start trying to awaken magic in someone. I'm sick of disappointing myself."

She'd already spent a good many hours trying to luck her way into this new knack, but reality was often disappointing, and it seemed that it wasn't going to be as easy to do as Odette had hoped. So she'd decided to hold out for new information.

"Have you thought that maybe Hythirion was bluffing?" Elsa asked, stepping up into the coach that would lead them to the train station downtown. It had taken a herculean effort on the part of the Unified Empire's engineers to get Arendelle's railways working again on such short notice, but Elsa had made it a top priority for them. "You know, I was thinking that maybe this is one of those things where ancient peoples ascribed superstitious beliefs to the abilities of their wizards, and maybe Greeks thought Hythirion should be able to turn people into wizards, and so maybe she needed to bluff when people asked her to do it."

Odette leaned back against the plush interior seating. "Well, I have thought about that, yes."

"And?" Elsa raised an eyebrow.

Odette shrugged. "And I have no idea. So I'll keep looking for new clues."

Elsa nodded.

"What do we hope that he knows, anyway?" Odette asked.

"Duvier?" Elsa said. "Well, hopefully, he gives us some good news about how Everdark has encountered surprisingly fierce resistance below the Sahara and it hasn't taken control of the region. Realistically, he's going to tell us that the Cult of Entropy owns the place, now."

Odette bit her lower lip. "Well, I suppose we take the wins with the losses."

Elsa smiled again and reached across the space between them to cup the side of Odette's face with a hand. "Hey. Today is a day to celebrate. No matter what we learn about Africa. Getting through this is the sort of thing we do one step at a time. And we just took a big step forward."

xxx

Odette was surprised by the intensity of her own joy at meeting their weary friends in a ballroom at the palace. She grinned as Elsa pulled Anna into a powerful hug, and she did the same once they were done. After a few minutes of warm greetings, everyone finally sat down.

"I gather that you have good news for us," Elsa said. "It couldn't have come at a better time."

Hans shrugged. "Well, when you have talent like we've got…"

Kariena elbowed him.

"Hey, I was talking about all of us," he said, rubbing at his side.

"Within the month, we should expect England to be on our side. Some of her colonies might not be so easy to bring into the fold. But on the bright side, Peel is immediately opening London to us. As a matter of fact, he and some of the members of Parliament are recommending that we relocate the capital of the empire to London."

Elsa frowned. "What did you say about this?"

Anna shrugged. "I didn't commit to anything. I said that I'd talk it over with my advisors." She glanced up at Elsa. "There would be some advantages to it, Elsa."

Elsa glanced to the side. "Yeah, yeah, I know, we had the same talk when we brought Corona into the empire. Really, any other country that joins us is going to have a less-destroyed capital than Arendelle, except maybe the United States, at this point."

"Actually, New York City isn't the capital of the United States," Hans volunteered. "As far as we know, Everdark's forces are still working their way down the eastern seaboard towards Washington."

Elsa shot a look at him, and he grinned.

"To be fair, Arianna didn't offer," Anna said.

Elsa glanced down at her hands, clasped before herself on the table. "Well, yes…"

Odette watched her thoughtfully. Why did Elsa care so much about staying in Arendelle? After all, it was the people that made it home, right? Otherwise it was just a bunch of cracked buildings and rubble. But maybe not to her, Odette supposed. Elsa had been queen for several years, and Odette knew that she felt a deep kinship with a sort of platonic ideal of Arendelle. She viewed herself as its steward.

"I'm just saying that I think we should consider it," Anna said, voice diplomatic. She, of course, had also picked up on Elsa's behavior.

"Of course," Elsa said, inclining her head. "And it's your decision, anyway."

Anna looked around the table, and then nodded. "Well, I'll be sure to take everyone's input into account regardless."

"How did Egypt go?" Hans said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms.

Elsa glanced up, her frown waxing more worried. "Badly. We managed to discover what Everdark's forces were up to, but too late to stop them. In a monument in the Valley of the Kings, there was an amulet, a lot like the one that I found in my ancestor's tomb."

"And they were after it?" Hans asked.

Elsa nodded. "Once they recovered it, they performed a ritual using a great many sacrifices from the surrounding villages. They managed to bind Everdark's soul to the world."

"They what?" Kariena said.

"Everdark is back," Elsa said, "for the first time since Ashanerat's days. I don't know what it changes, because it hasn't attacked us directly, but we have to assume that it's bad for us."

Odette looked around the table. Anna and Kariena looked shocked. Hans, to his credit, looked pretty much the same as he always did. He scratched at his beard idly.

"Well, now I know why you felt pressed for good news," he said.

Elsa nodded, and for almost a minute nobody spoke.

Eventually, Kariena jumped in with a change to the subject. "So, uh, now that we have some natural downtime, when are you two getting married?"

She indicated towards Odette and Elsa. Odette blushed, and glanced towards Elsa. "Oh, uh, I don't know –"

"Christmas, I was thinking," Elsa said. "It's a big day anyway, and it's soon, and we'd never forget our anniversary."

"That's a stupid day to get married," Hans said.

"Why?" Elsa shot back.

"Yeah, it sounds like you're just trying to get out of buying Odette Christmas presents and anniversary presents. You're just trying to roll it all into one," Kariena said, eyes twinkling mischievously.

Affronted, Elsa said, "I am not! I just… I don't know, I thought it was poetic or something!"

She halfway stood out of her chair, hands on the table. Odette was surprised by how mad they'd made her. Hans laughed and raised his hands.

"We're kidding, we're kidding. Do it whatever day you want. Odds are, we'll all be dead before you get an anniversary anyway."

Elsa slumped back into her chair and sighed, still annoyed at the both of them. "That's a very optimistic way to look at it."

Hans grinned. "Oh, don't mind my pessimism, it's all just an excuse to be a hedonist."

He stood up. "We done here? It looks like we're done here."