I just want you to take a good look at the 'To' and 'From' there. I know you've gotten used to ignoring it but, please, just for me?

To Anders.

From Vald.

There is hope we will find some use for you yet. Everyone here had been thinking of swords not prayerbooks and human kindness. The Blackfeet have been sent. I think, though I couldn't swear to it, that I saw your father looking proud.

As to the other, you said that I am the sea, not like or similar as my family are, that I am, and it is one of the truths of my life that when you use words they mean something – they create worlds out of nothings. So I went to the sea and called on the sea witch. She reminds me of the girl, very big eyes. I asked her what spell had been placed on the girl. She said merfolk lack an immortal soul, and that is what the girl wanted, so the witch gave her a chance to find a man who would love her so dearly that when they were joined in marriage a part of his soul would slip into her. The witch laughed then, a disgusting, wet sound. Mermaids can live for centuries but she isn't a mermaid anymore, not with those legs, she said so herself, and her body is wasting away for want of a soul.

With that forewarning, it almost made sense when I woke up too early this morning with the girl standing over my bed, knife in hand, under the erroneous impression that you do not love her. (That was not a little bit unkind, if you don't mind me saying.) Did you think I would not see through you, brother? If you loved her less, you wouldn't have spent so much time, energy, and eloquence not telling me you loved her. Who has ever stood on her own two feet when you were trying so hard to sweep her off them? Who has ever understood you to your heart? Who has ever turned you so completely upside down in frustration but me? Brother, who but me?

It was only later we found the letter you had planted on her. Quite sweet when you put your mind to it, aren't you? But still she had a shadow of a doubt in her eyes. Because you see, the witch of the sea told her that she could only share a soul with someone who loves her perfectly, above all, even his country – and you sent her away, you heartless bastard.

I told her that we, the people who love you and whom you love, we take it on faith. We trust that you love us before anything else, we live in the certainty of that and do not ever ask you to choose. To choose between us and the thousands of people who face war in the spring after the hardest of winters. We never, ever ask you to tear your heart in two. We can disagree all we like with your decisions – like this frankly ass-about-backwards, stupid one about marrying us off – it is the only way you will learn to shed the weight of the world from your shoulders, but we do not ever ask you to choose.

And sometimes we have to make the decisions for you.

Stop being an idiot and come home; I miss your stupid face and Delfin is waiting for you. At some point in your mystical wandering you received a very aggrandised idea of yourself, and somehow got it turned about in your head who is the prince and who is the useless youngest son of a lensgreve. Who is called to make sacrifices for the good of his country and who should stop making everything his sole responsibility. The original choice you set before me, if you'll let me remind you (not that I'd for a moment assume you had forgotten something), was between a fragile flower or my own cousin.

I choose my cousin, brother.

You can thank me later.

The end.

That's it. A year and a half ago, I wrote those words, and now you've read them so it's finished.

Captain, thank you for loving Anders more than anyone; he's ever and always yours.

(Postscript. Vald's not kidding about the original choice Anders set before him – go back and read the very first paragraph.)