Pippa's POV, one year after Elena gone missing.
"Pippa!"
Dad's voice echoed across the excavation site.
"I've found something! I think you'll want to see this."
I looked up from the trench I had been documenting and hurried toward him, brushing the dirt from my gloves.
It had been a year since Elena and Marcus disappeared.
A year since we had exhausted every missing persons report, every police lead, every impossible theory we could think of. Eventually, we had been forced to tell her parents that there had been an accident, using Dad's and Dr.Madakwe's connections to make it believable.
It was a heartbreaking lie, but a necessary one.
People need something to grieve, something to bury, a closure.
Even if I had never truly believed it myself.
Life, stubbornly, had continued.
I finally finished my doctorate, just as Elena would have nagged me to do.
Dad and I returned to the excavation site in St.Albans, the same site where one of my colleagues had first uncovered Marcus's sword.
Neither of us ever admitted it aloud, but we kept coming back because some irrational part of us still hoped...
...that she left something behind.
Dad was kneeling beside a freshly opened trench beneath the ruins of what had once been an ancient church. And in his hands, rested a small bundle wrapped in brittle, centuries-old oilcoth.
My heart stopped.
"It can't be..." I whispered.
The wrapping had survived remarkably well beneath the soil.
With trembling fingers, I carefully unfolded it only to reveal a single letter.
The paper had yellowed with age, the ink had faded.
But the handwriting...
I would have it recognized it anywhere.
Tears blurred my vision before I had even read the first line.
It was Elena's, my best friend.
Pippa,
First of all, I'm alive.
And I hope that knowledge alone eases even a fraction of grief I know I must have caused you.
I tried to come home. God knows I've tried.
If love alone could carry me back across time, I would have returned to all of you a thousand times over. But I couldn't. I don't know whether I was always meant to stay here, or whether time simply refused to let me leave. What I do know is that this century has become my home in ways I never imagined possible.
Marcus found me. Or perhaps, I found him.
Whichever way history chooses to tell it, we found one another again. We were married beneath Roman tradition, witnessed by the people who have become our family here. He still drives me absolutely made, believing he can solve every problem with stubbornness.
And somehow, I love him even more for it.
There's something else I need you to know.
When I first arrived here, it wasn't Marcus who found me. It was another man, Lord Gwrgenau, Garrick's ancestor. He rescued me, gave me shelter, healed the wound on my head long ebfore either of us knew who I truly was. For that, I owe him a debt I can never fully repay.
History will probably remember him as a rebel. Rome will remember him as an enemy. But I will remember him as something far more complicated. You see, he loved me. But I couldn't return that love the way he deserved, even when I loved him too, in my own way.
Enough to mourn him. Enough that his death still hurts as I write these words.
There is one more thing I need to tell you about. I'm pregnant. I know, trust me, I was just as shocked. Marcus hasn't stopped smiling since we found out. He already speaks to our child as if he/she can hear every word. We're leaving for Rome tomorrow. His Emperor has summoned him home. Whatever awaits us there, we'll face it together.
Please tell Mum and Dad that I never stopped loving them. Missing them. Not for a single day. Tell Mum I still miss her Sunday dinners. Tell Dad that he was right about more things than I'll ever admit. And please, hug them for me. Hold them as tightly as you can, because I will never get that chance again.
As for you, thank you.
For every terrible bottle of wine we shared. For dragging me out of the house when I've been a hermit for far too long. For every ridiculous conversation. For being my sister long before either of us needed to say the word aloud.
Finish living the life we always dreamed about. Laugh enough for the both of us. Fall in love, grow old. Remember me when you drink coffee, because god knows I miss it so terribly. Remember me when you walk through the English countryside, because I suspect I'm walking there too, just two thousand years before you.
And if, by some miracle, we ever meet again, I hope it's over a cup of coffee. Not another archeological disaster.
I love you.
Always,
Elena.
I didn't realize I was crying until a tear splashed onto the paper, smudging the edge of Elena's signature. My hands trembling as I folded the letter carefully, like it was something sacred.
She had survived, really truly survived.
For the first time in a year, the weight I had been carrying loosened ever so slightly.
Behind me, I heard my father clear his throat.
"Pippa."
I turned, finding him standing several feet away, holding a weathered leather folder against his chest. His had expression had changed from excitement to disbelief.
"The package from Rome arrived," he said. "And I don't think that's all she wanted you to find."
Inside were several photographs taken during an excavation, decades ago.
Fragments of carved marble, showing a family mausoleum in Rome, uncovered beneath the foundations of an old church.
My heart skipped, as I flipped through the photographs.
One of them had been enlarged, its Latin inscription had already been translated in neat handwriting beneath it.
I read it once, then again.
Unable to believe what I was seeing.
Here rests Imperator Marcus Valerius Corvus, beloved husband of Elena Corva.
Together they lived forty-three years in faithful marriage.
Parents of five children.
Grandparents of twelve.
May the gods keep them together in death, as they were never parted in life.
My vision blurred.
Forty-three years, five children.
They had done it, beaten all odds and grown old together. They had lived the life she thought had been stolen from her.
A shaky laugh escaped me through my tears.
"Damn you, Elena," I cried, pressing Elena's letter against my chest. "You fucking did it."
The late afternoon sun stretched across the site, warming the ancient stone beneath my feet.
Somewhere beneath these same skies, two thousand years earlier, Elena had once stood with Marcus. She had laughed, cried, loved and lived.
I looked out across the English countryside, the wind rustling through the trees exactly as it always had. Exactly as it always would.
And somehow, it no longer felt like I had lost my best friend.
Only that history had borrowed her for a little while.
The End.