“Fine,” I said, mostly because my head was beginning to throb from all the objects I’d moved. That last tree had been hard to get going. I sat down next to her, and a bit of dirt billowed up from the couch. “This is never going to be clean.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Willa said. “We’ll get this place picked up, and then we can send out our maids to help them clean or something. We’ll get it all taken care of.”
“I hope so.”
“But Wendy, how was your wedding night?” Willa asked.
“You really wanna talk about this?” I groaned and leaned my head on the back of the couch.
“Right now, there’s nothing else I’d like to talk to about.”
“You’re in for a real disappointment,” I said. “Because there’s nothing to tell.”
“It was that bland?” she asked.
“No, it was nothing,” I said. “And I mean literally nothing. We didn’t do anything.”
“Wait.” She leaned back on the couch, as if to look at me better. “You mean that you’re married and still a virgin?”
“That is what I mean.”
“Wendy!” Willa gasped.
“What? Our marriage is weird. Really weird. You know that.”
“I know.” She looked disappointed. “I was hoping you could have a happily ever after is all.”
“Well, it’s not ever after yet,” I pointed out.
“Wendy!” Matt yelled from outside the house. “I need your help with something!”
“Duty calls.” I stood up.
“That was barely even a minute,” Willa said. “You do need to take a break, Wendy. You’re running yourself ragged.”
“I’m fine,” I said as I walked out of the house. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
We worked well into the night. We ended up getting most of the big debris cleared out and piled up. I might have pressed on to do more work for the night, but it was clear that everybody else couldn’t.
“I think we need to call it a night, Wendy,” Loki said. He rested his arms on an overturned refrigerator, leaning on it.
Matt and Willa were sitting on a log next to the pile, and Tove stood next to them, drinking a bottle of water. Only Duncan still helped me as we struggled to pull a shredded mattress from a tracker house. I had to stop using my powers, because it killed my head every time I did.
Only three streetlights in the entire town still worked, and Matt, Willa, Tove, and Loki had taken their break by one. They’d stopped working about fifteen minutes ago, but I insisted that I keep going, even though I was exhausted, and my head felt strange.
“Wendy, come on,” Matt said. “You’ve done as much as you can do.”
“There’s more stuff to do, so clearly I haven’t,” I said.
“Duncan needs a break,” Willa said. “Let’s quit. We can do more tomorrow.”
“I’m fine,” Duncan panted, but I stopped pulling on the mattress long enough to look up at him. He was filthy and haggard. I’d actually never seen him look so terrible.
“Fine. We’re done for the night,” I relented.
We walked back over and sat down on the log next to Matt and Willa. She had a small cooler of water and handed a bottle to each of us. I opened it and drank it greedily. Tove paced in front of us, fidgeting with his bottle cap, and I don’t know how he had the energy to walk that much.
“We’re getting this cleaned up, and that’s good,” Matt said. “But we’re not doing anything to rebuild. We’re not even qualified.”
“I know,” I nodded. “We’ll have to send another team down that can rebuild and do more specialized cleaning. After we get back to F?rening, we’ll really have to get people down here.”
“I could work on some blueprints, if you want,” Matt offered. “I can design stuff that’s quick and easy to build but doesn’t look cheap.”
“Yeah, that would be really fantastic,” I said. “It’d be a great step in the right direction.”
Matt was an architect, or at least he would’ve been if I hadn’t dragged him to F?rening with me. I’m not entirely sure how he spent his days at the palace, but it would be good for him to work on something. Not to mention that it would be good for Oslinna.
“The good news is that the damage seems to support what Kenna was saying,” Loki said. He stopped leaning on the fridge and walked over to sit next to me.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The hobgoblins aren’t vicious or mean, not really,” Loki said. “They’re destructive and irritating, sure, but I’ve never known them to kill anybody.”
“They have now.” Willa gestured to the mess around us.
“I didn’t think murder was their ultimate goal, though,” Loki said. “They were trying to destroy the town. And even when they fought with that team the other night, they didn’t kill most of them.”
“How does that help anything?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Loki shrugged. “But I think they aren’t as hard to defeat as we once thought. They’re not fighters.”
“I’m sure that will be real comforting to all the dead people here,” Tove said.
“Alright.” Willa stood up. “That’s enough for me. I’m ready to go inside and get cleaned up and get some sleep. What about you guys?”