Chapter 2

Owen Mallory narrates that he was born nearly a millennium after Una Everlasting’s death. At nine, ashamed of his father being called a coward, he flees to the last remnant of the Queen’s Wood and, beneath an ancient yew, finds a children’s retelling of Una’s legend. The story’s image of Una’s death transforms him, turning shame into resolve “For Dominion,” and linking his longing for purpose to her example.

At twenty-three, during a losing war, Owen feels accused by the public’s gaze and his exemptions. A recruiting poster of Una—valiant, haloed, demanding—compels him to enlist. Three weeks later he is at the front. Though terrified and scorned by comrades, he proves a preternaturally accurate shot, becoming a begrudged talisman within his battalion under Colonel Drayton.

Campaigning across the Hinterlands, Owen witnesses silent, hostile towns and wrestles with his heritage. At the southern coast, pressed for a decisive victory, the unit assaults dug-in defenders. Hours later Owen is found with his throat half cut; Drayton lies dead beside him. In fever, Owen dreams Una speaking his name and pleading “Please,” and he answers “Always,” the first word he utters in recovery.

After discharge, Owen returns to Queenswald to seek meaning where it began, only to find the grove razed and the yew gone, the site ringed with small white “dragonscales,” also called ulla flowers. He mails Cantford to resume study. Professor Gilda Sawbridge challenges his patriotic rationale; beneath it lies his private devotion to Una. She grudgingly accepts him, and he begins an obsessive hunt through archives, ruins, and texts.

Years pass as Owen’s scholarship remains derivative and his fellowship prospects dim. Just as doubts and talk of leave rise around him, a parcel arrives: the impossible manuscript—The Death of Una Everlasting—promising the first firsthand account and saving him, he says, for the fourth time.