Page 18 of An Honored Vow

“I’ll go fetch something for her.” I squinted at Fyrel’s shoulder and stooped. I pulled the long piece of ribbon that Gwyn used to tieback her curls from the edge of her leathers. “I think this is yours.” I passed it to Gwyn.

She smirked. “I was just looking for that,” she said too sweetly.

Fyrel looked like she was about to vomit.

I headed to the stairs and heard Fyrel slide to the ground at the bottom of the trunk. “I told you it didn’t fall out in the wind. We need to be more careful.”

Gwyn’s singsong laugh followed me all the way down the stairs.

I found Syrra in the lowest levels of Myrelinth. Only one tunnel led to the crypts. We were far into the Dark Wood, underneath layers of rock that pulsed with turquoise and silver light through its veins.

Stone petals bloomed along the cracks, filling the circular chamber with the fresh scent of river water and honey. With closed eyes, I could imagine that I was outside along the lake and not deep into the earth where it was cool enough to keep bodies before funeral rites were performed.

She had become a statue guarding her sister until then. In the dim light, the scars along her arms looked more like moss, dark and shadowed lichen that grew on stone standing still too long.

A haunted expression was carved forevermore on her face. I’d watched a part of her die the day I brought her sister home in my arms, only weeks after her miraculous return. Since then, the living part of Syrra had slowly begun to fade. Perhaps she truly was a tombstone and not a statue at all.

“The mission was a success,” I said in way of a greeting. Even though Syrra’s face did not move, I knew she’d heard me approach. “We saved a few dozen Halflings before awaateyshircame to Silstra. Well, we saved all but one.”

I glanced around the room. Had the beast not turned Victoria’s body to ash, I would have given her an Elvish funeral. She had certainly helped enough of us to deserve one.

But life so rarely gave justice to the deserving.

A blink was the only sign that Syrra had heard me. Her hands stayed tucked behind her back, and her eyes were locked on the wrapped linen that covered Maerhal’s body. The Elverin had ways of preserving the body, but the longer Syrra waited, the longer Maerhal had to wait to be returned to the earth to join her ancestors.

Feron had wanted to light her pyre alongside Lash’s, but Syrra had refused. She would not allow her sister to be buried without her son. It wasn’t what Nikolai would have wanted. It was he who would wear herdiizraand no one else.

My stomach clenched. I wasn’t sure Nikolai was capable of wanting anything at all. I was certain he was alive, but that didn’t give me any comfort. Damien was too cruel to those in his keep. He had more than one way to make a person wish for death and nothing else.

I fought the urge to run out of the room and fly from city to city until I could feel Nikolai under my feet, but that would be playing directly into Damien’s hand. He wanted us fractured; he wanted our focus on our friend instead of our rebellion. He wanted us in a desperate frenzy, but I refused to play his game any longer.

I had trained my entire life for this. Balancing the hardest decisions, choosing between two false choices even though both ripped at my soul. Nikolai just needed to survive long enough for us to have a solid plan of attack.

I owed him that. I would keep my head even as the others lost theirs.

But it would be easier to do it with Syrra in fighting form.

“Feron told me about the Elvish warriors of old.” I took a step closer to the stone slab Syrra guarded. “The first ones to fight thewaateyshirak. The ones who startedNiikir’nabefore the palace ever stood on the island.”

Syrra’s neck tensed but she still didn’t speak.

“We need warriors like that again.” I stood at the edge of the slab, turning myself so Syrra had no choice but to look at me. “We need you.”

Her full lips were set into a frown I thought might be permanently etched into her face. Even her eyes seemed to droop at the corners. She was no longer an Elf, no longer a person, just a shell—and her shell was beginning to collapse.

Tears pooled at the corners of my eyes. She had been there when my sorrows lashed at me and wouldn’t let go. She had found me, drowning in my guilt, and reached out her hand until I could breathe on my own again.

I tapped the backs of my fingers along the edge of the slab. It was my turn to find a way to reach her. But how did one make a statue breathe with hope?

“Syrra,” I whispered, my desperation echoing against the stone walls. “You have waited long enough. There are so many who are still …”

That last word caught in my throat.

Syrra’s head turned, curving toward me like the owls she found so frightening. “Alive?”

I nodded. “A warrior protects the living; she doesn’t haunt the dead.”

“She is not truly dead until her pyre is lit.” Syrra’s neck flexed. “Until then, my sister rests in the in-between.” Her lip trembled.

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