Page 86 of An Honored Vow

Dark circles hung under his eyes. I doubted he had slept an hour since the funeral was announced. I wanted to cross through the crowd and wipe his tears away, but I knew he wouldn’t let me. He would never stop trying to atone for the lives his lies had cost, and that started with making sure I was there to comfort our friends while he could not be.

I stood tall and gave him a small nod as we cried looking at each other, separated by mountains of grief and guilt. I only hoped we wouldn’t be lost in a landslide before Riven managed his way through it.

He turned and walked away as if he could hear my prayer and couldn’t bear to tell me that today would not be that day.

The entire city watched until the pyre had burned through. Feron brought a leather-bound box and placed it on a root next to Syrra. She wiped her face and opened it to reveal a small golden pouch with a metal shovel and brush. The gold chain hung from the bottom as she passed it to Nikolai. Then she brushed her sister’s ashes into the basin of the shovel and poured her remnants into the pouch.

Gerarda grabbed her blade from the fire I had left burning at the edge of the pyre and sealed the top of the pouch with the red-hot steel. It melted together, taking the shape of a closed bloom waiting for the suns to shine on it.

Feron took hold of the chain and lifted it up. His hand hung in the air, stuck between Syrra and Nikolai, unsure who should hold it for the year to come.

Sister or son.

I bit my cheek. “Can’t we make two of them?”

“No.” Syrra shook her head. “She must be whole for her tree to bloom.” The strong Elf turned to her nephew and placed a heavy hand on his shoulder. “She was your mother. It is only right that you hold her safe, Miiran.”

Nikolai pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. He looked up at Syrra and Feron, like a lost, little boy who didn’t know what to do. “I knew her for only a few short months,” he said when his airway cleared enough. “You knew her all her life. It should be you who carries her. As you always have.”

Syrra’s mouth dipped but she nodded. Too touched to speak.

Nikolai nodded at Feron to place the gold chain around Syrra’s neck. Feron held up thediizraand Syrra bowed her head, but Nikolai rubbed his brow. “No,” he shouted, standing up from the ground. “This isn’t right.” Nikolai snatched thediizrafrom Feron’s grasp and ran out of the grove.

He didn’t turn back as we shouted after him. Nikolai kept moving through the groves, shouldering past worried onlookers, toward the field where his son’s tree stood over his mother’s statue.

Feron called a root from the ground and had it hoist himself into the air, using his magic to keep up with all of us.

Nikolai didn’t halt until he reached the statue. The place he had marked as the new grove of his kin. It was where he would be buried and where his mother was always meant to be.

He dropped to his knees and started to dig. Syrra grabbed his shoulder, but he shook her off, thediizrasitting safely under the stone carving of Maerhal and her toddler-aged son.

“This is not right, Miiran,” Syrra pleaded. “We are meant to wait a year to grieve before we give her back to the ancestors.”

Nikolai scowled. “I have grieved my entire life for my mother. Seven hundred years of mourning is more than enough.” Nikolai wiped his nose on his sleeve. “She spent seventy decades—seven Mortal lifetimes—in darkness. I will not have her wait one more day for peace. I do not need it, and I will not bear it.”

Nikolai’s eyes were red as he turned back to his aunt in utter desperation. Syrra ran her hand along her shorn head and nodded.

Nikolai turned to Feron, who had placed himself on the ground, though the root still hovered beside him. “Are you going to deny my mother her rest?”

Feron stood perfectly still. His pulse flared along his temple, visible from where he had cut off one of his twists to braid into Maerhal’s hair.

“Will you?” Nikolai pressed, his rage bubbling over as he threw a handful of dirt at Feron’s boots.

“No,” Feron answered hoarsely. “I will not.”

Nikolai dug the hole with his bare hands, finally getting deep enough to place thediizraat the bottom of it.

Feron lifted his hand and the earth fell back on the gold pouch. The grass sprouted through the dark earth as if Nikolai had never clawed into it at all.

“What are you doing?” I asked Feron quietly.

He nodded at the grave. “It has always been the responsibility of an earth wielder to bring our dead back to life. The magic is what causes thediizrato bloom and grow.”

I bit my lip. Maerhal had saved me as a young girl, kept my mind strong when all I wanted was to succumb to the darkness. I hadn’t been able to save her in the end, but this I could do.

“Can I?” I asked, to Feron or the others I didn’t know. I wasn’t familiar enough with our people’s customs to know whose decision this was.

Syrra turned to me and nodded. “It would be an honor for my sister to be blessed into the next life by aniinokwenar.”

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