Page 85 of An Honored Vow

I held out my arm to Syrra. She held her hair in one hand but looped her other arm through mine. We marched in silence toward the Myram tree where the pyre was waiting. The entireFaelinthhad convened for the ceremony. They stood draped in red like the branches above us, waiting for the closest kin to arrive.

Syrra’s grip on my arm tightened as we approached the pyre. Even though she had been standing guard over her sister’s body for weeks, even though she had seen the wrappings dozens of times, there was nothing to prepare even the strongest Elf for a moment like this.

Thick tears streamed down her cheeks as she beheld her sister for the last time. Her hair was no longer singed and shorn, but frayed out in every direction with thin braids. It wasn’t braided with the living vine that Syrra had painstakingly woven into her hair after her return but with the strands of hair from every person who loved her.

I noticed the braid I had made that morning was overlaid with a thicker one. I looked up trying to find Riven in the crowd of Elverin, but he was not there. He had taken Nikolai at his word and stayed away.

Nikolai and Syrra knelt, each taking one of the strands of Maerhal’s hair that had been left for them at the center of her face. Syrra’s shoulders shook as she braided every last strand of her hair into her sister’s head—as she let Maerhal take everything she had left to grieve.

I handed her a piece of teal fabric from Maerhal’s favorite cloak to tie the braid. Nikolai finished his and gently laid it over his mother’s cheek. Her skin was untarnished, not a blemish or burn to be found. With the ghost of a smile that still clung to her lips, it was like she was asleep and not dead.

The braids along her crown were too numerous to count. Some were so tiny they appeared to be nothing more than a few strands of hair.

Nikolai walked over to Elaran, who was holding a bouquet of Maerhal’s favorite flowers. It was three times the size of the bouquets that Nikolai had left along his mother’s statue. A final gift for her to carry with her to the ancestors, so she should be forever shrouded in the scent of moonflowers. Nikolai placed the stems into her hands with rasping breaths.

My own breaths thinned as I watched him. The tears cutting into his cheeks sliced my own heart. The guilt I had been holding onto for months bubbled up as I remembered Maerhal’s final moments. Calling out to me, thinking I was her son, telling him she loved him and she was scared. I had been so sure in the comfort I gave her, so confident that I would return her home to her son in a chorus of laughter and joy.

But I hadn’t thought to clear her lungs of soot. And she’d died alone on the grass, merely a few feet away from me. She died in pain, the same way she had lived for most of her life. I would carry that mistake with me until it was my body on the pyre.

Nikolai pressed a final kiss to his mother’s forehead and backed away. Syrra pulled something small from her pocket. A doll, stitched and patched beyond recognition. A toy shared between sisters and kept for centuries even after Syrra had thought she was the only one of them left alive.

Now she truly was.

Nikolai sobbed as Syrra tucked the doll under Maerhal’s soft hands. Another token for her to carry to the ancestors until Syrra could join her there.

“May Favrel and Aydar welcome you,” Syrra whispered in Maerhal’s ear. Tears scattered across both their faces as Syrra pressed her last wish against her sister’s brow. She had to trust that her wife and child would greet Maerhal with open arms in the world to come.

Feron stepped forward with Darythir on the other side of the pyre. He cleared his throat and waited until both Nikolai and Syrra nodded. Then I raised my hands and waited for the story ritual to begin.

I had been practicing since Lash’s funeral. I had little of his mastery of fire weaving, but I could create crude images to pair along with Darythir’s story. Her hands waved through the air, slow and rounded as she tried to keep her own tears at bay. Feron’s voice boomed over the crowds as he interpreted her signs.

“The Elves were the first people of this land,” he said, his purple eyes darker than I had ever seen them. “We were not born of prayer like the Fae or of love like the Halflings. We were sculpted by Elverath herself. From her own lands she made us, from the sand on the beaches, and the earth in the mountains, and the clay in the deserts, she made a people of caretakers to watch over the land and help her magic grow.”

I painted the sky with my flames. Large mountains of smoke lured behind fiery figures emerging from the ground itself, sprouting like trees. Sweat covered my brow from the heat and the concentration, but not a tendril of flame flickered.

“Elverath granted us long lives to laugh and sing, to cry and love, but ultimately when the day came that our lives should end, the Elves must return to the earth from which they came so they can sprout again.”

Darythir’s hand lifted from the middle of her belly over her head. Behind her, my tiny seedling grew into a tree that rivaled the height of the Myram.

“The ashes of our loved ones are collected in adiizra. It is the most precious keepsake one can hold, and hold it they shall for one year. A year to grieve the one they have lost while their memory rests along their chest.”

I glanced at Myrrah. Her cheeks were red, and her hand was wrapped around her own sealed pendant that carried Hildegard’s ashes. She had followed tradition and hadn’t taken it off since the day Syrra settled the cord around her neck.

“And now we watch as our beloved is turned back into the earth she’s made from and placed into herdiizrato wait for the world to come.” Darythir dropped her hands, and Feron nodded at Gerarda.

She stepped forward, dressed in the black leather chest piece that Syrra and Nikolai had made for her. Her short hair tied back in an elaborate braid with a piece cut to the scalp just above her ear.

“Ish’kavra diiz’bithir ish’kavra.” Gerarda’s voice boomed from her chest with the power of the sea, flooding the grove with its cadence as the drummers hastened their beat. It was heart-piercing melancholy, but there was a beauty to it too. Just like the Elverin’s ritual for saying goodbye. It was not without pain, but it would always end in hope and new life.

Gerarda’s funeral song came to a close. I faced Nikolai’s and Syrra’s tearstained faces. My fingers were covered in flames, but I wouldn’t light the pyre until they were ready.

Syrra’s back straightened and she gave me one stiff nod. Her dark eyes cast above the pyre, unwilling to watch it light.

I turned to Nikolai; his bottom lip quivered as he shakily nodded his head. I touched my hand to the pyre and stoked the flames until every piece of driftwood was alight.

Nikolai fell to his knees. A ghastly shriek tore through his throat, so painful I was sure his lungs were bleeding. His wails echoed through the city as the flames burned hot and Maerhal was returned to the earth once more.

Vrail knelt and wrapped her arms around Nikolai as he sobbed. I looked over at the shaking pile of limbs they had become and sawRiven standing at the back of the crowd. He was sobbing too, so silently no one else knew to turn around to witness it. But I did. I saw the guilt pouring from his face as he cried. The tall flames reflected in his jade eyes as he watched the mistake he could never fix burn away.

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