Page 88 of An Honored Vow

Feron nodded. “There is always an after, Keera.”

I just hoped it was happier than this.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-FOUR

MY TEARS HAD DRIEDto salty lines down my cheeks just like the scars that had been cut through Brenna’s eyes. They itched as I made the journey through the portals from Myrelinth to the Order, but I didn’t wipe them away.

The brine of the surrounding sea slapped my face as I stepped out of the lake portal and cut across the field to the north side of the island. My chest ached from losing Maerhal, for Nikolai, for Syrra, for myself. But just as Hildegard’s funeral had brought the Shades together in our grief, Maerhal’s had stitched our bleeding hearts just enough to feel something other than the gash in our chests.

Brenna deserved the same.

We had come to save the Shades, but we had left one behind. I wasn’t going to leave her buried on that island alone, completelycut off from anyone who ever cared for her, any ancestors her bones might recognize in the kingdom.

Even if theFaelinthended in ash and flame, Brenna should make it to those lands as we’d dreamed we would.

I pulled the emptydiizraI had stolen from my pocket as I approached the side of the hill where I had buried her. The waves crashed against the cliff’s edge, scraping the rock with their watery claws and filling the air with their mist.

My palm flattened against the earth until I could feel the pulse of life underneath me. Every blade of grass, every wildflower, was connected to a web that pulsed through me like a shared heartbeat.

Brenna’s bones didn’t pulse. They were cold and dead just as she was, but I could sense the absence of life through the web. I traced the shape of their coldness, inking a shadow of them in my mind. I used the earth gift Elverath had given me to pull them from the soil.

One by one, pillars of every size lifted from the ground, each holding a piece of my first love. I blew a gentle gust across them, sprinkling the dirt through the air until the white shone through. A spout of sea water rose over the cliff’s edge by my command, washing them clean.

The bones shone under the night sky, more precious than any metal I had ever held. I let my powers leak out of me as I cried, leaving a trail of blossoms and shrubs with every step I took.

The training field was now a meadow. I lingered over each bushel of blooms, plucking one from every bush until I had a soft bed of petals covering the ground.

I picked up the bones one by one, starting with her feet, and placed them on the blooms. The salt seared my throat as I sobbed. The bones that had once been Brenna—the person who had beenlarger and brighter than anyone I’d ever known—was now a pile small enough to fit in one of Rheih’s berry baskets.

I looked down at the them but I no longer saw bones laid on petals. Brenna was lying on the bed of flowers, blooms poked through her blond curls that splayed out like sunrays lit behind her. The same curls I would have braided my own hair into if I had been able to bury her properly the first time.

Without thinking, I pulled the white hilt from its sheath and grabbed the length of my braid. The end trailed past my weapons belt as I held it in front of me. All those years, all those memories woven together at the ends. The last part of me she’d touched. I lifted the bloodstone dagger to the side of my face and sliced through my braid at my shoulders.

The freshly cut ends untangled in the wind as I circled the braid around Brenna. My hair was now the same length it had been the day Brenna and I met. A worthy amount for me to give to her while leaving enough length for Riven to braid his hair into mine if this war ended the way Damien wanted.

That was how it had always been. Brenna got everything I could give her, and Riven got the pieces that were left. It was unfair. Cruel to both of us. But my heart had been half dead for decades.

Something moved behind me. I turned around on my knee, dagger still in hand. The rock that Gerarda had kicked rolled to a stop beside my boot. With the rage of the sea, I hadn’t heard her approach.

“What are you doing here?” My words were sharper than I’d meant them.

Gerarda’s amber eyes lingered on my cut braid. There was a sheen over them as she finally looked at me. “This is not a ritual one does alone, Keera.” She swallowed thickly. “And Brenna deserves more than one person at her funeral.”

My lips trembled. “Almost everyone who knew her is dead.”

Gerarda’s jaw pulsed four times. “You, me, and Myrrah.” She pulled something from her pocket. Her palm opened, and I choked on a laugh.

“She kept it all this time?” I took the tiny ship from Gerarda’s hand and caressed the folds Brenna had made in the parchment. A reminder for Myrrah that she would set sail again.

Gerarda nodded. “I asked Myrrah if she wanted to come but she said she would only slow my journey.” She gave me a knowing look. Myrrah never slowed anyone down.

“She’s had her fill of funerals.” I placed the paper ship onto the pile and stood again. “So have I.”

“Indeed.” Gerarda stood silently over the pile with me, waiting for me to fill the silence, but I had already told Brenna everything I needed to. In my dreams, in my nightmares, in Vellinth with Syrra at my side. I was filled only with grief, but it was no longer cold and trying to drown me. There was a warmth to it, a fullness, it was my love for her persisting in a way that finally let me carry on.

“I actually don’t know the words to the song.” I turned to Gerarda. “Will you sing it?”

She placed her palm over her face and then her chest. “It would be my honor.”

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