Page 31 of The Night Prince 3
“Always,” Vex chuckled.
“A good fight,” Finley answered.
Vex lifted a delicate eyebrow. “He likes violence–”
“No, no, not like that. When he fights, it’s like a dance. He’s… he’s beautiful to watch.” Finley worried at his lower lip, trying to capture Declan in those moments in words. “When the Leviathan came and he had only a kitchen knife to defend me and Gemma against the hordes of them, I stopped being afraid at some point. Because I was so amazed by what he could do. The sheer grace of it. Flying through the air. Gliding over the ground. Moving like silk in the wind.” He shifted a little on the cool stone, his fingers trailing into the water. The fish nibbled lightly at his fingertips. It tickled. “He’s completely and utterly at one with the moment. Not in the past or future. But in the present. So there.”
“I see. His mother was like that,” Vex answered.
“His mother?” Finley perked up. “Is she with you?”
But then he realized that Vex said was. Not is. Was like that. Past tense. Not present.
“No.” Vex shook his head and gestured to the opposite side of the obelisk that Finley had ignored, thinking it was just more of the garden.
But there was something laying there. Something not so finely wrought. On a slab of stone that might have had another purpose was a long, low pile of rocks. It was the length and width of a body.
Finley swallowed and shakily got up to his feet. He glanced over at Vex. The Night King gestured again towards the object. He meant for Finley to go over to it. Suddenly, Finley desperately didn’t want to. But his desire to know came over him and he was moving towards it. His breath held. His heart was hammering.
What is this?
The stones piled a foot high were dark, black, evidently hacked out of the earth elsewhere. They were not the clean white stone used for Ailduin’s tomb. Above the tip of the pile was scrawled–carved really with no precision and a rather shaky hand in anguished determination–a name and below it another word. It was etched into the stone again and again. The lines were broken and ragged. Finley brushed his fingertips over them and snatched his hand back. They were sharp, uneven. They hurt.
“What does it say?” Finley asked.
“Lady Ashryn Zinsadoral,” Vex answered. “Mother.”
Finley turned his head to look at the Night King. “Zinsadoral?” It was the name that Declan had told him to look up. It was part of Declan’s full name. “Is this… this Rahven’s mother?”
A simple nod. Nothing more.
“But I don’t understand!” Finley protested. “No Kindreth has lived here in millennia! Why would she be buried here?”
“Because she died here,” Vex answered simply.
The Night King’s expression was completely smooth and unreadable. Did he feel grief about this? Was he glad about it? Angry? Rageful? Gleeful? Had she betrayed him? Had he killed her? Or had he loved her as much as Ailduin? All was hidden from Finley.
But he didn’t bury her in a beautiful tomb like Ailduin. She’s covered by rocks and… Vex didn’t bury her. Mother… A child did. Her son buried her.
Finley took in a sharp breath and abruptly straightened. “Did Declan–Rahven–bury her here? Was he here for her death?”
“Yes.”
Finley’s heart was pounding. His breathing quickened once more. Nausea bubbled in his belly.
“There for two mothers’ deaths? Oh, god, Declan,” he whispered, anguished beyond words for his best friend. “Is that why you took his memories, King Vex?”
“I did not take his memories.” Vex’s expression was completely blank like glass yet Finley could see nothing behind it.
“So who did? And why? What was he doing here? He wasn’t with you here, was he?” Even as Finley asked the last question, he knew that Vex had not come here in some time.
Vex’s red eyes looked steadily into his. “All good questions, Finley. Complicated answers.”
“Or not complicated,” Finley answered, surprised at his own sharpness. “You don’t want to tell me.”
“I do not owe you those answers, do I?” Vex lifted an eyebrow.
Realizing that Vex was right. Declan was owed these answers. Not him. “No, but Rahven… Declan may not ask.”
