I grimaced and shifted my feet to the ground. Gingerly putting weight on my leg, I stood next to Nikella as she gazed into a small fire that was still stubbornly burning amid the rubble.
“I keep telling myself one more death,” I said softly. “Just one more death and it’ll all be over. I told myself that with Weylin and now with Renwell. But it’s never true.”
“Of course not. There will always be another enemy to defeat. But you could at least prevent more powerful enemies from controlling Rellmira.”
I frowned. I’d been fighting for a better Rellmira since I could carry a sword. Nothing I’d done seemed to make a difference. By trying to eliminate Rellmira’s most powerful enemies, I’d only caused more innocent deaths.
“How?” I asked.
“As king,” she said, as if it were the most obvious answer.
I sighed. “We’ve been over this, Nikella. I?—”
“Don’t want to be king. I know. But I swore to your mother?—”
“She’s dead. My father, too. And no one needs their son to take the crown.”
Nikella faced me and cupped my cheek in her hand as if I were still a young boy. “Your birthright is your obligation to Rellmira. Who you are, Aiden Falcryn, the man who protects others and fights for justice—that is why youneedto be king. The more you hide, the more it allows men like Weylin and Renwell to step in and destroy everything.”
I flinched away from her touch. “You’ve taught me to hide who I am since I was old enough to understand.”
Her eyes hardened. “To protect you until it was time. It’s time, Aiden.”
A familiar fear wriggled loose in my chest, something that had grown and festered while I was a prisoner in the mine. Each of my failures since the Pravaran rebellion had only multiplied that fear like worms in fertile soil.
“I don’t deserve that kind of power,” I whispered, my jaw tight.
“Power isn’t inherently good or evil. It only becomes so in the hands of who wields it. Your heart is good, Aiden. Don’t squander it by locking it in a cage.”
No good has ever come from sharing my heart, either. Even when a certain beautiful thief steals the key.
“I saw Kiera head west out of the village just before you found me,” I said, my voice tight. “Her face was still bloody, which means the wound on her back is likely the same. Take care of her, would you?”
Nikella pursed her lips. “Why don’t you?”
I shrugged, already walking away. “Like I said, I know when I’m not wanted.”
Perhaps it’d been petty, but I’d been too gods-damned tired to disguise the edge of hurt in my voice.
But Kiera had come to me later that night. Slept by my side. So perhaps I wasn’t the only one with contrary feelings.
After two more mind-numbing trips up the base of the mountain, we ferried the mourners across. They filled the stone steps, a safe distance from the glowing fireflowers.
Kiera came with them, her hair re-braided and her face clean apart from the paste on her cheek. Her amber eyes glowed golden in the setting sun. She hugged Maz and gripped Yarina’s hand. Whether to ease the weight off Yarina’s injured foot or because she needed the support, I couldn’t say.
Sigrid flanked Maz, dark circles under her eyes. I stood on Kiera’s other side. She darted a glance up at me. Her mouth seemed to soften for a moment, but then she faced forward again.
Either someone had told her what to expect or she was too exhausted to question the strangeness of seeing shrouded bodies lying amid the fireflowers.
There were no drums this time. No mead. No party would follow. Most of these souls had been lost in a massacre, not abattle between warriors. It was murder. There was no honor to celebrate in that.
Yarina swayed a little, like the fireflowers that bowed over Davka’s body. Maz looked paler than I’d ever seen him. Even after Korvin. Sigrid’s hands were clenched into fists.
Jek, Nikella, Vorkahn, and most of our war party lined the steps below them. The Berengar woman whose bow I’d used to shoot Renwell, and her warriors, stood on the steps below.
What was left of the Urzost villagers and their warriors huddled on the steps above me, their eyes glassy. A woman about Nikella’s age stepped into the snow by a small body and sang the funeral song.
Her body trembled with anguish, and her voice sagged with unshed tears and buried cries, yet still she sang on.
