Bone to marrow, blood to vein,Let the fever break like rain.
What was scattered, gather in,Stitch the soul beneath the skin.
Root to earth and earth to stone,Call the wanderer back home.
Lara’s breathing slowly deepened as Ren continued her sain.
Breath that falters, breathe again,Earth will mend what flame has rent.
Fire that burns too bright will fade,Cool the embers that you made.
Sleep now, daughter of the flame,Wake restored and whole again.
Alar bathed her face once more. Her skin was burning to touch. They had to cool her off.
Ren’s melancholy song ended, and as it did, the fever receded just a little.
He continued to wipe the sweat from her brow, aware that the others now sat silently around the fire pit, watching. Alar paid none of them any notice though. He couldn’t look away from his wife.
A groan escaped Lara then, and his breathing hitched.
She was returning to them.
Sitting back on his heels, he raised his chin. Bree sat opposite him. She’d been there since Ren had begun her vigil, her face taut with worry.
His gaze met hers and held.
It was the first time Lara’s warder had met his eye without dislike glinting in her gaze.
Her expression wasn’t friendly either though.
“I’ll let you take over from here,” he said softly. “She’d prefer to see your face rather than mine when she wakes up.”
Bree snorted. “Aye … you’re learning, Alar.”
He stilled.Alar.Not ‘Half-blood’. Could Lara’s fierce protector be lowering her guard around him? “I am.”
Rising to his feet, Alar shifted away. He realized then that some members of their group were missing. The Shee. Leaving the fire’s warm glow, he emerged from under the overhang, and there, under the silvery glow of the moon, he found them.
The remaining Ravens were building cairns over their fallen warriors—tombs of stone.
Mor looked on, Eagal upon her shoulder, as they worked. She looked otherworldly, standing there, frosted by moonlight.
Vyr began to sing then. A slow, soft lament for the dead that drifted over the hollow. Among the Marav, it was women rather than men who sang such songs, but Vyr’s voice was right for it.
Alar couldn’t understand the words, for they were in the Shee tongue. But they settled into his bones, all the same. Longingrose in his breast. For a realm he’d never seen, and people he’d never known. The Shee were the other half of him. He’d spent his life hating his father, but underneath it all, he’d always been curious. This journey had taught him that the Shee were his people too.
He shared their strangeness, the difference that set him apart from Marav.
His gaze shifted from Mor then, to the tall lean figure who heaped stones onto one of the cairns that were quickly taking shape.
Wynn Sablebane’s profile was stern, yet Alar studied it, searching for answers. Earlier, when they’d been battling the knavoar, he’d been surprised to find his father fighting at his back.
For a short while there, they’d been a team.
“Can you sit up?”
Lara’s jaw tightened. “I’m not dying, Bree.”
