The stories I heard as a child seem like little more than lies, now, as I stare at her. She doesn’t move. “Father wouldn’t want this end for you.”
Her sigh is buried as she rolls over, giving me her back. “He’s not here to see it.”
But I am.
Valcor and Nythen will stand beside their children tomorrow. And my mother, themonarch, can’t see fit to even raise her head from the bed to say goodbye.
A victim of whoever finds her first when Vaelion sweeps through Umbraxis. No doubt they’ll make a spectacle of it, some sort of execution ceremony. My voice hardens. “Get up.”
But she doesn’t, even when my anger turns to pleas.
“I have to go.” I can’t look at her any longer. “There are people depending on me. Onus.”
When I was a child, I would hide from my nightmares in this bed, hidden between two people who would never have let them touch me.
But I’m not a child anymore.
Her hair is barely visible. I press my lips to it. “Goodbye, mother.”
Lyra
The dress is black, but not the harsh black of the stiff mourning cloth from Solvandyr. This black is soft, layered, faintly iridescent when the light from the lantern touches it, like oil on water. The fabric pools around my ankles, sleeveless and open at the throat.
My hair hangs loose down my back.
I almost never wear it this way. In the Sunspire, it was always braided tightly. Loose hair was a liability, something an opponent could grab.
I turn to Elspeth. “Will I do?”
She’d arrived at Kaelen’s door an hour earlier, the dress folded in her arms as she all but shoved me inside. Adjusting the fall of the fabric, she smooths my hair back with elegant fingers and nods once, as if she’s satisfied. “You look ready.”
When she throws her arms around me, I’m not prepared. My throat grows tight as she squeezes. “Thank you for the dress.”
She breathes in. It sounds choked. “Thank you for Sera.”
And then she’s gone, back to their rooms to be with her. My smile spreads across my face as I glance down again, hearing her called words. “You can go in now!”
My stomach knots as the door swings open. “Will I do for… whatever we’re doing?”
I know that it’s some kind of ceremony, but nobody explained more than that. Darian enters first, and my cheeks flush at his appreciative look. Kaelen and Eres follow, and I find myself biting the inside of my cheek. They make me feel… hot. Flustered, as if I don’t know where to put my hands.
I’m not entirely certain that I like the sensation.
“The moon’s nearly there,” Darian says. He’s dressed, as they all are, in a simple black shirt and dark trousers. “We should go.”
No one argues.
We walk together through the keep and out into the night, using the back door that I followed with Kaelen for mine and Eres’s Binding ceremony. The path down to the Gloam holds small, flickering lanterns set into the ground at intervals, softening the darkness. The air smells of damp earth, and river moss, and something sweeter.
I walk between Eres and Darian. Kaelen walks at my back, blocking out the worst of the breeze. Although I don’t feel as cold as I thought I would. Every so often, Kaelen’s hand brushes my back.
The Gloam opens up before us like a ribbon of black glass. “This is a service?”
“The Passing,” Darian murmurs. “It’s where we say our farewells to the fallen, and send their souls safely on to Erevan’s keeping.”
The hair at the back of my neck prickles.
“Do you not do something similar?” Eres asks. “In Solvandyr?”
