“Still grieving,” I admit quietly, “for everything. For your father and for everything he showed us.”
Keane nods in understanding just as I desperately start to search his eyes.
“My younger self…” I whisper, faltering on the words I want to say, “did you notice?”
“You were wearing the attire of a human from Woodlands, Alexis.”
“Ancients,I have so many questions.”
“As do I.”
I burrow myself into Keane’s side as my mind races in different directions. I replay what Zander showed us, most notably coming back to the memory of Troy using his summoning on me. I pair that knowledge against my life in Bardot and how I grew up, frowning as my own memories from this recent travel keep rumbling in my head…
I see Holis and Mana eyeing me perceptively when I inquired about their Ancient. The two of them had asked if I’d always been this curious.
I see Keane smirking when I answered Lord Daniel in the forest of Fumagalli, replying that my friends were too content in themselves to notice the sleeping air.
I see all of the little breakthroughs that Zander had mentioned to Golem, realizing that my own contentment had fully left me the moment I set foot in the Court of Warriors. I embraced the curiousness roaring inside me and came alive in the Black Capitol, disregarding every prior idea I had about what it truly meant to live as a human in Disce.
“Everything I felt growing up,” I whisper, “my easiness, my unbothered life… was it all a lie? Was it all a lie until I met Golem?”
Keane drop his lips to my hair again and tightens his hold.
Hewas the first to see the battle within me, the first to see my fire. He watched me fight against a life I thought I knew, recognizing what that battle meant even before I did.
But that fire has always been within me, even if I never recognized it in myself. I saw it in the visions of when I was a young girl. Saw the flames that held me so steadfast in my anger until Troy pushed them away.
Keane and his Court,and now Golem, only helped to fan those flames again. They were there, waiting to take light, just needed the proper push to get them started.
And Ancients.
Oh Ancients…
I pull away from Keane’s chest and look into his intense gaze, remembering his father’s words…
I wish I could be there to see their children…
He knew.
Zander knew this would happen, just as Elena foretold.
Perhaps it was destiny after all.
“It’s you and me,” I whisper.
Keane watches me closely, watches as I come to the realization that it’s the two of us.
Keane and me…
Our lives together. Building with eachother.
I can’t stop the tears that start falling down my cheeks.
“It’s you and me, Alexis,” he affirms, “we’ll figure everything out together.Always.”
Death’s Bonfire has always been a grand event, one that’s worthy of celebrating a life lived in the Old World. It’s an event that aims to wash away the mourning period, and by the grim mood circling around Castle Bardot, it’s exactly what our capitol needs.
The tradition is held by all Four Kingdoms, though the more I learn about the Leviathans, the less I believe they actually practice it. The event calls for honoring a life,celebratinga life, and is practiced by everyone throughout the Old World, magical and human, high born and low.
