“Eira, please.” Cullen leaned away. His skin was blue and white from where he’d clutched on to her. His teeth were chattering.
Eira looked from him to the fire. To the inferno that continued to rage and smolder…perhaps these fires would blaze, fueled by shale, for eternity. Even in death, Noelle would burn brightly. She’d make her mark upon the earth well beyond her years. Eira eased away, turning, drawing her magic to her. The land was brittle and barren, frost-burnt.
She staggered away from the rim and every step felt like a betrayal. Part of her wanted to run back and try against all odds, even when hope was lost. Part of her felt like it was down in that blazing pit, clutching Noelle.
“We have to go.” Her voice was detached, vacant, as she loomed over Ducot and Alyss.
Ducot tilted his head up at her. Eira knew what was going to happen well before it did. He lunged up, grabbing for her, balling her shirt into his fist. He reared back with his other hand and found his mark. Eira didn’t fight. Not when he pulled back and struck her for the second time. Eira knew how to take a beating.
“She died for you!”
She didn’t fight when the third blow landed.
“Because you let her!”
Nor the fourth.
But Eira stopped him the fifth time, her cheeks stinging as much as her eyes. Blood dribbled down her nose and split lip.
“I know.” She held his trembling fist in her palm. “But this isn’t going to bring her back. And we must keep going.”
“Have you…did you even look? What if she’s?—”
“She’s gone. I looked. I tried.” But it took all her willpower not to run back and check again. Not to hope that Noelle would emerge, against all odds, with one of her usual, arrogant quips.
“I’d rather die with her.”
“I know.” And she meant it. But she didn’t let him go and launch himself into the pit after her.
Ducot trembled and hung his head. He wept until his tears caught in his throat. Until he vomited.
Eira waited until he was finished. When he was, Alyss slipped her arm under his shoulders. She supported him with a strength Eira was in awe that she still had.
They left, starting for the woods and toward the distant town and the ship they were owed. That they had sacrificed everything for.
Noelle didn’t have a proper Rite of Sunset.
There was no body for it.
But at least she had been immolated. So Cullen led the prayers that night from the deck of the boat Lavette and Varren had successfully procured. They stared at the shoreline of Carsovia in the distance, a bloody sky mirroring the fires that still burned in the distance—bright enough to light up a spot on the horizon when all else had turned to shadow.
There wasn’t much talking after the prayers were over.
Ducot kept to himself. Everyone gave him space. Except Alyss. Even though, during their time at the clinics, Eira was the one who had dealt with the dying specifically, it was Alyss who went to check on Ducot. Eira was sure she was the last person he wanted to see. She felt like she was the last person whom any of them would’ve wanted to be around.
So even though he had the most experience sailing out of all of them, Eira didn’t demand he help them with the rigging. With tacking against the wind. Or with finding theStormfrost.
She’d asked enough of him…of all of them.
Eira continued to replay every word. Every decision and choice that she’d made or didn’t make. Should she have ordered Noelle to come with her? If she had decreed that Noelle, Olivin, and Yonlin stay above the mines no matter what, they could’ve shaken the knights after Eira’s capture, sneaked out quietly, and met in the forest.
There were a thousand ways she could’ve acted differently. Any of them would’ve saved her. All of them added up to, once more, she hadn’t been good enough. She should have protected her friends better.
I did what I wanted.
Eira could almost hear Noelle’s retort on the wind. Even knowing it to be true—Noelle was,had beena woman who listened to her own desires—that knowledge didn’t stop Eira from laying blame at her own feet.
Two arms slid around her middle. Eira knew it was Cullen from the movement alone; he’d done it countless times now to pull her back from the brink. She knew him from the shape of his forearms. From the soft breath against her neck. She knew him almost like her own magic—as an extension of herself.
