Now we stood in the shadow of a crypt, surrounded by men who paid silver for grief they didn’t feel.
Salvatore did not move. Not when the chants ended. Not when the air stilled. Not when the last priest’s voice snapped into silence.
They lifted Julian’s bier. The smell of myrrh and cedar oil hung heavy—suffocating and sacred—clinging to our skin and the folds of our clothes, making grief taste both sweet and rotten.
Eight honor-guards in fire-polished bronze bore the cedar closer, moving as if the weight of Julian’s name might break them. A cloak of crimson and gold draped his body, gleaming like spilled blood. His sword lay across his chest; his fingers curled about the hilt. Even in death, he looked ready to command.
Beneath the city gates, the funeral march began in earnest. Mourners poured out in a river of silk and ash—robes immaculate, faces made for ceremony. Necklaces flashed, anklets chimed; mourning here was theater, and the elite had come in costume for their curtain call.
They did not come to grieve. They came to be seen grieving.
I walked among them like a scar. My tunic was plain, sun-bleached, and scrubbed by Amara the night before; she had worked at the stains until her hands ached. I kept my collar high as if linen could hide the truth stitched into me. Linen could not mask poverty. Linen could not hide blood.
Lord Lorian moved at the head of the procession—stone-faced, unbent, iron to the bone. The hem of his mourning tunic had been rent as custom required, but his limbs showed no tremor. He paced like a war god—spine straight, shoulders squared, carrying his son’s death as if it were merely another burden to set down.
But his eyes were different. They were ruined—blackened, as if some old account had come due. Not grief, then. Not sorrow.
Behind him, the mourners wailed like sea-winds against the cliffs. Their cries rose like smoke—high and shrill, practiced. But in the gaps between their voices, I heard something real, buried beneath the ritual, beneath the gold and the incense and the holy lies.
They were weeping for a house with one less lion.
And for the son who never fit the cuirass his birth prescribed—the son who lived in the wrong skin.
Salvatore walked one step behind his father. His head was bowed; his fists were clenched so tightly his knuckles were bloodless. His shoulders were set with restraint, as if he kept a scream folded inside. He said nothing. Made no sound.
And still—Lord Lorian never looked back. Not once. Not until we reached the tomb.
The family crypt gaped from the oldest ridge of the necropolis—a monument of black basalt and iron-veined stone, its mouth yawning wide like a beast that closed only on its own blood.
As they prepared the final rites, Salvatore stepped forward, hands shaking.
That was when his father turned.
No one else heard what he said—except me.
But gods, I wished I hadn’t.
His voice was low. Cruel. The kind of whisper that drew blood.
“It should have been you,” Lord Lorian hissed. “You. Not him. Julian died like a warrior—honored, remembered. And you? You live like a fucking parasite, draining my name.”
The words landed with the force of a blow.
Salvatore did not answer. He didn’t blink. He stood—stone under fire—holding himself whole. His flinch was small, almost private. But it was real. Whatever storm roared beneath his skin, whatever thunder tore through his bones, he swallowed it whole.
Because this was not the place. Not before the gods. Not beside his brother’s grave. Not when the whole city was watching.
The tomb yawned—a chamber of shadow and heat, thick with smoke and the acrid smell of grief. Julian lay at its center, wrapped in linen; offerings—oil, wine, honey—sat at his feet, small jars of life set for the dead.
Around him, the mourners made violent music. Faces were streaked and raw; shoulders bared and bleeding from the prostrations; sorrow slapped the stone like thunder—louder than the silence Salvatore kept.
I stayed back, a flaw in their perfect line of mourning.
Then Lord Lorian stepped forward.
Not like a father—like a warlord. Cold. Controlled. His gaze never left Julian. He drew a blade with no words and no hesitation, clipped a lock of his own hair, and the room froze.
He laid the lock on Julian’s chest and curled the dead fingers around it as if setting a seal. It was not tenderness. It was a brand—a final, possessive gesture.
