“I did. Even though it was forbidden for our colony to warn or interfere in that way…I did, Skylenna. A couple of years ago, I broke down and warned him. I told him everything. I begged him not to go, even though I didn’t have an exact date to give him. I put your daughter at risk by warning him because he protected her that night! But Niles…Niles was too noble not to go. Not to be there when our kids needed him the most.”
That fucking hurts so much more. What was I thinking? No amount of warning would ever keep our sweet Niles from doing the right thing.
“And…he saved someone important while he was out there in the Blackspire Ward of The North,” she adds, wiping her pink nose.
“Is this Niles’s funeral?” Two men approach from the shadows of the trees.
Everyone stops talking. I scope out their appearance, recognizing the older one with dark skin, and gray hair in long braids down his back.
They are from the Naiadales.
“I helped Niles once after he was burned,” the older one says, speaking to me.
I lift my chin. “Rydran?”
He nods, flicking his gaze to the grave site.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, feeling uncomfortable for how to say this. “This is just for family.”
Rydran bows his head. “I understand. But I am not here for me, I am here for him.”
He places a hand on the young man’s back, perhaps in his early thirties. With heavy tears filling his eyes, the man makes his way to Niles’s casket in the ground. Not yet covered in dirt.
“Niles was a father to me when I was taken from my papa,” he says with a tight throat.
I look at Marilynn with confusion. Though her chin trembles as she already knows who this is.
I hesitate. “When was that?”
“Twenty-one years ago.”
I think back and look to Dessin.
“In the Vexamen Prison?” he speaks up for me.
The man shakes his head. “The Blackspire Ward of The North.”
Collectively, our family calculates this in our heads. We exchange looks. We shift on our feet. He was with Niles as a captive? He knew our Niles before he died?
As questions swim and float through my mind, I can see that for this man, his memories have been preserved over many years. This event happened for us a day ago.
“You were with him in the end?” Niklaus asks quietly.
The man’s black eyes lower to the casket. He thinks long and hard before he responds, taking a knee out of respect.
“I was the youngest captive there. Taken from my family by the Breed when I was only six years old. Niles said I reminded him of his son. He looked out for me. Took the beatings I was supposed to receive. He’d force me to close my eyes during the executions. He’d shield me with his body when the mob threw stones.” Those round eyes dart to Marilynn. “I wouldn’t have made it out of that terrible place without him.”
Marilynn places her hands across her chest. She’s read the pages of this chapter. She’s read the words without the emotions coloring the page.
“He came up with a plan to get me out,to hide in the drainpipes until nightfall so I could escape to the coast and find safe passage home. I fled during the execution. Niles had to make a big scene, to give me my best chance at making it out. It’s why he was on that chopping block in the first place. I was just a little boy, and he saved me.”
One by one, we each hug and thank Rydran and Renly for coming. For sharing with us what Niles went through in his final days. What was going through his head when he was up there on that stage. That he saved a little boy’s life. I could not be prouder of my brother.
Before the end, Renly speaks with Ruth quietly, asking for passage back to the country that held him captive. He let her know that Niles told him that one day, he might meet the next Mazonist leader, and if he wanted to learn how to govern his own people with wisdom and kindness, to look no further than his best friend, Ruth Mazonist.
She hugged him and agreed to take him back with her, allowing him to pay Niles’s kindness and sacrifice forward by doing good in the country he lost his life in.
After covering his casket with dirt, and moving his headstone into place, we stand around it and admire the words engraved there.
