The hard pounding of his heart echoed in his skull.
He is leaving me.
“Finny,” Naia gasped through her weeping. “Look.”
Finnian opened his eyes.
Father waded through the waist-high lavender. A woman with long black hair raced for him with a small child in her arms. They soared across the Field, flickering from human form to radiant orbs shooting over the blossomed ends of the lavender.
At the sight of them, Father stopped and his shoulders melted, as if all the weight of his sorrows had drifted away. Thecenturies of pain and misery that life had brought. All stones he’d done well to carry.
This is peace.
“Daddy!” the child called out, giggling. He had Father’s smile, a contagious warmth in his eyes.
“Vale! We’ve been waiting.” The woman’s beaming face drew closer, almost there.
A happy laugh left Father, and he threw his arms wide. “I am here.Finally.” The words left him like a breath of relief.
The woman and child leapt into his open embrace, and he held them like he had held Finnian and Naia many times.
“I am here,” he said. “And I am not going anywhere.”
A cracked sound scraped up the back of Finnian’s throat. He slapped a hand over his mouth to hold it down.
Marina clung to Naia, a loud, violent cry pouring out of her.
Naia soothed her with a hand in her hair as her own sobs shook through her. She buried her face into Finnian’s arm, her breath erratic and her posture slumping on him.
He lifted his arm to support her, but it prickled, like the nerves were short-circuiting. Emotions he’d ran from his entire life flooded in, threatening to capsize him.
Cassian’s hand slid over his nape and into his hair. His lips lightly met the side of Finnian’s temple.
In his touch, the pillars in Finnian’s heart crumbled, and a mangled cry broke free. He folded inward and wailed.
“Love is death,” Cassian whispered, holding him close. “But death is love again.”
34
A RESPITE
Cassian
The wind stirredthe powdered remains of the grove. Fine particles of dust floated in the air, glistening like star dew. Cassian watched them drift and twirl.
It seemed fitting, after all these years, for their love to burn, preserving the ashes in the crevices of his Land.
Cassian stuffed his hands in his pockets and inhaled deeply—the stale, crisp scent of the grove, citrus and mint, tangled in a honeyed botanic fragrance wafting from his own garden.
He lifted his head and appreciated the buttery, soft pink dawn spilling over the peaks of Moros.
His heart ached for the friend he’d lost, for the brother who betrayed him, and for what was to come. A bittersweet ache he gladly welcomed.
Finnian’s footfalls sounded behind him—a light step, barely audible, except for the slight twist of his heel as he pushed off his foot. A sound Cassian had memorized long ago. A sound that shot an instant dose of euphoria through his system each time he heard it.
Only this time, that euphoria was muddled with melancholy.
Finnian stopped at his side and followed his gaze out to the grove. He frowned and rolled his neck. Cassian observed closely out of the side of his eye. The twitchy, uncomfortable motion was a product of the curse.
