Something moved above him and, through his blurring vision, he saw Raska hulking over him.
“It was always her, wasn’t it?” he rasped.
Raska inclined her head in silent assent.
The darkness embraced him, and he shut his eyes, relaxing into its cold grip. He pictured Valenna smiling up at him in the light of the glass yarrow flowers, her face radiant. Their love had been doomed from the start, but so was everything beautiful in the world—a flower floating in a bog.
As he slipped away, he heard the sunbird’s lament, lulling him into the quiet dark.
Chapter fifty-eight
Valenna
The ground was littered with bodies, and Valenna was disoriented. Her heart in her throat, she began to weave along the battlefield, searching for Evander. Everyone looked the same, dozens of leather jackets with shearling collars. What if she missed him?
“VANDER!” she screamed. “VANDER!”
Her voice was swallowed by the cries of the wounded and dying. Her feet sped, her panic rising.
“VANDER!”
Body after body after body, and none of them his. Then, over the din and the tumult, Valenna heard the sunbird. And somehow, she knew that she needed to run toward that song.
The battle was settling, Ashkendor retreating into the forest. A tattered cheer rose from the exhausted Sennalaithic forces. They wavered, uncertain what to do. Should they take the beach? Should they retreat as well? Half the army splashed into the ocean and struck out toward the boats. The others half-heartedly pursued the enemy to the trees or through the clouds toward Ashkendor.
Valenna reached the manor ruin and scrambled over the rubble.
“VANDER!” she screamed again. “VANDER!”
Her voice echoed in the mist. The fog flashed. The sunbird wailed again, nearby, just to her left. Frustrated, she swept herhands and summoned a breeze—not a zephyr, but a clean spring breeze. It cleared away the smoke, and suddenly she was standing in the dull sunlight, her back to the smoldering manor ruin, her face to the blooming dragon willow.
Like a weeping bride, the white tree inclined lacy arms over a motionless body. Crimson blood pooled on the petal-carpeted ground.
A scream caught in Valenna’s throat.
She couldn’t understand—how had this happened? He’d promised to wear his enchanted shirt. He’d promised to return to her after the battle. He’d promised …
Valenna wanted to run to him, but her knees hardly supported her as she staggered over the uneven ground. With each step, she felt as though someone was driving a spike deep into her rib cage.
Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it was someone else.
She reached the figure and fell to her knees beside it, turning the face toward her. Evander’s eyes were closed, his face grimy with blood and ash.
“Please, please no,” she choked, feeling for a thrum of life under his jaw. She was not surprised when her fingers met hollow stillness.
Valenna’s heart cracked like a bone.
She gathered Evander’s sickeningly limp body into her arms, pressed her face into his neck as his head rested on her arm, and wailed.
All her sacrifices, all her sins, and she could not save him.
The Dread Five crew approached. Samara covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shaking, she turned her back to Valenna, then ordered the crew to do the same. Silently, they stood guard over their captain.
Valenna’s cry of anguish shook the willow, and petals tangled in her hair. The dead forest shuddered.
She didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t mean to do it. But her tears fell like a spring shower. The scorched dragon willows burst into bloom, char falling from their branches like a shed skin. Trees thrust their arms from the sand, and grass spread in a green carpet, covering the bodies of the dead. Flowers adorned puddles of blood; buttercups bloomed over corpses.
In minutes, what had been a barren wasteland transformed into a lush forest bordering a meadow of wildflowers.
