Sadness?
She shot up, studying his expression where he now lay on the stone.
“What is it?” she pressed. Rionan sat up with her, his face unchanging.
“It’s nothing, Ali. You’re right. This does feel like forever.”
“Then why are you sad?”
He drew in a breath, looking down at his chest, and smiling. A smile that didn’t meet his eyes.
“I’m not, my love. Not because of you, anyway. We have the service tomorrow. I will have to speak. To say goodbye to people I cherished. People I still cherish. Please forgive me if I struggle to keep a mask of happiness at all times.”
Alianna’s face dropped. She felt stupid; she felt selfish. Selfish for not even considering what Rionan might be going through, outside of their time together.
“I’m sorry,” she said earnestly.
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
He kissed her tenderly, laying her back on the stone.
His hands explored her body in a desperate claiming. His fingers made their way to the apex of her thighs, delicately stroking her most sensitive areas, leaving her shuddering against him one more time.
They made their way back to the horses, redressing as they went. The late afternoon in the forest was heavenly, the bird song following them from the lake, all the way back to Savangrad.
Alianna wished she felt nothing but content and complete.
But she could not shake that feeling of sorrow that Rionan had not seemed to have let go of, either.
49
Home
The next day, Alianna joined Rionan at the service in memory of the fallen.
He had encouraged her not to, to stay in bed and rest. To keep drinking Ykava’s tonics, and try to keep the headache at bay that threatened to come back after a particularly bad night’s sleep.
Alianna had refused. She may not have known every member of his army who lost their life that night, but she knew one in particular, and it was for him that she would face this. She would stand there, next to Thallax, next to Rionan, and pay tribute.
She barely heard Rionan’s words as he addressed the crowd.
She barely heard him make his way through a long list of names that Korva had written.
Not until she heard him read out the final name at the bottom of his list.
“Ulreah Stormbringer.”
Alianna felt a heavy ache forming in her chest, and a lump rising in her throat. She saw those pale, stormy eyes staring at her before he was dropped from the sky. She heard his voice, one more time.
She had brought flowers with her, which she had taken from Rionan’s room that morning. Rionan had not questioned it.
As she laid those flowers on a small memorial that Rionan had commissioned, which now sat in the centre of Savangrad’s most open area of grounds, she whispered those words to Ulreah once more: “For Xanthia.”
Rionan had found Alianna walking through the grounds later that day, her body restless, like she was searching for something, but did not know what.
Rionan had simply walked with her in silence for a while, a sad, contemplative look on her face, echoing the feeling in each of their chests.
“Ali?” Rionan finally said. She stopped and looked at him, not sure what she should be feeling today. She didn’t want to feel this.
