Miss Hampshire whimpers. “Hush now…”
“No, Mother…” My whole body shakes. Every muscle along my arm quivers as I hook my arm into hers, helping to steady her while all I want to do is collapse into the dirt myself. “It’s I who failed him.”
We watch the hole disappear, shovel by shovel. With each spray of heavy soil, Mother’s wails fracture more, breaking down into small, hiccupped whimpers. Then the hole is gone. A mound of fresh, wet earth rises where my brother used to be.
Dirt finishing what rot started.
Silence reclaims the air, thick and uncomfortable. Ministers. Priests. Maids. One by one, the dark shapes of the mourners detach from the semi-circle, murmuring condolences before turning their backs and drifting away into the gray morning, leaving us alone with the grave.
Eventually, Miss Hampshire releases Mother and turns away with a solemn curtsy. “Your Majesty.”
Mother watches her go, then sags against me, her weight settling onto my arm like a heavy, sodden coat. The hysteria has drained out of her, replaced by a hollow exhaustion that leaves her face slacker and paler than I’ve ever seen it.
She draws a ragged breath, dabbing endlessly at her eyes with a ruined handkerchief. “I should have been there,” she whispers, her voice cracked and thin. “A mother should be there.”
“As should a sister.” I squeeze my eyes shut, the motion hot and stinging against my trapped tears. “Because of me, he died completely alone.”
“No, not alone. Just not with family.” Her voice is thick with mucus and misery. “Well…presume he’s family somehow,” she corrects herself. “But it’s not the same.”
I open my eyes and look at her, blinking through the blur. “What?”
“Your husband.”
My throat tightens until I can barely swallow. “What of him?”
“He was sitting there on the bed beside your brother when I came…pale as a sheet, his clothes bloodied. Looked like he’d come from a war, that man.” Mother wipes her face with a shaking hand, each of her slow nods making my chest cave more. “He said…he said you fainted and were looked after by Miss Hampshire, so he came in your stead.”
My mind flashes to the greenhouse, to the overwhelming chaos of that moment. Everything happened so fast. How I slit his throat, if out of rage or desperation to perform the rite, I can’t even say. Probably the latter, given how I slammed the crown on his head.
It hums against my skull once more, my mind going to Vale’s bloody, trembling palm. How it cupped my face, thumb swiping a tear from my cheek.I’m sorry.
That hidden coal flares up—wild, confusing, against any sensibility—only to be quenched by a wash of cold shock. “What do you mean, he came in my stead?”
“He was holding your brother’s hand when I finally got there,” Mother continues, her voice soft now, reverent.“Speaking softly to him. Telling him not to be afraid, even though he was already gone. We should…we should have been there, Elara.” She nods, a jerky, fractured motion, leaning heavily on me now. “But all that’s left now is to find peace in the fact that he wasn’t alone.”
A violent tremor moves through my body. It starts in my chest and surges out through my ribs, flaring with such intensity that it makes me dizzy. Death can’t die, but I know Vale’s body can suffer, yet he dragged his freshly bled and newly mended body to Daron? Why would he do such a thing for my brother? Why would he do such a thing…for me?
My eyes snap to the forest.
The space where Vale stood is empty.
I don’t know what to do with the chaos of emotions in my core. Gratitude, shame, and sorrow arrive at once, none willing to be put in the ground first. Finally, something quieter settles beneath them all—not peace, but the exhausted stillness of a body that has simply run out of ways to fight itself.
A grave of fierce, painful confusion.
“Your Majesty?”
The voice startles me. I turn, nearly losing my balance on the thin frost underfoot.
The young priest stands there, clutching his white robes with one hand and a roll of parchment with the other. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. I-I didn’t know if I should wait, or,” he stammers, his eyes darting between me and the mound of earth. “Your request was urgent. I know this is a mourning time, but…” He extends the scroll, his hand trembling slightly. “I completed the translation only this morn.”
The translation. The stanza.
Urgent, I’d called it. Now the urgency has gone quiet inside me, collapsing into a dull, defeated stillness that makes even lifting my hand feel like work.
My fingers reach for the parchment without feeling, dryness rasping against my skin, gripping the scroll like a thing that belongs to someone else. “Thank you.”
I give the translation a quick, cursory glance. Ink. Letters. None of them of much use anymore because my baby brother lies six feet under.Why did you sit with him? Why did you stay with Daron?
