Then she piles them all together in a heap, ignores the falling rain, and sets them on fire.
I open my eyes again when Ariel appears in his typical whirl of smoke. Winter is holding on to him, her arm looped around his neck. She looks pale and sickly, I think, but the vampire king is way ahead of me. He barely spares her a glance as he tears open his own wrist and then puts it to her mouth.
She grips him with her free hand, and drinks.
It’s another level of intimacy, then. Me sagging against Ty because I can’t stand of my own volition when I would normally hurt myself so as not to appear weak. Winter taking her lover’s blood that we all know will heal her and keep her human body strong and something a little better than merely human, which is something I doubt very much she shares with anyone but him.
Meanwhile, Ty and Ariel discuss the battle we just won in their low voices. They sound dark, I think—but less urgent.
Eventually, Savi makes her way across the crater to us. She looks polished to a smooth shine again, not a hint of a hair out of place despite the enduring rainfall. Her gaze is assessing as she sweeps it overWinter, less so when she looks at me, and she nods slightly. Apparently pleased with what she sees.
Or what she doesn’t see,I think, that paste and thosethingsrolling back over me for a moment. I shove them away.
Winter smiles up at Ariel, kisses his wrist, then wipes her own mouth as he pulls his wrist back, shakes it once, and heals.
I straighten, but not before I press a kiss to that sweet spot between Ty’s pectorals.
Then we all, finally, turn and look down at Briar’s body.
“We will burn her twice,” Savi pronounces in a voice that reminds me that she is made of old laws, from ancient cities no one alive now will ever see.
“And then flood this crater all over again,” Ariel agrees, sounding even more ageless and stern. “Just in case.”
I think someone should say a few words for Briar. I think that someone should probably be me, but I also remember the way she looked at me before she died. Before I killed her.
Maybe I’ll keep my oddly conflicting feelings to myself.
Savi builds a bonfire around the sacrificial rock. All the Kind clans gather around, some nursing injuries, others looking around furtively—not used to interacting with other Kind species if it’s not violent, if I have to guess.
The priests go on the fire first. All the rest of the minions are burning in that pile on the crater floor, but Vinca’s priests get special, personal attention. Their bodies are covered in their runes and their symbols, all of them carved deep into their skin, and though the priests are already dead we can hear each rune and symbol moan as the fire reaches them.
“Black magic fears the light,” Savi says with satisfaction.
When we finally lay Briar’s ruined body on the pyre, we throw in all the charred bits of heart we gathered up, too. Then we all flinch, because the flames scream. And they counter the charred black darknessin her that we can see swell and then shrink as the relentless fire burns and burns.
I find that my urge to say a few words is truly gone. I really take in what Vinca did to Briar, the horrific tangle of her limbs, with half of her seeming to be inside out. Not to mention what I did to her.
I stare into the flames for a long while, Ty’s arm over my shoulders and the heat of him rivaling the blast from the fire.
The hour grows later. The moon is getting higher in the sky.
The wolves are getting restless.
Most of the pack’s females are back in the den, too far away for a mating run tonight.
But I’m not.
The wolves start howling. They circle the fire, doing a decent impression of the ritual the way it’s supposed to go—even without the drums.
All around us, I’m aware of the other members of the Kind who might understand what’s happening here but have certainly never witnessed it before. I see Savi and Winter exchange a glance, both of them looking various degrees of wide-eyed or fascinated. Maybe both.
It makes sense to me that this is how this happens. Nothing typical for Ty and me. Nothing run-of-the-mill. Only the death pyre of a death goddess beneath the Wolf Moon for the first high king and his famously reluctant queen.
If I’d planned it this way deliberately, it couldn’t suit us more.
I stand straight, feeling like myself again—and a little bit more. A little more kick, courtesy of the moon. I can feel her pull. I can feel everything.
Longing. Yearning—if, of course, he’s male enough to catch me.
