But death doesn’t come quickly. Too tired to speak, I watch Danial and another healer sprint onto the cliff and work together to heal me as though I’m a spectator, not a part of this moment at all. Meredy sobs into Lysander’s fur while her sister, Elibeth, keeps a hand on her arm as if to prevent her from rushing to my side and interrupting the healing. Simeon and Jax hurry onto the cliff next, their wounds already mended judging by their speed.
Warmth envelopes me as Danial and the other healer work. I’m going to make it through this, but I’m still too tired to move or talk.
Valoria, seemingly unable to watch, walks to the edge of the cliff and looks down. I wonder if she can see anything—a body? Her crown?—but it isn’t until Kasmira arrives and lets Nipper off-lead to lick me in the face that I find my voice.
“What do you see?” I call weakly to Valoria as the healers work.
“Sea foam,” she calls back, walking slowly to my side and kneeling.
“All right,” Danial relents, raising his hands in defeat and rising with the other healer. “You’re good as new, Sparrow. But rest here a moment. It might take a while before you feel up to walking around again.”
I barely get a chance to thank him before Lysander and Meredy are on top of me, vying with Nipper and Valoria for a chance to embrace me. Still a little numb, I smile to reassure them, keeping them all as close as I can while having enough room to breathe.
“Maybe Devran and the others were right, and I wanted too much change too fast,” Valoria says suddenly, glancing between me and Meredy. “I suppose... new magical gifts like Karston’s will require a lot more guidance and research before they’re unleashed on Karthia. I’ll have to close the school, at least for a while.”
I nod my agreement as Meredy helps me sit up straighter. I lean against her and squeeze her hand in thanks. “I’m sure you’ll have to introduce some new things,” I tell Valoria, “but what if you brought back some old ones, too? Festival days were so much fun—at least, when Hadrien wasn’t asking me to dance...”
My voice trails away as I catch sight of Hadrien’s rock. The plain chunk of stone is just out of my reach, but I point to it and begin to explain what I did and how I did it.
The look of astonishment on Simeon’s face would usually make me laugh, but nothing seems very funny when my body still feels like Lysander stomped all over it.
Slowly, Valoria moves toward the rock and nudges it with the toe of her boot. After covering her hand with part of her cloak, she reaches down to grab it, hesitating before closing her fingers around it as though it might bite. Once it’s in her grasp, she strides toward the edge of the cliff and raises her arm to hurl it into the sea.
“Wait!” I call. As everyone looks a question at me, I start to grin. I can’t help it. I’m that pleased with my own cleverness. “I have a better idea,” I explain.
XXXV
Hadrien’s rock now sits on top of the highest hill in Grenwyr City, overlooking the palace and its surrounds, a perfect vantage point from which he watched us give the metal soldiers’ empty husks to the sea. From on high, he’ll even have a view of tonight’s fireworks as Valoria hosts her first public festival since the one at which we bid farewell to the Dead.
And festivals aren’t the only thing she’s reinstated in the two months since we stopped Hadrien a second time.
After I had a long talk with her about it, Valoria came to understand that while we necromancers are willing to respect her ban on raising the dead, she has to respect us traveling to the spirit world regularly to make sure all is well. She even has us training some young and eager necromancers who we rarely let out of our sights. I’m afraid one of them, a girl of about eight with a vocabulary far beyond her years, looks at me the way I used to look at Master Cymbre. If I’m right, I’m in for eight or nine years of trouble—especially since thetrainees don’t have much to do other than follow us around until Valoria reopens the mage school.
For now, she’s turned the Temple of Change into a library where all are welcome. I even helped her place the metal plaque naming it after Karston.
He’s on my mind now, as evening creeps over the palace and we prepare for a festival he certainly would have enjoyed. But soon my attention turns to Meredy, who helps me into my party gown in the privacy of our shared room. As she does up the laces on the sides of my dress, her fingers slip between the fabric and my skin, lightly grazing the scar Orsa’s blade left despite Danial’s best efforts to heal me. Meredy, on the other hand, came away unscathed thanks to all the training she did with Lysander in Sarral.
I don’t mind my new scar, though. It tells me that I fought and won another hard battle. It tells me that nothing is impossible, no matter how dire things may seem.
Turning in Meredy’s hold, I grab her hands and kiss her fingers, then her lips. “I have to tell you something,” she murmurs, drawing back to look at me. Her new insistence on never keeping secrets seems smarter than ever, given all the suffering that could have been avoided if people had been more open with one another.
“I asked Valoria for a favor this afternoon,” she says, watching my face carefully. “She’s going to set my mother free tomorrow and banish her from Grenwyr Province for good.”
I squeeze her shoulders, letting her know I support her decision. “What brought that about?” I ask gently.
“Hadrien’s rock. It got me thinking about prisons,” she says, grabbing a brush from a nearby table and starting to fix my hair. “The ones we choose. The ones we create. Don’t get me wrong, I thinkHadrien is right where he belongs—he more than earned his place.” She strokes the brush through my hair with a tenderness I’ve never known from anyone else. “But my mother isn’t any unhappier in her cell than she was in her mansion. She’ll still suffer when she’s free, and perhaps more so. Wherever she goes, she’ll be reminded of everything her cruelty cost her.”
As she pins tiny, glittering butterflies in my hair, we talk about who might be at the party tonight. Already, Azelie’s black fever cure is being made by every apothecary from here to the Idrany Islands. That’s definitely something everyone should want to celebrate, though Azelie herself won’t be around to enjoy the festivities.
She left this morning with Kasmira, bound for Sarral as Valoria’s newly appointed ambassador to the dragon kingdom, to help reforge our old alliance and broach the subject of peace talks with the Ezorans. Of course, she only took the job with the understanding that a greenhouse will still be built near the Temple of Change in her absence, and a promise she’ll have plenty of time to tend the plants between diplomatic trips.
“Suppose Kasmira is giving her trainees a hard time already?” Meredy asks, sticking the last pin in place. She holds up a small mirror so I can admire her handiwork.
Nipper coos her approval from the spot she’s claimed in the middle of the bed.
“No doubt in my mind,” I answer after a moment, grinning at her. “I’m sure she torments them daily—when Elibeth isn’t keeping her busy.”
Valoria insisted that Kasmira take two gray-eyed apprentice weather mages to guide the winds on their voyage to Sarral. Partly to give her hands a break, and partly to allow Kasmira to focus on her new role as royal explorer and cartographer for Karthia. Naturally,Elibeth insisted on accompanying the captain as her new girlfriend, bringing a familiar leather-bound book of maps and notes with her. One I’ve known in Evander’s hands, then Meredy’s. There’s no question that Evander’s dream of seeing the world is still alive and well—and through it, so is he.
