Page 102 of Song of the Dead

The toasts go on and on. The wine is still flowing when our small group of necromancers goes to make our usual rounds in the Deadlands.

It’s still flowing when we return.

Meredy sweeps me into a dance, and we don’t stop even when it’s light.

After all, we Karthians love a good party.

***

There are flowers blooming on Evander’s grave. Long, purplish stalks of budding sage cover the earth under which his body is concealed, though they sprout no farther than the boundaries of the graves beside his—his father’s and his grandmother’s.

“Look at all those,” I tell Meredy with a yawn, still exhausted from the Festival of Grapes yesterday. Maybe it was two days ago. Everything’s a bit hazy thanks to Valoria’s wine.

“That’s a lot of sage. Pretty, though,” Meredy says, squeezing my hand as the late afternoon sun disappears behind a bank of clouds. She’s been coming here with me every day since Hadrien’s defeat.

Softer, she adds a moment later, “Sage flowers mean eternal life, if memory serves.”

I nod, grateful for Meredy’s steadying presence as we kneel together among the out-of-season blossoms. I begin to pluck the stalks around me, weaving them into a crown as I think. Flowers, real flowers, only bloom on someone’s grave when their spirit has a message for someone in the living world. But the spirits that send those flowers are in the Deadlands—or so we’ve always believed.

Maybe Evander really is gone for good, but I don’t think there’s any mistaking why these flowers are here, with him. Maybe his spirit is wherever the spirits from the Deadlands go after the water there carries them away. Maybe there are worlds upon worlds we can’t and won’t know until we’re done with this life. Maybe we have forever to learn and love and exist—or perhaps, like I’ve always thought, we only have the now.

But if the past few months have shown me anything, it’s that the world is so much more than what I’ve been taught, so I’ll have to side with forever.

Tying off the ends of my flower crown, I nestle it gently in Meredy’s wine-red hair as Nipper and Lysander chase each other among the surrounding headstones.

“Want to talk about anything?” Meredy offers, lacing her fingers through mine. Her emerald eyes skim the sea of sage flowers before returning to my face.

There’s no shortage of things to discuss. How the necromancer trainees swear they saw their first Shade today; how the provinces with the richest farmland are preparing for the arrival of the first Ezoran families; how Simeon and Danial are about to have the time of their lives on a much-needed quiet getaway to Dargany’s warm southern coast; how Jax managed to buy the Rotten Rose with his savings and move his things into Valoria’s chambers in the same day, no doubt the best day of his life; how Grenwyr City will be rebuilt with Valoria’s designs; how so many citizens have been hired to do the job; how they’ll be building air balloons next.

But what spills from my lips as I hold Meredy’s gaze is “You. I want to talk about you and me, and what we’re going to do with this gorgeous afternoon.”

“Suppose we should take a romantic trip to Dargany, like Si and Danial?” she asks, snapping off a flower stalk and blowing the petals into the wind.

“Why not take a tour of every province?” I counter, pulling her into my arms. “We can start now, if you like. But honestly, I’m not in a hurry...”

I kiss her carefully, slowly, until the stars come out. There’s no real rush to go anywhere, because we’re already home. Better still, we’re alive. And if the flowers in my love’s hair are any indication, no matter what darkness may be lurking on the path ahead, we have all the time in the world—and thensome.