She reduces her pace.
As we draw closer to the gravestone, I finally make out the vines Stellen described.
Vibrant and green, but far more delicate than I pictured, they spring up across the ground in a large, circular patch encompassing the gravestone. At least twenty paces in diameter, the earth visible between them is rich and brown.
Yet the circular edge is abrupt. The snow piled up around the warm space is inches deep, and it’s hard to reconcile the existence of these vines in this otherwise-barren field.
Nara draws to a stop, and I’m now close enough to read the two names etched into the gravestone.
Two lone names and nothing more.
Sineria Nas’Lethian.
Safra Nas’Lethian.
I don’t know which is his mother and which is his sister, but this single gravestone is clearly for both of them.
“I buried them together. The way they died.” Stellen’s voice is unbearably strained, and it worries me.
Before I can twist to him, he slides to the ground, his next steps heavy, his focus on the coffin.
While he works to remove the ropes, I slip off Nara’s back but remain at her side.
Stellen pushes the coffin forward and stops near me, his muscles bunched where they press to the end of the icy case.
“Where?” he asks without looking at me, his focus forward, his shoulders tense.
I point to a spot a few paces to the left of the gravestone, parallel to where his family must lie. “If that’s okay with you.”
Without a word, he slides the coffin forward over the edge of the ice and along the surface of the vines.
His movements are overly focused. Wooden. Severein how tightly he’s controlling himself. Brutal in the way he never once looks at his family’s gravestone.
As soon as my father’s casket is in position, Stellen sinks to his knees, his back to me and his voice still tight. “I can coax the vines to move. They will create a grave and welcome your father into the earth. You should deliver his last rites now.”
Carefully, I step across the greenery, edging my way between the vibrant strands so I don’t crush them too much.
I reach Stellen’s side.
One look at his face tells me he’s barely here.
“Stellen?”
He flinches when my hand brushes his shoulder.
I won’t be deterred.
He gave me the chance to let go of my sadness. I need to give him the same.
I lower myself beside him, slip my arms around his waist, and angle myself forward so I can rest my chin to his chest. “You’re doing this for me, even though it’s hurting you.”
His gaze lowers to mine and I’m reminded of that fearful moment when he pulled me away from the dark cliff in the bloodlands. He drew me to safety, and his frozen whisper brought with it a harmony so calming, he might have reached into my soul as he told me…
“I’ve got you,” I repeat to him now, my voice a bare whisper in the heavy silence of this field.
His forehead puckers and the corners of his mouth turn down as he returns my gaze with much the same ferocity he expressed when I was facing death that night, his beautiful features razor-sharp and icy and so wraithlike that I’m certain he can’t possibly belong in this world.
For a fraught second, I expect he’s going to push me away. Maybe even snarl something defensive.
