Instead…
Tears fills his eyes.
His shoulders hunch and his body becomes heavy in my arms.
“I’ve got you,” I say again, more determined than before to keep hold of him as he slumps and closes his eyes.
With a deep breath, I leverage myself upward and press my lips to his throat, letting my mouth move against his skin as I hum, a soft vibration.
I accept the weight of his body as he leans into me, and then I begin to speak, whispering the last rites for my father, but I extend them to his family, knowing my father would approve.
“For they shall see no more,” I say. “For they shall embrace the future as we are left in the past. Their songs. His visions. All of their hopes, spoken and unspoken, will now rest in silence. They are not dust, nor darkness, but a dream of what could be. It is not the end. For one day, we will See and Sing together again.”
Stellen opens his eyes and then he begins to harmonize the words I whispered, his voice sending shivers to my toes and warmth through my chest, the power of his melody, broken but mending, wrapping around my heart and anchoring me to him.
As Stellen’s singing fills the air, the earth moves beneath my father’s coffin, the vines separate, and slowly, my father begins to sink into the ground.
Gradually. Reverently. Until the vines close over the top of the coffin, binding him to this place of rest.
Silence falls after the last note fades.
Stellen and I stay like that for a long time as the chill air plucks at us, but no matter how hard the wind tugs, it can’t tear this moment of peaceaway from us.
I cling to the quiet because I know that when we leave this place, I will once again have to face what fate has dealt me.
A future fraught with blood and death.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Stellen
Thyra is breaking me and she doesn’t know it.
With the lightest touch. The softest words. The power of a song she doesn’t even know she’s singing, radiating from her body with every thud of her heart.
I thought that coming so close to my family’s gravestone would threaten my control and send me spiraling back into darkness, but Thyra stood between me and that sharp edge, pulling me away from it.
Only to bind me closer to her.
Now, we travel silently back to the palace with the final rays of daylight shining ahead of us in the west.
Nara picks up her pace, since we don’t want to get caught in a snowstorm, but as we approach the city, I face a dilemma.
To signal the city or not?
Another glance at the sky tells me an ice storm is brewing, and it’s building quickly. We can’t risk delays.
I raise my hand and Thyra doesn’t try to stop me when I release my power into the sky, sending first one, then anotherspear of ice spiraling into the air. Finally, the orb that will crash into them.
The explosion cascades across the sky, brilliant snowflakes catching the final glimmers of sunlight.
Just as well to send the population indoors. In the distance, snow billows and a wall of frost quickly approaches.
This snowstorm is sudden and sharp. Not unprecedented. But the damage it will unleash can’t be underestimated.
We need to get inside.Now.
“Hurry, Nara.”
