“Do you know where?—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Andrian’s interruption was biting. “None of it matters anymore.” He grabbed the back of a chair, pulling it across the floor. He set it with a thump beside Mariah’s head, dropping into it heavily.
This weariness of loss, this exhaustion of suffering…he just wanted it to end. But he also couldn’t leave.
To leave would admit that it was over, that she was gone. He wasn’t ready to do that yet.
Sebastian released a frustrated, strangled sound, before stomping into the back of the building.
There was a soft shuffling, then the quiet sound of slippered footsteps. Anniliese halted beside Andrian. She gasped softly.
“Is… Is she?—”
“Don’t,” he choked out. “Don’t say it. Don’t ask it. Please.”
She fell silent, but her hands tremored at her sides.
Sebastian returned, carrying a simple shovel. He halted beside the table, pinning Andrian with a hard stare.
“I am going to bury my brother. You should do the same for?—”
Andrian shoved up from his chair, Anniliese jumping back with a startled yelp. “You aren’t going to fuckingtouchher,” he snarled. “No one is.”
Sebastian’s expression softened, and gods, it made Andrian want to connect his fist with his face. “She’sgone, Andrian,” he murmured, like talking to a wild beast. “You can feel it. I know you can. There’s nothing else we can do.”
Andrian felt like a horse was standing on his chest, cracking open his ribs. He was sinking, buckling, swaying, dying?—
“What are these?”
Anniliese’s question snagged something in him, pulling him from the caverns of his descent. He and Sebastian followed Anniliese’s pointed finger.
To the Marks on Mariah’s hands and forearms. They still faintly glowed and pulsed, opalescent rainbow light drifting off her skin.
Andrian answered on instinct.
“They’re from beings beyond gods. Creators of the gods, if what they said is true. They call themselves the Crieré…”
Realization struck him like the hard edge of a hammer. Wild, desperate hope bloomed with it, snaking through his ruined self like a winding, corrupted vine.
“Don’t, Andrian.” Sebastian’s stare was hard, as if he could read the pathways of Andrian’s thoughts. “Don’t do that to yourself. She is gone.”
Andrian’s fingers gingerly touched Mariah’s skin. He traced the glowing patterns, the way they pulsed beneath her skin. “Then why are the Marks still here? Magic can’t thrive without a host.”
He didn’t know if the Marks were even magic. Yet it was something. And something was all he had, the only raft he had in the dark abyss of his grief.
Sebastian shook his head. “You said it yourself. They were placed there by something greater than gods. We can’t possibly understand how things like that work.”
“We can’t?” Andrian was tired of this. Tired of trying to tell the one man who should be as desperate for this hope as he was. He walked around the table, halting in front of Sebastian. His hands flashed, ripping open the front of Sebastian’s shirt.
“Hey, what the fuck?—”
“Look.” His finger drove into Sebastian’s chest, right over his heart. Sebastian’s gaze dropped, his eyes going wide.
“If it means nothing, then why is your Mark gone? Why is there nothing there but a scar?” He tugged down the collar of his own shirt. His chest was the same as Sebastian’s—no more roaring dragon over his heart. Only the raised, ragged scar, the only sign it hadn’t all been some crazed, delusional dream.
“Mine is gone, too. And I would bet every Armature—every Marked man back in Verith—is noticing the same loss.” He pointed back at Mariah’s prone form, at her still-glowing Marks. The words were tumbling from his mouth now, a dam set free.
“But why are hers still there? And not just on her skin, butglowing?”
