“I’ll carry him to the pyres.”
It was a risk. I knew that. Some clans would see me carrying bodies as a sign of both leadership and service. Obsidian might not. Obsidian was always invested in ferreting out any weakness and using it for their purposes. I understood the impulse, but being the nearest target was inconvenient.
Obsidian would be looking for someone to blame for their dead. The queen was too far away, and her son was very present.
And in truth, the queen’s wrath would not have descended on them without me. Every corpse found in the rubble was the result of my choices, and I did not want to be here for the accounting.
Had the story of Cara’s work with the unmaking knife been carried to them yet? If it had, there would be no denying that I was the one who had stolen it from them. Could they be convinced to still fight on our side against the queen, or would I lose them?
“Fine,” she said grudgingly, as if she were doing me the favor.
For now, I shouldered the corpse and trusted myself to talk my way through Obsidian’s wrath. I always talked my way through it.
As I lifted him, I caught a glimpse of his face and recognized him. Terick. He’d had a habit of giving candy out to mortal children to soothe them when the monsters had been struck down.
The pyres had already been built at the edge of the sea. She glanced at me and answered the question I hadn’t asked. “Their civilians had been building them for us.”
“How many?”
“Five. Not counting today.”
Griega removed his cloak, her fingers working at his collar, then laid it out over the street. I settled Terick onto the dark fabric, resting my hand briefly on his lifeless chest. “Rest now. You earned your sleep.”
As I rose, I caught a glimpse of Ander, cloak fluttering in the wind and sword sheathed, standing with one of Obsidian’s lead three.
Obsidian would go to him instead of me, given what they must suspect. Ander was not as mythic as I was, but he was certainly more tolerable to those who didn’t buy the legend. Those I knew adored me or hated me, with little between the two extremes.
I looked up from leveraging up part of a building to get at a body and saw Cara coming toward me. She was carrying a litter under one arm, a bit awkwardly, the other end dragging over the cobblestones. There was blood across her tunic, and she looked tired, but then, she always looked tired these days.
“You are excited to see her,”Shadowbane observed.
“I am not excited to see the would-be little murderess. I’m glad she’s alive.”
“Dramatic, fragile thing.”Shadowbane sniffed.“You knew she was alive and well already, or you would have hunted for her first.”
It was difficult to argue with the creature that occupied half my mind and spent centuries learning how to be annoying.“She is important to my plan.”
“She is your mate,”Shadowbane said merrily.“You should give her gifts and ask for her forgiveness. I see something shiny in the rubble!”
“Are you going to ask Lightbringer for her forgiveness?”
“Yes. I am not new to being her mate.”Heavily implied in his tone: my foolishness.
“She tried to kill me.”
“And yet your heart still leapt when you saw her.”
There was no point in arguing with Shadowbane.
Cara glanced around, and I thought for a moment she was carrying the litter to somewhere else—I was managing fine, carrying the bodies out alone—but then she came a few steps closer to me and dropped it on the rocks.
“I came to help you carry their dead,” she said.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Neither do you.”
Arguing with Cara was probably as useless as arguing with Shadowbane. I settled the body down onto the litter, then took up one end. She lifted the other, the difference in our heights making it awkward, but we made our way across the rubble anyway.
