“Anything you’re comfortable sharing. What was he like?”
Her change in topic blindsided me, the way grief always did—gone for a while, only to resurface, breaking me open like a fresh wound. To this day, it remained the one cyclical upheaval I rarely saw coming.
Visions of my brother manifested, accompanied by unconditional affection. With it, a new type of longing swarmed my being, stoked by Aspen’s breath against my lips. After broaching the subject last night, I wanted to share more about this with her.
Because I waited too long, Aspen flinched. “I’m sorry. If you don’t want to talk—”
“He was spirited,” I remembered. “He feared warhorses but admired them from afar. He loved straw flowers, the color blue, and all manner of birds. He was eternal.”
Aspen’s mouth tipped into a fond grin. “What was his name?”
“Raven,” I whispered.
I had not voiced his name since I lost him, the letters delicate on my tongue. Then the rest came out, washing from me like water from the creek.
“The day my brother died, he was birdwatching in the woods,” I recounted. “As a squire bent on proving myself, I’d been training in a neighboring copse a handful of yards away. Because Raven lived with the same condition as Nicu, I had made a pebble trail for him to follow, so he wouldn’t lose his way—”
I cut myself off, anguish lacerating my throat. “Renegade thieves identified Raven as a born soul and surrounded him.”
Pictures flashed through my head. Raven’s scream tearing me from my stance. My legs pounding through the underbrush. Not fast enough, not strong enough, not close enough. Like Nicu at that age, my brother failed to recognize friend from adversary, and so they besieged him before he knewwhat was happening. More than greed over his fine clothing, hateful prejudice spurred their actions.
I tore into the clearing with a roar. Blood splattered the grass. Red soaked my tunic and spritzed my face. Eventually, the thieves stopped howling for mercy.
And so had Raven.
My sweet brother. My whole world. My first love.
The struggle had ended with a knife in his stomach. Among the carnage, I sank to my knees and cradled his bleeding body, my bellows flying into the sky.
“I screamed so loud, I could not speak for days afterward,” I finished.
“Aire.” Aspen’s reply wobbled from her lips. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Wasn’t it?
For all I could sense and predict, I hadn’t foreseen Raven’s death. I had been training myself to defend the citizens of my kingdom, yet I’d been helpless to save the one person who mattered most. I could play the savior for this nation, rescue millions, win a war.
But I would never win back my brother.
Oftentimes, the memories tore at my flesh. In the past, I welcomed the feeling, relied on it as a morbid sort of reckoning.
What did I have, if not my bereavement?
What did I deserve, if not my guilt?
At the same time, I had detested myself for succumbing to these impulses. Basking in loss made me lethargic. Only the sword, my service, and my kinship with the Royals kept me sane back then.
In private, I sobbed.
In public, I drilled myself.
Never again would I fail to protect another person.
Aspen braced my jaw, kept my head aloft instead of letting it hang in shame. A sniffling noise caught my attention, ripping me from the story. At some point, my eyes had drifted to the ground, but now they returned to Aspen’s face, where a single tear trickled across the leaf vines imprinting her flesh.
In the years I’d known her, this woman had never once cried. Not during her stint with the Masters. Not after Merit’s death. Not over her mother. Not from the pain in her flesh. For she believed crying made her vulnerable.
Yet she wept now. For Raven.
