After everyone was buried, they held the ceremonies.
Each shifter tribe had their own ceremony for their dead, though Fox, Sofia, and many of the others stayed for all of them. Fox barely understood the words being spoken for most of the rites, but the emotions were easy enough to follow. He held Sofia’s hand through it all, tightening his hold when her hand began to shake, his thumb rubbing soothing circles. Her father sat on her other side, his hand on her other arm.
When Jacinta stood to say a few words about Micael, Sofia began to cry, silent tears trickling down her cheeks. Even Clarita, who sat among the resistance members, wept. She had respected Micael in the end, even if their relationship had been born out of a reluctant allianceagainst a common enemy. When Jacinta was done speaking, her own face wet with tears, Clarita stood.
She spoke in king’s tongue, her voice thick. “Your legacy is one of unity. We will not forget what you started, and we will drink to your memory in the sun cycles to come.Qe Quelia levi du spirdu ala Profundi en ayas velozi.”
The shifters repeated the last sentence as Clarita pulled Jacinta into a hug.
Fox asked Sofia what would become of the resistance now that Micael was gone, but she only shrugged, saying there were others willing to take over. Jacinta, perhaps, or even Flor. Or no one. The resistance didn’t need a leader for its mission to thrive.
“This isn’t the end,” she said, her voice clear. And Fox didn’t doubt her words, looking out over the crowd that had gathered. Many of the shifters sat within their own tribes, but others mixed together, holding hands, crying. Harlow would hate himself for what he’d done—bringing the people of Wueco together against the kingdom. He’d feared the Dragonborn and what they could do when they were alone.
They weren’t alone anymore.
After the burials were complete, they built the pyre to burn the Dereyans.
A few of the shapeshifters looked scandalized until Fox, with the help of Clarita, explained to them that the Dereyans didn’t have the same beliefs around the dead and the afterlife, but he noticed that many of them still chose not to watch the burning.
The party that night was no less raucous, the songs and the dancing just as celebratory in honor of the dead. It was nothing like the formal affair of his brother’s death or the somber funeral he’d attended to Falais when his father’s parents had died.
They ate their dinner next to the fire as they’d done the night before, the warmth radiating from the flames easily keeping the mountain winds at bay. The sunset was a fiery affair, the clouds along the horizon turning bright red and vibrant pink. Nothing like the sunsets in Suvi. The same color as the pyres they’d watched burn that afternoon.
He closed his eyes, starting a prayer to the kings, but something stoppedhim—a tickle of something in the back of his mind. It felt like the memory of a dream, slipping through his fingers like sand every time he tried to grasp it.
“Are you okay?” Sofia’s voice was laced with concern, and he opened his eyes to see her staring at him, eyebrows furrowed.
“I was just thinking…” he trailed off, looking back at the fire. He didn’t know how to say the next words. He didn’t want to watch her face as he said them. “Javi told me I’d stopped breathing. He told me I had been dead.”
“We made a mistake,” Sofia said, quickly.
Fox nodded slowly, something stuck in his throat. Like a word slipped from memory, balanced on the tip of his tongue. “Probably. It was a weird day.”
“You mean when I summoned fire down from the sky? Right after I magically healed from being speared by ice? It all seemed very normal to me.”
Fox laughed, running a hand down his face. “Do you think we both died out in the rainforest the first time and we’re both just dreaming now?”
Sofia knocked her shoulder against his. “Not a bad afterlife.”
A flash of blackness invaded his vision—then a pink star in an empty night sky.
“My mom wants to talk to you both,”Chalia broke in a second later. Fox looked up, but she wasn’t around them.“We’re by the lake. Bring furs, it’s cooler here.”
Sofia was already standing, snatching up the fur she’d been sitting on and wrapping it over her shoulders. Fox grabbed his and pulled it over his shoulders, following her as she wove through the bonfires and dancers.
The lake was perfectly still, its surface reflecting the stars, as if a portal to the sky itself. Aurelia and Chalia rested on the edge of the lake, alone.
They waited until Fox and Sofia made it down to them. Chalia reached down with her head, blowing a cool breath across each of them in greeting before sitting back up.
Three angry scars stretched across Chalia’s neck. She had clawed out the “J” that had been carved there, hiding it beneath her own self-inflicted wounds. Sofia’s eyes burned with tears to see them.
“Thank you for coming,”Aurelia said, her almost purple eyes seeming to shine in the darkness as she blinked down at them.“First, I want to thank you both. I had given up on our disappeared flock—on Eha and Zuni and Crax. I had even given up on Chalia. You brought them back to us. You reminded me of why we fled, but also made me realize that our reasons for hiding four hundred sun cycles ago may not stand firm today. Perhaps it was time for change.”
“I am sorry for the ones you lost because of this war,” Sofia said. Aurelia inclined her head in acknowledgement.
“Now, my daughter says you have questions, and I think it is time we talked.”
“You know something,” Sofia said, more a statement than a question.
