But I took the first step toward the growing funeral pyre.
I’d already failed Geryll in life.
I couldn’t fail him in death.
I carried him one last time, uncaring of the chaos, the moans, the blood. Nothing else mattered right now but him.
In the distance, I heard the Serpent army retreating.
My boots trudged through the blood-sodden mud, stepping over fallen weapons which will never be picked up again.
Slaughter and gore.
War.
The pyre stood taller than me, a monument to our defeat.
The funeral oils Elysia had splashed onto the bodies hid the smell of death.
But nothing could hide the truth of it.
So many bodies.
We’d lost so many souls.
And I had to lay Geryll among them.
I stopped a foot away from the pyre.
I couldn’t move.
Zandyr came to stand next to me once more. “May the gods guide him into a better afterlife.”
“The gods weren’t merciful today,” I heard myself saying. That voice was too hard to be mine. “Neither yours nor mine.”
I found the courage to gaze down at Geryll one last time.
Instead of pain and guilt, anger rushed through my veins.
They’d taken Geryll and destroyed my world.
I would destroy theirs.
With that silent promise, I ran my hand through Geryll’s hair, cradled him to my body one last time, and laid him down gently on the pyre, face toward the sky so he wouldn’t see the other bodies.
I told myself he would be reunited with his father. He could watch over him better than I did.
I’d failed in my promise to him.
I wanted to roar.
Scream.
Kill someone.
I didn’t move.
Geryll wouldn’t even be entombed in the Memory Hall, with his family. On the battlefield, we followed the Capital’s tradition of burning the bodies.
