Page 6 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

She didn’t deserve the crown the new queen had laid upon her head. Or the raven mournfully singing its lament over her body—the familiar Poe had tried and failed to dissuade from burning with her master.

Numb.

There wasn’t another word for the hollow chasm where my heart should’ve been.

Totems were placed. Gifts offered. Wreaths laid. Only when Cali gave a jerky nod did Jo lead her away.

Wordlessly, heads bowed, we followed.

Together, we trudged up the long path to the shore and fell into line with the Wings, all wearing mourning black. Faces somber.

Cali’s hand slipped into mine, and I squeezed her fingers. Hopefully, it offered reassurance I had no business giving. In silence, the formation filled in, one hierarchy after another, until only two living souls remained on the water.

Freya and Lana could’ve been statues for how little they moved.

Long minutes passed before I looked sidelong at the gathering of stone-faced Grayshellians. Jaws set. Fully armed. All at attention, as if we hadn’t gotten our asses handed to us. As if thousands weren’t wounded and hundreds hadn’t burned through every ounce of their power. As if they hadn’t lost… everything.

August stood at the center of the front row.

We’d waited three days for the funeral, hoping more would wake after burning out. But we were out of time. That truth etched itself into every face above black-and-gold armor.

Still, he didn’t move. Neither did the few surviving members of his coven.

All the while, I stood there like a ghost. A phantom watching from above as my body shifted and turned, as though my limbs had been fastened to a marionette. Waiting. The chill of the ocean mist stung my face, my chest tight with the grim reality we all now faced.

And Grayshell waited.

Waited for the grieving widow draped over her mate.

Ansel Callahan had been made whole. Pieced back together by menders as a show of respect before he was sent to his final resting place. Cleaned and dressed. But he was only one of countless dead. The first of too many departed souls to comprehend.

Cali’s soft sob constricted my throat as I watched Freya lower herself to kneel beside them.

Her soul parents. So briefly reunited.

She had it. That… thing. That connection and camaraderie with the souls who’d brought her into this world. She loved them. Was loved in return. I’d seen the way Ansel cared for his ‘babygirl,’ and somehow, that made it worse. Worse than the shattered connection Mom left in her wake.

Because they meant it.

The ‘I love yous.’

The forethought to plan for her. To protect her, even from Alvara.

The sacrifice.

The Old General paid the ultimate fucking price to ensure Freya lived. That I lived. Because I meant something to his daughter.

And somehow, that was worse. Worse than Freya’s betrayal. Her manipulations. Worse than my mother handing me to Nix. Than my cousin’s sick machinations.

They’d been fables when I was growing up. Folklore.

Now they were dead in front of me.

For me.

A price too steep to ever repay.

But I could start here and now.