Lady for Embers (Lady of Darkness #4)

Chapter 14

Scarlett

S carlett hoisted herself up the rungs as she climbed the main mast of the ship. They had spent the morning on Briar’s ship paying respects to the fallen. She had learned that Fae are not entombed the way the mortals entomb their dead. No, the Fae give their bodies back to the element that ran through their veins when they crossed the Veil to the After. The body is burned, and then the ashes are offered up to the god of their element in a ceremony they call The Farewell. And while she had watched as the Fire Fae had worked to carefully burn the bodies of the thirty-two Fae warriors they had lost, she hadn’t been able to help. Panic had wrapped its icy claws around her chest, leaving her unable to move, scarcely able to breathe as she watched them continue to burn those of the ?re element until even their ashes were nothing. Because that had almost been Sorin. She’d nearly lost the contents of her stomach as Azrael carefully stored the ashes of the Earth Fae to be scattered among the soil whenever they reached dry ground again. And when Briar had released the ashes of the Water Fae, of Nakoa, back to the sea, she couldn’t keep the tears from spilling over any longer. She’d paid homage and respect to those Fae who had given their lives to protect her own, to protect the innocents, to protect their home.

She wanted to go and hide in her quarters with Sorin beside her, escape to the place where it was just him and her, where everything going on around them couldn’t seem to touch them. She wanted to lose herself in him, remind herself that she wasn’t watching his ashes burn away to nothing to return to Anala. But as much as she wanted to do that, this needed to be done more.