Chapter 6 #2
I miss my mother. I miss Marcella and Gray. I miss…
The thought strikes me, and it is an odd sensation—having anger and gratitude slam into each other. “Is there still time to add one more name? I’d… I’d like to say goodbye to someone else as well.” Even if I’m sure Bathara held a ceremony for all their dead already. I want to say goodbye.
“Of course. Just tell me the name.”
My bottom lip quivers, and I pinch my front teeth into the skin of it to hold it steady. “Griff. His name was Griff. He was an aether-wielder. Was someone who was pure and true and good.” I pause, my eyes hardening. “And he was murdered. By you.”
Casimir does not react to my words, his expression instead remaining steady. Without breaking his gaze from mine, he lifts a hand, flicks his wrist, and a red-gold light sizzles across the wood. Shortly after, a Mortui blooms next to it. “All finished,” he murmurs.
I glance at the new carvings on the pyre. “Thank you,” I croak, the swell in my chest intensifying.
“You are welcome.” His tone remains gentle, despite the sharpness I speared at him. “Now, it is time we begin.”
Casimir strides forward and addresses the sea of sad eyes spread before us.
“My brothers. My sisters. Tonight, we honor our dead. Those who valiantly gave their lives to our cause. To our future. Knowing the pain they would suffer, they opened themselves to the madness. Allowed corruption to burn through their veins. But their sacrifices were not hollow.” He swivels his chin, scanning the faces in the crowd.
“A new dawn is rising,” he declares, his powerful voice dripping with passion.
“And with it, the long night will finally bleed. Justice will weep. The world will be remade.”
Casimir turns and finds my gaze, stretching his hand out for me to take. At the gesture, my heart picks up speed in my chest. What the hell is he doing?
With a subtle nod, Casimir beckons me toward him. There is something magnetic about the gesture, pulling me into his orbit. I slip my hand into his, and he guides me forward. Presents me to his people, who watch with a mix of tears and curiosity in their eyes.
He leans down and whispers into my ear, “I’m going to draw on magic. All I want you to do is allow yourself to feel what you recognize—let it enter your veins.” Before I agree, he pulls back from me, keeping my hand in his.
Casimir continues addressing the crowd.
“A light—brighter and more powerful than any other—has finally appeared, and we have brought her home. Brothers, sisters…. lend me your hearts, and allow me to carry your pain tonight as we grieve as one. And as we light the sacred flame and the names of those passed rise to the heavens, do not let despair weigh on you. For in their ashes, hope has returned.”
Casimir lifts my hand above our heads, and a warm sensation rushes my veins.
Doing as he asked, I allow the trails of magic that feel familiar—that I know with utter certainty I have touched before—course through me.
At the decision, my skin heats, rising in temperature at an alarming rate.
When the crowd erupts in murmurs, I glance up at my right arm.
At the arm Casimir holds in the air like a prize.
My wielder’s mark is glowing.
Along the thread-like marks—all the way from the tips of my fingers, into the arcs cresting at the base of my shoulder—iridescent light glows brilliantly like a coursing river.
It flows into the flowers that blossomed from sleeping buds into fully-bloomed, unfurled petals, where the light glitters and pulses like living seams.
A man near the front of the crowd places the back of his fist over the right side of his chest. Again, away from the heart. Just like Neilina. “Sithraki,” he begins chanting. “Sithraki.”
A chorus of voices join him, and within seconds, the entirety of the crowd has placed the back of their fists over the right side of their chests and are chanting the word Sithraki over and over again.
I look up at Casimir. “What are they saying?”
He watches the crowd, tired eyes glittering. “They’re saying… Savior.”
A sharp pang twists in my heart. “I am not a savior.” Flashes of my unchecked power rip through me similar to how it ripped through flesh, staining my conscience. The guilt is like lead in my stomach; a living creature whose merciless claws have forever marred something within me.
Casimir drops my arm and faces me. There is a keen sharpness waiting in his gaze.
“You could be.” Then, without warning, he steps toward me and grips my shoulders, spinning me around.
It puts my back on full display for the crowd.
The mark I have spent hours upon hours staring at, trying to understand it, warms against my skin.
“Sithraki!” Casimir bellows, his fingers remaining clasped to my shoulders.
The crowd chants louder; I grit my teeth.
Being put on display like this…
It dredges up shadows of a past I clawed tooth and nail to escape. One where a cruel king forced me to dance and wear ridiculous outfits while hungry eyes devoured me like I was their property to claim.
Anger courses through me. My skin burns hotter. The colors zipping along my wielder’s mark shift from iridescent to a deep maroon.
“This was not part of our deal.”
Casimir slides his eyes to me, his gaze landing on the new color saturating my skin.
He swiftly turns me back around and steps in front of me.
Then, he lifts a hand, and the crowd falls silent.
“Brothers. Sisters. It is time we say goodbye.” Casimir doesn’t so much as look at me when he faces the altar.
Three female singers with markings painted across their bodies and kohl lining their eyes step forward, kneeling into the dirt a few paces away from the pyre.
One of the girls with flowers twined into her braid slides the drum strapped to her back forward, and she begins beating against the head of it.
Within seconds, the three girls are humming in tune to the rhythm of the drum, filling the air with an ethereal melody bleeding with sorrow, equal parts haunting and beautiful.
The girl with cascading white hair opens her mouth and sings in a language I don’t recognize, and suddenly, I find the edges of this world melting away. As if I am falling under some spell.
A flicker of light flashes in my peripheral, and I turn back to find Casimir wielding a bow and arrow forged entirely in flames.
Magic, I realize. He is wielding fire magic to create the weapon, the glowing tendrils pinched between two fingers as he draws tension on the conjured string, ready to send the burning arrow soaring.
There is a stir in my chest at the sight of it.
Still not looking at me, but instead with his eyes glued to the altar, where a pyre climbs up and up into the sky, Casimir asks, “Would you like to say the ceremonial words for your mother and friend before I release my arrow?”
My breath stutters in my throat. Still, I nod, squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin.
I close my eyes and allow the haunting voices pouring into the sky to swirl around me, filling the hollows of my bones and fueling the beats of my heart.
I picture my mother’s face. I remember her mauve eyes, her warm hugs, and the love I felt when she’d call out to me.
Come, my sweet flower, she would always say.
I remember Griff and his goofy smiles. The way he dropped himself atop of Marcella and me that day in the hills, laughing alongside us.
I remember his nervousness as he stood outside my door, smiling as he fell helplessly for a fiery girl.
I allow myself to see it all—to remember.
I dig the details from the shadows and hold them up to the light.
I reopen my eyes. “In Death you walk. In Life I remain. Bound together, yet neither the same. Safe travels, weary souls, for I shall see you soon. But until that day, I’ll give you life by remembering you.”
Casimir releases his burning arrow, and it soars through the air in a flash of brilliant, golden light.
The pyre goes up in flames, swallowed immediately by a swell of heat.
As the tongues of vermillion climb higher, the Mortui flowers begin to glow—the delicate traces of their petals not crumbling to ash, but instead fluttering into the sky like a trail of endless iridescent fireflies.
So, as dusk officially bows to the night—as three voices mingle together in harmonies that lasso around the heart of this world—a million fluttering pieces glow brilliantly as they scatter across the horizon, rising up to the heavens alongside the smoke, making the world appear as if the night sky has fallen, and we are surrounded by living stars.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Casimir says from behind me.
“Breathtaking,” I whisper, my neck craned back as my eyes hungrily sweep across the sky, watching the petals ascend like remnants of living souls.
Though I don’t look at him, I feel Casimir’s eyes on me. “It helps my people say their goodbyes. It is like getting to watch those we have lost travel on to their next journeys.” A pause. “Do you feel like you have gotten to say goodbye?”
I watch a petal float through the sky, rising higher and higher into the night. Its blue core is bright, but the gleam of white cast around its edges makes it stand out against the rest, the light both soft and radiant.
“Yes,” I answer after a passing silence, my eyes glued to that glowing piece. “I finally do.”