Chapter 57
Ryker
My knees had hit the ground so long ago, they no longer felt like they belonged to me.
I didn’t feel anything.
Couldn’t hear the battlefield.
I couldn’t smell the blood.
I rocked.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Something lay in my arms.
No.
Someone.
Someone…someone I’d carried before.
Geryll.
My arms shook so hard, he almost slipped. I gripped his body like I’d never let him go.
I couldn’t let him fall into the bloody mud.
He was too pure for such gore.
Reality finally slammed back into me.
Geryll didn’t feel right.
He didn’t move.
He wasn’t breathing.
Shaking, I looked down.
I squeezed my eyes shut a moment later.
Half of him had been ripped from the waist down.
He was gone.
His eyes were still wide, like always. But fear had frozen in them.
He’d left this life horrified.
Because I hadn’t saved him.
I pressed a trembling hand to his chest, as if I could feel the flutter of him hidden somewhere.
Only brutal cold reflected back at me.
He was covered in blood.
On the armor I’d helped him pick out a year before, when he’d shot up five inches in just one summer, laughing that he’d almost caught up to my height.
On his cheeks, now even paler.
In his beautiful blond hair, which he always kept neat and pushed back.
The rain had messed it up, plastering the strands to his forehead.
My trembling hand rose and pushed his locks back, shaky fingers trying to rearrange them as he used to.
Useless.
The rain ruined them again.
“You shouldn’t have been here, Geryll,” I muttered.
Pain.
Pain was choking me.
No.
Those were the sobs trapped in my throat.
They’d killed him.
They’d killed Geryll.
Nothing made sense anymore.
“You need a healer,” someone called behind me.
Zandyr.
No healer could fix this.
No healer could bring him back.
Not even the gods.
I didn’t move. “Go away.”
Zandyr approached, touching my shoulder. Only then did I finally hear the blood dripping from me.
I couldn’t feel my wound.
I couldn’t feel anything except my soul breaking.
He inhaled sharply, looking down at me. And Geryll. Sweet, innocent Geryll.
I kept wiping the blood from his face, tears streaming down my cheeks.
He would have hated to meet the gods and ancestors like this.
I tried closing his mouth.
It had stiffened in that scream he’d never gotten to release.
It opened again, as if he was yelling at me from the afterlife.
Yelling for help.
I pressed his mouth closed again, sobs scratching at my throat.
He couldn’t die like this.
Not like this.
Not him.
Zandyr placed his hand on my unwounded shoulder, stilling my shaky hands.
My back heaved with sharp breaths.
“With his dying breath,” I choked out. “His father made me promise I’d take care of his son.”
The tears fell harder.
“He snuck back among the troops,” I said, voice brittle and catching on the words that shattered me.
How hadn’t I been able to tell?
Why hadn’t I checked every single warrior?
If I had discovered him, I could have protected him. I would have carried him on my back out of the battlefield even if I had to crawl him to safety.
I hugged his body to my chest again, rocking. Again and again.
“You need to let him go,” Zandyr muttered.
“NO!”
I gripped his body tighter to me.
“Ryker.” Zandyr leaned down, arms stretched for Geryll. “I’ll take him–”
“No!” I twisted away, like a feral animal, covering Geryll’s body with mine like I could protect him now.
He was so cold.
My tears fell onto his cheeks, mixing in with the blood.
“The gods are waiting for him,” Zandyr said gently. “Don’t keep his soul trapped between the worlds.”
“They can wait,” I said viciously.
I started wiping his cheek again. The same cheek which had dimpled the first time he’d successfully deflected Nadya’s attack.
He’d never smile again.
Geryll was dead.
He’d died right in front of me.
And what an awful death it had been, mauled by a monster which shouldn’t have existed.
“Ryker.” Zandyr’s tone turned forceful–and alarmed.
I knew what he saw.
His feared Commander breaking.
Broken.
Let him go, Ryker, a sweet, gentle voice echoed in my mind.
I shook my head, closing my eyes as if reality would change when I opened them again.
It didn’t.
He needs to be with his ancestors, that same voice whispered. They’re waiting for him.
They were.
They were trying to take him away from me.
He is not yours to keep. Set him free.
I sucked in breath after breath, but I still suffocated under the pain.
I looked down at Geryll’s face once more, so terrified and empty.
He wasn’t here anymore.
I embraced him one last time, uncaring of the blood that spilled onto me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into his hair.
Trembling, I rose, clutching his body, still powerless to let go.
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.
And I couldn’t carry Geryll back.
Not like this.
I couldn’t subject Nadya and Mrs. Thornbrew to seeing him torn like this. I would carry this burden alone.
Better if they remembered him as he’d been.
A soul too innocent for this world.
“Why did you follow us, Geryll?” I whispered.
No answer.