Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
Crymson
The Dead begin to collapse one by one almost immediately.
There’s no cry of pain or shock. Just a gentle relieved sigh with each who dissipates into ash.
It lingers in the air all around us. I stand at the dais, Boris’ blood coating my skin and everything else around me, watching as the Promised are freed from their eternal prison. Finally.
My heart feels lighter and somehow also heavier as each one disappears, but I know it’s because of the Queen of the Dead slowly walking toward me. I know it’s because of the understanding between us.
I had to rise, so she could fall.
The Dead Queen places her slender palm against my face, and I don’t shy away from it. I don’t cringe or cower or flinch. I hold strong just as she has all these years. She deserves no less.
Carver wraps his arm around his mother from behind, holding her tight, his shoulders shaking with a sob he doesn’t let out. Gone before he knew her, gone again when she was found. The pain he must be feeling, that they all must be feeling. I can’t even imagine.
I never knew my mother. But I feel family all around me now.
She pats his arms as he holds her, but her gaze remains on me.
“Thank you,” I breathe, my voice choking on the emotion in my throat.
Christian comes forward and touches her shoulder, giving her strength in the only way he knows how. Emotion I’m not prepared for flickers in his eyes, but he doesn’t break. Thorn wraps his arm around her shoulders from the other side, holding her just the same.
She smiles. “Thank you, Crymson Vaine,” she murmurs. “For freeing us all.”
She tilts back her head as the last Dead falls, and slowly, her flesh begins to flake away.
If it wasn’t so horrifying, she would almost be beautiful like this, burning away to the ash she rained down outside.
My men hold onto her until there’s nothing left to hold, until the sparks and ash float away on the wind, free at last.
It’s only then that I realize I’m crying, that my face is wet with tears I hadn’t known were leaking. I wipe at my cheeks, but they don’t stop. They flow as free as the Blood Lands now are.
Outside, the sun penetrates the smoke and ash for the first time in what must be centuries.
And all bow to the new Queen of the Kingdom of Blood and Thorns . . .