Chapter 69
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
FOX
It took two days to sweep the camp and collect the dead.
The clearing the soldiers had created to house the dragons became the burial ground.
The shifters and the Dragonborn were buried first, the dragons helping to dig the graves, while Sofia, Javi, and Fox took charge of creating markers for each body.
Sofia insisted everyone be buried with their names etched onto stones with her dagger.
Fox insisted on helping after he noticed the way her hand shook.
She added a stone for her mother and Ian, though she didn’t have their bodies.
After everyone was buried, they held the ceremonies.
Each shifter tribe had their own ceremony for their dead, though Fox, Sofia, and many of the others stayed for all of them.
Fox barely understood the words being spoken for most of the rites, but the emotions were easy enough to follow.
He held Sofia’s hand through it all, tightening his hold when her hand began to shake, his thumb rubbing soothing circles.
Her father sat on her other side, his hand on her other arm.
When Jacinta stood to say a few words about Micael, Sofia began to cry, silent tears trickling down her cheeks.
Even Clarita, who sat among the resistance members, wept.
She had respected Micael in the end, even if their relationship had been born out of a reluctant alliance against a common enemy.
When Jacinta was done speaking, her own face wet with tears, Clarita stood.
She spoke in king’s tongue, her voice thick. “Your legacy is one of unity. We will not forget what you started, and we will drink to your memory in the sun cycles to come. Qe Quelia levi du spirdu ala Profundi en ayas velozi.”
The shifters repeated the last sentence as Clarita pulled Jacinta into a hug.
Fox asked Sofia what would become of the resistance now that Micael was gone, but she only shrugged, saying there were others willing to take over. Jacinta, perhaps, or even Flor. Or no one. The resistance didn’t need a leader for its mission to thrive.
“This isn’t the end,” she said, her voice clear.
And Fox didn’t doubt her words, looking out over the crowd that had gathered.
Many of the shifters sat within their own tribes, but others mixed together, holding hands, crying.
Harlow would hate himself for what he’d done—bringing the people of Wueco together against the kingdom.
He’d feared the Dragonborn and what they could do when they were alone.
They weren’t alone anymore.
After the burials were complete, they built the pyre to burn the Dereyans.
A few of the shapeshifters looked scandalized until Fox, with the help of Clarita, explained to them that the Dereyans didn’t have the same beliefs around the dead and the afterlife, but he noticed that many of them still chose not to watch the burning.
The party that night was no less raucous, the songs and the dancing just as celebratory in honor of the dead. It was nothing like the formal affair of his brother’s death or the somber funeral he’d attended to Falais when his father’s parents had died.
They ate their dinner next to the fire as they’d done the night before, the warmth radiating from the flames easily keeping the mountain winds at bay.
The sunset was a fiery affair, the clouds along the horizon turning bright red and vibrant pink.
Nothing like the sunsets in Suvi. The same color as the pyres they’d watched burn that afternoon.
He closed his eyes, starting a prayer to the kings, but something stopped him—a tickle of something in the back of his mind. It felt like the memory of a dream, slipping through his fingers like sand every time he tried to grasp it.
“Are you okay?” Sofia’s voice was laced with concern, and he opened his eyes to see her staring at him, eyebrows furrowed.
“I was just thinking…” he trailed off, looking back at the fire. He didn’t know how to say the next words. He didn’t want to watch her face as he said them. “Javi told me I’d stopped breathing. He told me I had been dead.”
“We made a mistake,” Sofia said, quickly.
Fox nodded slowly, something stuck in his throat. Like a word slipped from memory, balanced on the tip of his tongue. “Probably. It was a weird day.”
“You mean when I summoned fire down from the sky? Right after I magically healed from being speared by ice? It all seemed very normal to me.”
Fox laughed, running a hand down his face. “Do you think we both died out in the rainforest the first time and we’re both just dreaming now?”
Sofia knocked her shoulder against his. “Not a bad afterlife.”
A flash of blackness invaded his vision—then a pink star in an empty night sky.
“My mom wants to talk to you both,” Chalia broke in a second later. Fox looked up, but she wasn’t around them. “We’re by the lake. Bring furs, it’s cooler here.”
Sofia was already standing, snatching up the fur she’d been sitting on and wrapping it over her shoulders. Fox grabbed his and pulled it over his shoulders, following her as she wove through the bonfires and dancers.
The lake was perfectly still, its surface reflecting the stars, as if a portal to the sky itself. Aurelia and Chalia rested on the edge of the lake, alone.
They waited until Fox and Sofia made it down to them. Chalia reached down with her head, blowing a cool breath across each of them in greeting before sitting back up.
Three angry scars stretched across Chalia’s neck. She had clawed out the “J” that had been carved there, hiding it beneath her own self-inflicted wounds. Sofia’s eyes burned with tears to see them.
“Thank you for coming,” Aurelia said, her almost purple eyes seeming to shine in the darkness as she blinked down at them.
“First, I want to thank you both. I had given up on our disappeared flock—on Eha and Zuni and Crax. I had even given up on Chalia. You brought them back to us. You reminded me of why we fled, but also made me realize that our reasons for hiding four hundred sun cycles ago may not stand firm today. Perhaps it was time for change.”
“I am sorry for the ones you lost because of this war,” Sofia said. Aurelia inclined her head in acknowledgement.
“Now, my daughter says you have questions, and I think it is time we talked.”
“You know something,” Sofia said, more a statement than a question.
“I think you know it, too, even if you do not have words for it.”
“Chalia and I are connected,” Sofia said, words careful. “More than just a friendship.”
Aurelia’s nostrils flared, her feathers ruffling. “I was young when the massacre happened. Only a little over two hundred sun cycles old, barely old enough to lay an egg. There was a lot I did not know—things that have been lost to death or simply passed from memory.”
Aurelia stared up at the sky as she spoke, her voice full of a wistful pain, and Fox wondered what grief felt like four hundred sun cycles after you lost someone. What was time like for a being who lived so long?
“But I remember,” she continued, “that we used to talk about the bonded ones. Dragons who bonded with humans. Most of them died in the massacre, killed alongside their humans.”
“What did it mean? To have a bond? I can use Chalia’s magic. That’s how I called the fire down.”
Aurelia made a sound that Fox thought might have been a laugh. “Lightning. The fire from the sky is called lightning. And yes, I believe you can channel Chalia’s magic. It is why you can heal. It is why your pain and your anger hurt her the same as it hurts you.”
“What does it mean? Can any human bond? What happens when I die?”
“These are the questions I cannot answer. But I know someone who can. I have prayed on it and think it is the best course. One that Quelia would approve of. I think you should go speak with Bruta.”
Fox exchanged a look with Sofia. Bruta was the dragon who Chalia had told stories about—the elder dragon who was gone now.
“Chalia said she’s dead.”
Aurelia gave a snort of derision. “Not dead. She lives in the deadlands now, communing with Quelia. If anyone knows how the bond works, it is she. I can direct you to where she resides, but you will have to go alone, and there is no guarantee she will speak with you.”
Sofia opened her mouth, but she never got her question out. A dragon’s roar split the night, the slope going quiet at once. Fox’s stomach dropped, and Sofia’s hand went to her belt. She was wearing her dagger despite the festivities. Fox was glad for it.
Yet, a second later, when Aurelia let out a roar, it wasn’t one of fear or anger. Even Fox could hear the joy ringing through the vibrations.
Sofia gasped, and Fox followed her gaze into the sky. A tiny dragon the size of a wolf was flying behind Ielo. Its wings were nearly invisible against the black night, but its pink skin glowed as it made a crooked, undulating path across the sky and down toward the lake, unsteady in its body.
A moment later, Fox was face to face with a baby dragon, its toothless mouth open in a high-pitched howl. The rest of the dragons, scattered as they had been around the slope, descended until they surrounded Fox, Sofia, and the baby.
Aurelia moved forward, her nose nudging the newest member of their flock.
“Gavil and Bia’s child. The first dragon born in over forty sun cycles,” Chalia said, her words meant for only Fox and Sofia. “He’ll get his name at the end of his first sun cycle, but for now he is known as Ours.”
Sofia’s hand slipped into Fox’s, and he turned to see she was crying again. He pulled her closer until he had wrapped his hands around her.
“Are you okay?” he asked, a whisper in her ear.
“Yeah—yes,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I think everything is going to be okay.”