Chapter 10
Mystique stood facing into the winds, drawing her cloak tight as the cold bit at her exposed skin. She was looking down over Jeth City from her position on the highest battlements of Jeth Keep.
Even from her great height above, she could see the plain gray and tan stone of the houses and buildings below, and the speckles of red everywhere that decorated them now as they had not three days ago.
The red banners of mourning, hung everywhere the loyal citizens of Jeth could possibly reach.
The symbol of the city, splashed against a black background, was displayed in respect for the death of one of the cherished Pack.
As usual, the slightest thought of Amando made her chest constrict and sent hot tears searing into already raw eyes.
Still, she’d rather watch the distant sadness of the city than remain within the keep where the loss was felt so keenly, so much closer.
It was as though every male in the Pack had been stabbed deep in the belly, a wound slowly bleeding, killing them with as much pain as imaginable.
They walked, they talked, they drew breath, but their spirit had abandoned them.
Never had she expected the violence.
Not against one another, but against themselves.
Every day for three days it had been the same.
The training grounds, the chapel, the wilderness—-wherever they could lose themselves in a moment of privacy, these men would butcher themselves in devastation and loss.
It was something ritualistic, the bearing of one’s dagger against one’s own skin, cutting arm, chest, or thigh as deep as one dared.
Worse, none of them would allow her to heal them afterward.
Since she was sensitive to injury now, she was aware of every new wound a Packmate endured.
She’d first learned of the practice when she’d felt Reule suddenly wounded soon after they’d returned to the keep with Amando’s body.
She had run to him, encountering him as he was leaving the keep’s chapel.
She’d demanded to see his wound, insisted he allow her to heal him, and he’d summarily rejected her.
He wouldn’t even allow her to heal his injuries from the battle with the Jakals.
She wondered if she would have fled the keep had she known then how truly bad it was going to get over thè next few days.
How much longer would this continue? She couldn’t bear much more.
She felt every single wound in a way none of them could comprehend, each a little voice crying out to her for healing.
The deeper the injury, the louder the voice.
Reule was the worst, taking Amando’s loss even harder than the others. No matter how careful her approach, he wouldn’t let her near him. He could hardly bear to look at her, and that hurt more than she would have thought possible.
And Rye.
Reule’s heir was openly hostile to her. She could feel his outrage and hate, a force he made obvious to her empathically challenged brain.
It stung to have lost his faith in her, but it cut deep to feel his soul-blackened contempt.
Rye had been warm to her, even when he hadn’t been certain of her motives.
This bitter man blamed her, Reule, and most of all himself for Amando’s death.
The revelation had come when she’d been walking alone and a brutal hand had sealed around her throat from behind.
She was jerked into a dark place and slammed hard against a stone wall.
Seeing stars, she had barely comprehended it was Rye who held her.
His face raw and red in the wake of her latest healing, he snarled as he cut off her air.
“Why? Why?’ he demanded. “I saw what you did for Chayne. Why couldn’t you save him?
Answer me, you heartless bitch! Did you waste too much precious energy panting after my Prime?
Running around where you weren’t needed?
Saving me? What am I, but heir? Amando was the heart of our commerce, the peace we keep so precariously.
You sat next to him, broke bread with him, how could you let him die? ”
He had thrown her to his feet, knowing no real answer could possibly be forthcoming. She made no defense of herself, not feeling she deserved to. He’d felt that guilt, the knowledge evident in the disgust on his face.
Mystique touched her throat where the bruises of his fingerprints were fading now, two days later.
She’d been avoiding them all ever since.
She mourned alone for a man she’d hardly known and yet knew perfectly through the intensity of the love of six other males who were floundering without him.
So she stayed in the cold wind where she knew it was unlikely she would be found or joined.
The sky was overcast, the sharp scent of first snow growing as the temperature dropped.
She had learned one more thing about herself, she thought with a humorless laugh.
The cold didn’t seem to bother her very much.
It was almost as though she was used to the extreme temperature.
Strangely, this made her feel more of an outlander than anything else in this place where warmth was so highly coveted.
Reule watched Mystique from just around the corner.
She leaned into the wind, shedding a single tear that was quickly blown away, chapping her cheek an even brighter red than it already was.
It was a novel experience to be able to watch her undetected like this.
How much of her obliviousness was caused by her obviously deep thoughts, he didn’t know, but he’d been there a good twenty minutes.
Long enough to know she hardly moved, didn’t sit, merely stared out at the city, thinking and feeling.
Her thoughts he left alone. The empathy of a city of mourners was intense enough; he didn’t need to hear painful inner dialogues as well.
He felt her sadness reaching deep, but it was the loneliness he found surprising.
There was a keep … a city full of others feeling exactly as she was.
The chiming harmony of Sánge grief lent him a kind of comfort, and he didn’t understand why it wasn’t the same for her.
She was confused and angry, and he knew she was having a hard time understanding their mourning rituals.
She’d accepted so much so easily, but here she floundered in Sánge differences.
Still, none of them were performing at their best in the wake of this devastation.
He had sought her out to tell her there was a ceremony tonight.
Upon his death, the rights to Amando’s body had reverted back to his blood family.
It became the choice of his mother, father, or siblings what would be done to recognize his life and his death.
Amando’s family had deeply honored Reule by extending his rights as Packleader in this regard.
It meant they wished Amando to be paid homage in state, rather than make it just a familial affair.
Reule wouldn’t disappoint them. Tonight they’d begin the seven formal days of light and dark mourning with all the proper pomp and regalia that the Packleader could muster.
No one in Jeth would ever forget how deeply he had treasured Amando, or how terribly he felt the loss of him.
He knew Mystique would value being present tonight, and he hoped the ceremony would help her understand that amongst the Sánge, no one truly ever mourned alone.
He looked up at the gray skies, felt in his bones the coming storm, and found it almost poetic. The snow always came just as Amando ended his final trade journey of the season. It seemed appropriate that it had come early, marking the occasion as the Prime Envoy came home for the last time.
Reule allowed himself to feel the pain of grief, pressing Iris hand over his heart where the deepest bite of his ritual dagger lay, provoking hurt in muscle and sinew that echoed the hurt he couldn’t touch.
And this, at last, alerted her to his presence.
She’d grown extremely sensitive to detecting physical pain, he realized as she turned her head to look at him.
The movement threw her hair to the mercy of the wind, sending tendrils whipping wildly across her face and throat before she could reach up and pin it back with her hand.
She faced him, silent and unsure in a way that twisted him into knots because she suddenly seemed so fragile.
In just a few steps he’d closed the distance between them, his wide palms reaching to frame her small, cold face.
It was the first time he’d touched her in three days, and he felt the awareness of it cutting them both to their very souls.
It brought him low, the way his entire body seemed to shudder with relief at the long-awaited contact.
She reached up with both hands to circle his wrists, holding him fast, as if she feared his escape.
“I came to tell you there will be a ceremony tonight,” he said roughly, emotion changing the stroke of his voice.
She blinked and then gave him a peculiar little smile. “No, you didn’t,” she corrected him. “Reule, anyone can see there’s going to be a ceremony tonight. It’s hard to miss such extensive preparations. So you came here for other reasons.”
He thought about it for a moment, easily seeing the truth. The ceremony had been an excuse to approach her, to breach the distance he’d crafted between them.