Chapter 69
The dead burned at dusk.
They had built the pyres that morning beyond Eldham’s lower road, where the black earth sloped toward the sea, far enough from the village that the smoke would not choke the wounded through the night, close enough that the tide could hear them.
Ivan stood where the grass gave way to stone and watched Vredian soldiers carry their dead beneath a sky the color of ash.
The rain had stopped an hour before, but the world remained wet with it.
Water clung to the cuffs of coats and the ends of hair, gathered in the seams of armor, darkened the stacked wood until the flames had to fight for every inch they claimed.
The first pyre took slowly. Then another.
Then another orange light crawled through the damp timber until the hillside filled with heat and smoke and the soft, awful sounds of wood learning how to burn.
There were too many pyres.
Bryn’s had been laid nearest the sea.
Not above the others—she would have hated that—but with a space around it no one seemed able to cross without slowing down.
Soldiers who had faced shades in the surf looked at her wrapped body and lost whatever strength had carried them there.
The healers stood together in a small cluster, hands bandaged, sleeves stained with blood that would never fully wash out, their grief made quieter by the terrible duty of burning one of their own.
Avis stood among them with her head bowed, one hand pressed so tightly around a little bundle of dried herbs that the stems snapped between her fingers.
Algernon’s pyre stood near the center.
His astrolabe lay across the wood. Someone had cleaned it.
Ivan did not know who. The old Druid’s hands had worn a dull shine into the brass where he had held it over too many years, and the carved markings along its edge caught the first rising fire with a brief, greenish shimmer before smoke swallowed them.
For a moment, it looked as if the astrolabe had taken one final breath.
Then the flame climbed over it.
Elara stood beside Ivan.
She wrapped herself in Ivan’s cloak. It hung too large on her frame, the hem brushing her boots, the collar swallowing the line of her shoulders.
The hood had fallen back, leaving the firelight free to find the exhaustion carved beneath her eyes.
Her hair was still damp from the rain, dark curls clinging to her temples and the slender curve of her throat, where fading bruises lingered beneath the skin.
The bandages beneath her tunic made her move carefully.
Every so often, when she forgot herself, one arm drifted protectively toward her middle before she caught the motion and let it fall.
Ivan looked away.
The Vredians began to sing.
It was not a song meant for beauty. There were no soaring notes, no polished grief offered to an audience.
The dirge rose low from the soldiers gathered across the hillside, roughened by smoke, exhaustion, and throats that had spent the day shouting orders over dying men.
One voice began. Then another joined it.
Then ten. Then more, until the sound rolled through the wet grass and black stone like something drawn up from the earth itself.
Ivan had heard the old Sídhe death songs before.
Osin had outlawed them in the realm after the third uprising, claiming they encouraged sentimentality among the ranks. Men still hummed them beneath their breath when no officer stood close enough to punish them for remembering they had once belonged to families before they belonged to kings.
This one was older than most, a song for those given to fire because earth could not hold them and sea would not take them.
Beside him, Elara’s hand curled at her side.
Ivan watched the movement from the corner of his eye. Her fingers closed once, opened, then closed again around nothing. He nearly reached for them. The impulse hit him with such clean, brutal force that his hand twitched before he could stop it.
He folded it into a fist instead.
On the far side of Bryn’s pyre, Yoni stared at them—his face had collapsed into something Ivan knew too well.
Grief with nowhere to go became a weapon quickly.
It searched for something to strike. For fault.
For a throat beneath its hands. The man stood with one shoulder bandaged and his mouth set in a line so hard it looked carved there, firelight catching in his eyes until they shone fever-bright.
He looked at Elara first.
Then at Ivan.
Longer.
Ivan held his gaze.
Yoni did not look away.
A problem, then.
The dirge deepened.
Dominic stepped forward first. His arm remained bound against his ribs beneath his formal coat, and bruising darkened one side of his face, but he walked without assistance. He placed a Vredian officer’s sash upon one of the larger pyres, then stood there for a breath too long, head bowed.
Dario followed with a broken sword.
Avis with herbs.
Ivan remained where he was until the others had stepped away.
The small object in his palm had grown warm from the heat of his skin. He had kept his fingers closed around it since Dario had handed it over before sunset, wrapped in a square of clean cloth. Something of Bravellian origin. For Rolfe.
Dario had stared at him when Ivan asked, stunned. Beneath it had come a flicker of recognition. Reluctant. Unwelcome. Almost respect.
Ivan unfolded the cloth. The old token rested in his palm, no larger than a coin, stamped with the cryxis mark of the old Bravellian warriors.
Rank. A promise. Given to those who had crossed enemy lines and returned with something that mattered, or to those who had not returned at all but made the crossing mean something.
Ivan stared at the token until the fire blurred at the corners of his vision.
Then he placed it on the wood beside Bryn.
He did not think she would mind it there.
He had nothing for her. Nothing tangible.
Nothing worthy of the woman who had dragged him back from death more than once with sharp hands and sharper words, who had helped him when any sensible person would have left him to bleed for the trouble he brought.
His throat tightened until swallowing hurt.
She had been his friend—had been, perhaps, the only one these past few months who had ever looked at all the ruin in him and still decided he was worth keeping alive.
The fire cracked.
Ivan’s eyes burned. He forced his breath in slowly, held it until the ache in his chest became something he could stand behind his ribs instead of wear plainly on his face.
She should not have died. Rage moved through him then, sudden and clean, cutting through the grief.
It settled deep, cold—a vow he had no right to make and no intention of abandoning.
By the time he stepped back, his face was still again, but Elara’s eyes were on him.
The dirge carried on until the sun vanished fully and the pyres became the only stars left on the hillside.
Afterward, people began saying goodbye. Plans had been made in Algernon’s cottage.
Messengers would ride before dawn. Scouts would move through the eastern roads first, then the old capital routes.
Elara would return to Tír na nóg long enough to secure terms with the Ellylldan commanders and send forces back through the crossing.
Dominic would stabilize Eldham and what remained of Vredia’s command.
Dario would begin pulling records from every prison, camp, and border fort still willing to answer.
Godfrey would remain with Algernon’s papers, looking for some way to follow the memory records that had not returned.
They would reconvene soon.
Days, perhaps.
Not long.
Ivan told himself it was not goodbye as Elara moved through the mourners.
Tristan caught her first and folded her into his arms with none of his usual mockery, his cheek pressing briefly to the crown of her head.
Ivan told himself it was not goodbye when Sybil gripped Elara’s shoulder and muttered something that made Elara produce the smallest, saddest laugh he had ever heard.
Dario and Avis came together. Dario touched Elara’s cheek with a gentleness that made his grief look almost painful, while Avis wrapped both arms around her and began crying silently before Elara could even speak.
Ivan stood in the smoke and watched it happen.
She had so many people now. People who loved her.
There were more of them than there had been when he first met her. More hands willing to reach. More bodies willing to stand between her and death. Humans. Sídhe. She had gathered love the way some people gathered enemies, without meaning to, without knowing what to do with them once they arrived.
Good.
His throat worked around the word before it could become anything else.
She would be all right.
She would be all right.
Elara turned toward him at last. Firelight caught the tear tracks on her cheeks and turned them gold.
She moved slowly, one hand pressed against her side beneath the cloak, though she tried to make the gesture look casual and failed badly enough that Ivan had to look away before the instinct to go to her crossed his face.
She stopped in front of him, too close for strangers and not close enough for what they had been.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The pyres cracked behind her.
Smoke curled through her damp hair. Somewhere across the rocks, Yoni was being led away by two soldiers, though his stare found them once more before the dark took him.
Elara looked at Ivan’s coat, his hands, the bandage crossing his palm. Anywhere but his eyes.
“I guess this is goodbye, then?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
“Until next time,” he said.
Her mouth curved, but pain caught in it before it could become a smile. After a breath, she nodded. “’Til next time.”
She turned to leave.
“Wait.”
Ivan reached inside his coat and withdrew the book.