Epilogue
Sereme moves through the frigid smog, a beacon of poise and stature in the dull carnage of her surroundings, purple-tufted coat clinched against her frame.
She pecks glances between a small metal contraption sitting in her gloved palm and the moon-sprinkled sky barely visible through the haze, mapping her location with each curt step through the snow.
There’s a hard glint in her gray eyes that Clode certainly notices, whipping close to get a better look before flitting away.
Curious.
That curiosity swells as Sereme snaps the contraption shut and pockets it, dropping to her knees in the ash-dusted snow atop an unmarked grave—the exact spot where the miskunn suggested—using her hands to dig.
It doesn’t take long for the bloody snow to heap. For two bodies to reveal.
Sereme pauses to pull the scarf from her mouth, heaving air still tainted with too much dust and debris, though no longer enough to clog her lungs as she draws big, gulped breaths of victory.
She smiles so wide her canines glint, visible to the curious Creator flicking about in eddying swirls, darting close, too hooked by intrigue to shift her attention elsewhere.
Sereme continues to dig, putting her entire body into the motion, tendrils of her perfectly coiffed hair coming loose. She finally reveals enough of Arkyn that she’s able to grab his frozen arm and lurch, lurch, lurch him free of any remaining snow—muttering between pinched lips.
“You’re a—heavy—lying, useless sack of—colk shit,” she grinds out, dragging his solid corpse and head free of the snowy grave, well away from the redheaded female frozen stiff amongst the snow … sealing the poor creature’s fate.
Ensuring that she, too, will not rise from the ashes.
Sereme sighs, wiping the sweat from her brow as she drops to her knees beside the mutilated corpse.
“I’ve never worked as hard as I have for you and just look how you repay me.
By getting your frozen blood all through the creases of my favorite gloves.
Do you know how hard it was to find this tone of purple stain?
Especially now,” she grits out, trying to scratch it free of the deep seams, giving up with a roll of her eyes.
“Of course not. You’re fucking hopeless. ”
She continues chastising the corpse while she flips her satchel open, digs past the Book of Voyd bound in a layer of cloth, then pulls out her blood-binding vial, unscrewing the lid before setting both aside.
Then she lifts a dagger and hacks off a piece of Arkyn’s frozen flesh without a single flinch of unease, dropping it down the nozzle.
“Better safe than sorry,” she snips while it spits and smokes, a plume of murky-pink fumes chugging free.
Re-stoppering the vial, she eases the chain over her neck and digs through her satchel, retrieves a bottle of hard spirits, then splashes the clear liquid all over the dead male she had such high hopes for.
He had her heart. Her dedication.
Everything.
But there’s no fury like a female scorned.
She shoulders her satchel and stands, pulling a silver weald from within her fur-lined pocket. “Unfortunately for you, you failed. Now you’ll kneel for me,” she seethes, then flicks the lid to reveal a bulb of flame that reflects in her hard stare.
Clode squeals, dashing away.
Not fast enough.
The weald is tossed, and Arkyn’s body erupts in a gorge of hissing, spitting fire.
Sereme watches him burn from a safe distance away, waiting for the corpse to break down into ash and embers. For the wonder that re-gifted Arkyn life so many phases ago to grip him by the throat and transform him into something that will never turn on her again.
Something that will treat her with otherworldly devotion—exactly as she deserves.
Ignos rages, Clode squeals, while at Sereme’s back, a male stumbles through the gloom, staggering toward the flame and the smell of burning flesh.
A statuesque, albeit weather-beaten male with a scruffy jaw, white hair, crisp blue eyes, and a bloody pelt wrapped around his broad shoulders.
Protection from the bitter cold, and from a world that looks nothing like it did when he last took stock of it from the back of his silver Moonplume, soaring between the mountains with his sister in his stride.
Sereme turns, smiling as she meets his gaze. “Ah, I was hoping I’d find you here.”
The male stills, pale brows pinching into a frown. Part confusion. Part wariness.
Not enough of the latter.
“Do I know you?” he asks, his voice a deep burr, tongue sweeping out to lick his dried, cracked lips as his gaze nips to the flames. To Arkyn’s burning body, sizzling and spitting, pumping flavored smoke into the sky.
Hunger, Sereme realizes. The desperate sort that doesn’t discriminate. Sure sign he’s been stumbling through the apocalyptic plains, scratching out an existence while trying to find his bearings.
“Not yet, no.”
The flames begin to writhe and surge, thrashing with a hatch of ruddy, gold-tipped plumage that makes the male’s eyes bulge, slowly becoming aware that he’s stumbled upon something … unexplainable.
Much like himself.
“A special miskunn suggested you might amble in this direction,” Sereme says, rooting through her satchel, pulling out a strip of dried meat wrapped in a waxed cloth. She holds it out. An offering of sustenance that won’t leave the revived prince hating himself later. “Haedeon Neván.”