Chapter 41 #2
Air burning in his throat, Azriel stroked Mhorn’s nose absently—the last remnant of the father who’d fought back against the encroaching, consuming darkness of a broken bond to try and fix what he hadn’t even broken. “Are you saying that if it weren’t for Keon, we wouldn’t be—”
“I am saying that it is no coincidence that I was named the Golden Rose on my second debut,” Ariadne said, taking his free hand in hers and holding it firm.
“The same year that you were appointed as my guard. It was no coincidence that your parents met. No coincidence that Alek Nightingale was always treated as an outcast, even by his father.”
He wanted none of this. The idea that his love for—gods, his bond to—Ariadne was anything less than his own physiology or desires felt vile.
His devotion to his wife would always be purely his, and he would accept no god’s influence.
For if he accepted that Ariadne had been given to him…
that meant that Keon could take her away.
And Azriel would wage war on the Underworld if that were to ever occur.
“Why are you telling me this now?” Azriel slid his hand along Mhorn’s deep red scales.
After all, they had come to clear out the dead and put the dragons who were unable to be moved to rest. Discussing the likelihood that Keon had any hand in their relationship was not part of what Azriel expected or wanted.
“Because I wanted to tell you,” Ariadne explained, “that your father is aware of what we have done here. They all know. And they are all proud of what we have accomplished—as I am certain Mhorn is as well.”
Azriel swallowed hard. “Do you think Mhorn is with him now?”
Ariadne’s brows raised, her lips curling into a small smile. “I know he is.” And before Azriel could ask for more details, she added, “I saw Kall, too. With Bindhe.”
Well, fuck.
At that, Azriel pressed his fists against his eyes. He sucked in a shuddering breath and let it out slowly, a low whimper escaping him before he could hold it back. It was all too much. The loss. The pain. The juxtaposition of hope and fear for the future.
“Come now, dhomin,” Razer said with a low rumble. “Let’s put him to rest.”
It took several more minutes for Azriel to finally rise beside Mhorn and turn to the blue dragon.
Razer made no remarks regarding his slow progress; instead, he waited patiently as Azriel said his final goodbyes to his father’s bondheart.
Such a lack of exchanges were at once welcomed and painful.
The only reason for the silence between them was the mutual heartbreak of losing yet more loved ones.
When at last Azriel turned to his own bondheart, he took Ariadne’s hand and led her to Razer, where she climbed upon his back with nimble ease. All too soon, she would be mounting Almandine instead, so he soaked up every moment he had with her tucked firmly against his chest as they took flight.
The two dragons moved in perfect harmony as they turned in the air above Mhorn. As they let loose their fire, Azriel could almost see his father standing beside his bondheart, welcoming him home.
Emillie wove between the small pyres built for the vampires that fought beneath Azriel’s banner. Rusans and Caersans were lined up beside one another, and no priority was given to one over the other. Only two stood out from those made for vampire soldiers.
The first took Emillie by surprise. After catching sight of her sister demanding something greater for one particular soldier, she made her way to where Ariadne stood, adjusting the hands of a Caersan man. Beside her, Revelie adjusted the man’s brown hair, her regal face taut with disbelief.
Only when Emillie stopped at the foot of the pyre and took in the crimson shirt did everything snap into place. “Nikolai?”
Ariadne looked up from Loren’s best friend and nodded, her expression grim and brimming with emotions. “He was found armorless beneath a Valenul soldier.”
“And we are honoring him?”
It was Jakhov who opened and closed his mouth several times from a handful of paces behind Revelie as he searched for the correct common tongue words. “Nikolai kill…with us.”
“There are dhemons who report that he was escorted out of the Hub and shoved into the fray with no armor and no weapons,” Revelie explained after giving Jakhov an approving smile.
The small praise had him standing a little straighter with his chest out, same as any peacocking man in the Society that her friend would criticize, given normal circumstances.
Jakhov’s adjustment to his stance, however, only elicited a small shake of Revelie’s head, her lips curling with amusement.
When she refocused on Emillie, she continued, “Nikolai was never the same after he returned from Algorath.”
“He saved me from Loren after the wedding,” Ariadne reminded her, returning to her small preening of the soldier. “And I have a feeling Loren discovered his allegiance was not unconditional.”
Emillie’s heart sank, wondering just how different the events could have been between Loren and her father if Nikolai had been there to temper his friend.
Would her father still be alive? Could they have avoided all of this pain?
Doubtful. The events would have unfolded with or without Nikolai, surely, even if they occurred in a different order.
But Emillie had witnessed firsthand just how abrupt and cruel Loren could be.
Murdering her father, erecting a throne where there never should have been one, ordering the death of her half-brother, then her husband.
He was brash and did not do well with stopping to calculate the potential fallout of his actions.
“Why would Loren not just kill him outright?” Emillie asked with a frown. She closed in on the pyre and fixed the angle of Nikolai’s boot on his calf.
“After naming himself King,” Revelie said, “I believe he began to relish the pain he could cause.”
Ariadne’s eyebrows flew high as she nodded in agreement before pulling a shroud from a pile that was being used to cover the dead vampires. “I think he relished it before that, but once he held power, no one could stop him.”
Perhaps Alek and her father had parted from the world in a far kinder state.
Images of the sword punching through her father’s chest merged with the very similar death of her husband, and her stomach churned.
Grief that she had hoped had been put to rest gripped her throat as she helped her sister and Revelie cover Nikolai’s body.
“I wish we could ask him,” Emillie said as they tucked the Caersan man in on all sides.
“There must be someone else who would know.” Revelie stepped back to survey their work.
With a nod, Ariadne said, “Azriel and I are certain of it. He is having the Valenul soldiers and officers interrogated.”
It was not often that Emillie saw a dhemon pale quite as much as Jakhov did the moment the words were translated in his mind. His red eyes snapped to Ariadne, and he squinted as he scrambled for the correct terms to use. Finally, he settled on a simple, “Alright, Yvhaltrinja?”
Ariadne smiled, though the tense curve of her lips held a weight that Emillie did not fully comprehend. “Yes, Jakhov, thank you. I asked for it to be done while I was not around.”
A long silence passed between them. Despite Ariadne’s words, Jakhov did not look convinced.
His gaze traveled between the three Caersan women before him, then around the camp until he found another dhemon.
After calling the man’s attention, they exchanged words in the dhemon tongue with Jakhov gesturing to Ariadne.
Emillie and Revelie exchanged a glance before focusing on her sister.
“What is it?” Revelie asked after gaping at her mate. “He is…distressed.”
Color flooded Ariadne’s cheeks. She shook her head, then waved off the dhemons and Jakhov before saying, “That is a tale for another time. Azriel learned his lesson, and something tells me that darling Jakhov was given some strict instructions from Kall before he passed.”
Before either of them could question Ariadne further, her sister nodded behind them. “They will be lighting the pyres soon. Let us go back to…”
Camilla.
The name never passed Ariadne’s lips, her voice cracking on the few words.
Pain resonated through Emillie at the same moment she saw it reflected in her sister’s and friend’s eyes.
They each cast their attention elsewhere as they let the fresh wave of grief envelope them.
The sensation was, horrifically, not new to Emillie, and she hated how familiar she had become with the twisting knot in her gut.
It had not been the same when she looked over Nikolai. The man had not been a friend or even a savior, as he had been for Ariadne. It had not even been the same when Alek, her savior, had been killed or when her father, her guardian, had been murdered.
Camilla was in a category of her own entirely.
As different as the feelings occurred for every person she lost, her body reacted the same for each.
A hollow space yawned open inside her belly, swallowing her up from the inside.
Her breath hitched, and her throat burned from all the unspoken words she could never exchange with one of her best friends.
For there was so much to tell Camilla that Emillie now had no chance to. So much she wished to know. All she ached to learn.
Camilla’s pyre was laden with a worn cloth beneath her snow-preserved body, shrouded in a thin, colorful linen donated by one of the dhemon women Emillie had worked alongside in Phulan’s medical tent.
Haloing her face and gently tucked beneath her hands were wildflowers that Emillie, Revelie, and Ariadne had picked just after sunset in preparation and before anyone’s attention had been brought to the crimson-clad Nikolai.
Now she stood back to watch, her lungs burning with each shallow breath, as Felix Dodd crumpled over his daughter. He held her beautiful, shrouded face in his shaking hands and pressed his lips to Camilla’s forehead.
Though Emillie had never lost a child and prayed to Keon that such a devastation would never become her, she knew what it meant to see a future torn from someone too soon. She had seen it too many times. Witnessed the agony. Felt a similar shredding of her heart.
Just as the first tear slid down Emillie’s cheek, a hand slipped into hers and squeezed tight. Looking around, she found Ariadne to her left, the same silent tears rolling down her face. A beat later, her other hand filled with Revelie’s.
The three of them stood together in silence as the ground shook beneath her.
On Ariadne’s far side, Azriel appeared in his vampire form, the tattoos down his neck standing out on his tan skin.
He did not take his wife’s hand, but stood just behind her in silent solidarity.
Jakhov took up a similar position behind Revelie, his sharp face expressionless and stern.
But it was the presence at her back that had Emillie turning her head.
Luce stood between the two dhemons, her perfect face softer and more somber than Emillie had ever witnessed before.
Her golden eyes tracked a tear down Emillie’s cheek, and she swallowed hard before refocusing on the pyre before them.
Only when Felix Dodd whispered his final goodbyes to his daughter and stepped back were the first pyres lit.
Those on the outermost rows began to spark and smoke before the next torches were lowered.
Again and again, vampires and dhemons moved forward to light the pyres until only the two at the center remained.
Nikolai’s pyre fluttered with flames delivered by a dhemon Emillie did not know, but who had carried him in and was the one to proclaim the Caersan’s feats before everyone.
As the fire rose up, engulfing his silhouette, Ariadne’s hand clenched Emillie’s.
What had happened between them in Laeton, she did not question.
Something had brought Nikolai to her sister’s aid, and for that, she would always be grateful, even as his soul rose with the smoke to Empyrean.
Hands shaking, Lord Dodd took the torch offered by a dhemon and turned to his daughter. With his head held high, the flickering lights casting deep shadows on his tear-soaked face, he lowered the flames to the wood and put Camilla Dodd to rest.