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It’s as if she kicked me in the stomach.
I squeeze my eyes shut, blocking her glowing silhouette from my sight. And my body shakes with a reawakened sob and watering eyes. The pain is something close to being hung, drawn, and quartered.
I never thought those four words put together could rip my soul in half. The devastation chokes my heart, pressing down on my lungs until I’m gasping.
Chekiss and Ruth hold on to me as I go up in flames. As Scarlett used to say, they set a perimeter around the pain. Or at least, they try to. This heartbreak is boundless, limitless. There isn’t a force on earth that could suppress it.
Bury him.
“I can’t go,” I blubber into Chekiss’s arm. “I can’t watch them lower him into the ground.”
It’s an image I would never be able to erase from my mind.
“Look at me.” Chekiss raises my chin. Tears drip from my eyes as I look up at him. “Don’t let him go into the darkness alone. Don’t do that. You’re going to be strong for him today, okay?”
Breath whooshes from my chest. He’s right. Dessin and Kane would have never let me be buried alone. No question. And that makes me feel worse. Because I have to go, have to say goodbye, have to watch my life slip through my fingers and into the dirt.
“One day, you’d regret not being there.” He clears his throat, attempting to suppress the cry tickling his chest. “I didn’t get to bury my wife and daughter. I was taken to the asylum immediately, and to this day, I don’t even know where they rest.”
Chekiss ended their lives to keep them from being prisoners of the asylum and enduring the same torture he suffered for many years. I wince at the memory of his story. Of the truth in his heavy words.
They hold me for several long moments, brushing their hands through my hair, caressing my cheekbones, murmuring words of encouragement.
But I can hardly hear them as I pick myself up, let Ruth dress me in a calf-length black dress, and stare blankly as Chekiss struggles to run a brush through my hair. The world around me hums with static and wisps of dark clouds. And as they lead me out of the mountain and into a small black buggy, I feel like my soul is drifting over my lifeless body. I’m a kite attached to a string, hovering in the air as I watch the buggy fill with Chekiss, Ruth, Warrose, and Aurick.
And I’m screaming. No one can hear me. No one can see that I’m trapped and dying. I’m trying to cut the string and float far away.
12. The Only Way Back
My back stiffens as we stop in front of a cemetery.
But it isn’t just any cemetery… this is the same land where my father was buried. The same place I planted a red oak tree. The same headstone Dessin told me to visit on my father’s birthday.
This is where they’ll be laid to rest today.
I crank my head to face Aurick, who is watching me closely with those cold, arctic eyes. He nods, knowing the question I’m about to ask.
The buggy door opens, and I follow the line of Demechnef soldiers to the red oak tree. Why would they assume that this is where Dessin, Kane, and the other alters will be buried? Is that what he wanted?
Despite the gloom around us, the sky is sunny and bright blue. The cool breeze flutters through the tall red oak tree, carrying a few fiery red leaves through the headstones across the cemetery. I stop in front of my father’s grave but quickly see that the large rectangular hole is not far behind it. I can feel Chekiss’s presence behind me as I step closer, noticing the three other headstones side by side.
Sophia Valdawell
Arthur Valdawell
Kaspias Valdawell
His—his family was buried next to my father? I was here only a few months ago… and of course, I wouldn’t have put the pieces together because I didn’t know his last name at the time.
But who is Kaspias? Could that have been Kane’s twin? The one Aurick said was stillborn? I look back and forth between the headstones covered in the leaves from the great red oak nearby. I can’t believe this has all been under my nose.
My attention is quickly drawn to the priest and the giant wooden coffin. An anchor that reels in my heartbreak and centers it in my chest. I suck in a sharp, painful breath at the sight.
He’s in there. They’re all in there.
Alone.
My knees quiver, and I sway toward the ground, but a pair of strong hands grip my waist, holding me steady against an iron chest. For a moment, my body remembers the gesture, the masculine presence, the unmovable stance behind me to catch me before I fall. And for that awful, cruel moment, I think this was all a bad dream. He came back. He fooled everyone again. Defied death itself.
