My lip curls, rage trembling through me, fangs bared. But before I can retort, Amara sinks.
The flowers curl over her, the soil opening like a grave. She slides downward, slowly, her body cradled by earth. Panic seizes me. I surge forward, but Mirael’s glare halts me like a blade to the chest.
“This is how we must heal her,” she snarls. “The earth must take her in, mend her wounds. Only then will she rise.”
I shake my head, muscles taut, horror twisting in my gut as the ground swallows her deeper, until only her face remains. Pale. Still.
“You’re certain? This is the only way?” My voice cracks, betraying the terror I cannot cage.
Mirael does not answer.
And then… Amara is gone.
The soil closes over her, flowers swaying as though undisturbed, as though they hadn’t just devoured the only woman I’ve ever loved.
I collapse onto the soil, sorrow, rage, exhaustion crushing me into the earth. My filthy hands clutch at my face, then rake through my tangled hair, tugging until my scalp burns. When I finally lift my head, my vision blurs on Mirael.
“What now?” My voice is cracked, hollow.
“Now we wait,” Mirael says. Her hand sweeps toward the Tenders gathered in their circle. “We pray.”
“Where are your sisters?” I demand, spitting the words through clenched teeth. “Together, you are stronger. Together, you could save her!”
Her chest trembles with a breath that nearly breaks her, but she steels herself, straightening. Slowly, she gestures to either side of Amara. It is only then I notice. The flowers there are wilted, their once-vibrant purple darkened and brittle, petals strewn like ashes across the grass.
“They did not wake,” she says at last. There is no grief in her voice. Only the heavy weight of acceptance. “It is just me.”
The truth hits me like a lash across the face, blinding, impossible to deny. In its wake, the fragments of what I’ve seen knit together in cruel clarity: the vine wall shattered, the village reduced to rubble, the Tenders cowering in their shattered homes and Mirael’s face carved with scars, eyes veiled by the ghosts of what she’s endured.
“Who did this?” I rasp, bile rising in my throat. “The Fae…”
She shakes her head, and the bitterness in her eyes is colder than any denial. “The Legion came for vengeance and they painted these beloved woods with Tender blood.”
My eyes snap wide. The first ugly thought ripping through me is Zyphoro. She’s with the Legion now. Who’s to say the Golden Son still holds power over them? Heat crawls up my spine. The itch in my feet is a beast. My runes pulse under my skin, my shadow-wings ache to tear free, to lash the sky and rend whatever fools stand in my way. I can feel the dark answering me like a hound at the leash.
And then my gaze drags back, drawn like a hook, to the bed of lavender, to the hollow the earth made for her. The soil that swallowed Amara with the promise of returning her to me.
I cannot leave her.
Something in me breaks and hollows at once. The crack opens like a wound. The thought that she might never rise is a black stone in my throat. I swallow. If the fates decree she will not come back, then let that same earth have me too. Bury me beside her. Let me lie under the lavender so that when her soul goes wandering, she finds me there.
So for now, I take my place, to watch over her, to wait for her return. I lower myself into the grass, bones creaking, body aching, wincing as I roll to my side. My head sinks into the blossoms, the wind sweeping over me, lifting strands of my hair like phantom fingers. I wrench off my gloves and toss them aside, skin aching to feel something real. My hand drifts to the place where the earth swallowed her whole; I drag my fingers throughthe flowers as if they were her skin, her hair, before pressing my palm to the soil. My chest swells, and for one mad, desperate moment I’m certain I feel her there. Her heartbeat echoing through the earth, a tremor beneath my hand. Gods help me, I pray I’m not losing my mind, because I have never needed anything to be truer in my entire miserable, cursed life.
The Tenders murmur their prayers, though I feel their eyes like pinpricks on my back. Mirael’s light footsteps press through the grass until she stands close enough to cast a shadow over me.
“I do not know how long it will take,” she says quietly. “Hours. Days. Weeks.”
“I’ll not leave her side until she wakes,” I mutter, eyes fixed on the earth as though sheer will might drag Amara back to me. “Or until I turn to dust and the wind carries me. Whichever comes first.”
“So be it,” Mirael replies. Then she turns away, her cloak brushing the blossoms as she walks into the forest, the sound of her steps fading until only the whisper of leaves remains.
As Mirael vanishes into the trees, the truth settles heavy in my chest. The Tenders their home reduced to ruin, still pray. Still believe. Their faith has not withered, even when every reason to do so has and I, who should have protected them, who swore to keep the Legion from their gates… I failed them. My kind failed them. The bargain was meant to keep them safe from the Legion, and yet their sisters lie buried, their walls burned, their peace stolen by the very war we promised to hold back and now I have returned their precious jewel to them just as broken and bloodied and still, they showed me mercy. They could have cast me out, let me choke on their vines or bleed in the dirt beside the fallen. But they didn’t. They chose faith over vengeance, hope over hate.
Amara’s life hangs in the balance, yet as I watch these remnants of grace, I think perhaps they are saving more than my wife. Perhaps they are saving what little remains of me.
Time folds in on itself. The hours creep past, and still Amara does not rise. The sunlight fades to a dull amber through the canopy, then thins to silver. Warmth slips from my skin, replaced by the chill of dusk. One by one, the Tenders climb to their feet and leave the clearing, their voices still threaded with prayer even as they vanish into the dark. Even in their absence, I hear them in the sighing of the wind, the cry of distant birds, the unseen scurrying beneath the soil. Their prayers seem to belong to the forest itself, a pulse that beats with the earth.
When night finally comes, the familiar kiss of darkness brushes my skin. Moonlight spears through the branches in slanted beams, washing me in its cold glow. The blossoms around me shift beneath it, their pale heads shimmering as though they’ve been dipped in starlight. I do not look up, afraid that if I glance away, she will rise in that instant and I will miss her first breath. But even without seeing it, I feel the Crone’s moon above, its pull, its sway, the final phase before renewal. A time of cleansing. A time for endings and beginnings.
