They both nod in greeting, and I wonder if they are Kirrian. Or if Kalan is happy to make friends all over the continents.
“Aten. Jensen is a Natural. Like me. Shawn is from Nehandun.” Kalan helps me out with the intel.
“I’d like to see Ever,” I address Kalan, and he steps aside, showing me a door to another room at the rear of the house. I don’t wait and rush past him. She’s on a makeshift bed, but her chest continues to rise and fall.
Still unconscious.
“I want to clean her up. Can I have some water? She’s alive. We need to keep her that way. Are either of you a healer?” I stand and shout back to the men in the other room.
They all seem to move in different directions, fetching items, but no one answers the direct question.
Kalan rounds up supplies and brings them back to me as I take up my vigil on the stool by her bed.
“Can we trust these men, Kalan?” I ask as he sets his supplies down.
“Yes. And right now, there’s no other option. But they aren’t against us. Jensen was sent here years ago from Kirrasia, and he and Shawn have helped me on occasion before. They like to keep away from the main villages.”
With as much care as I can, I tilt Ever’s head and place a few drops of water from my fingers to her lips. I can’t risk more, but I can’t just wait for her to wake up. After wetting her parched lips, I take the cloth and set about cleaning her up, swiping away at the dirt and soot on her face and down her throat. But the mark at her neck doesn’t come away. It’s scorched into her skin, burnt into her flesh. At the hollow of her neck, there’s now an angry burn, a crescent shape, mirroring half of her pendant,with a darker, deeper burn in the centre where the stone was positioned. It’s like her necklace is now tattooed into her skin. Never to be removed.
I watch her so still, so quiet, and panic grips me. As I check on every other inch of her, I place brief touches, kisses of contact from my fingers over her cheek, over her skin. I’m careful not to touch too long, not wanting to stir anything that might cause her pain. The urge to keep contact with her is ingrained in my very soul.
Watching her in pain and nearly die in that vision pales into the background of what we both endured these past few weeks.
This was real. Visceral. My fingers itch to check the rest of her body to see if there are other scars left from my own hand, but there will be time to go over that.
The bigger worry now is that with all this contact, our closeness, there is no reaction from Ever. No hum of energy, no heat, no flashes, and no hint of pain.
I shove the worry of what that might mean deep inside of me.
The three men are sitting at the small table in the kitchen when I finish up with Ever.
“Shawn and Jensen have agreed to let us stay the night and help arrange passage in the morning.”
“Thank you, both.” I hope I sound sincere.
“When the sun sets, we’ll take Crimson into a clearing from here and burn her body.”
“What! No. She needs to go back to Kirrasia.” I look to each man in turn, but they all share a similar grim look.
“There’s no way we can get her body back on a ship. It’s three days. There will be too many questions. I’m sorry, Aten. You’ll need to lay her to rest here.” Kalan actually sounds sorry.
My stomach knots and twists my guts at the thought of saying goodbye to her here. Forever.
“She’s a Warrior?” Jensen asks.
“Yes.” I stand a little taller. “Crimson Aster.”
“Very well. We’ll make the preparations.”
Each Order has a different tradition when it comes to passing. Warriors aren’t buried or left to decay like the Guards and Naturals. They are cremated like the Elementals, although the ceremony is different.
“Will you sit with Ever? I don’t want her to be alone.” I look at Kalan, and he nods before I all but run to the door into the gloomy evening.
My body is suddenly too heavy to keep upright, and I slump down, dragging my back against the wooden slats of the stable until I hit the ground.
“I’m sorry this will happen here,” I start explaining myself to her. “You came to avenge Calix, but I bet you didn’t think it would cost you your life. Then again, you’re too stubborn to believe anything could ever happen to you. You were always fearless. And I’m sorry I couldn’t love you the way you wanted—that the Triune that you and Calix wanted wasn’t my future anymore. You’ll never know how grateful I am for everything you’ve done for me. Although maybe now you will.”
The last light fades, and I’m haunted by the memories of my entire life: growing up together, learning, fighting, and evening dinners where she and Calix were my only company. In some ways, they were closer to family than my blood.
