“Goddess, help us,” she murmurs.
The village is flattened and scorched. Not a single building remains standing in its entirety. Partial roofless rooms, littered with fallen beams, are all that’s left of a once quaint and welcoming skyline. I shake my head in devastated disbelief.
“What the hell happened here?” Eloise whispers.
“I don’t know. But it’s our duty to find out.”
3
The Remnant
Eloise
As Damien leads our rabble beasts toward the ruins, my heart pounds in my throat and my stomach sinks. Bolvet looks like a wasteland. Even from a distance, the moon reveals a place I would never recognize as the village where the most masterful dressmaker on the planet once fitted me for a wardrobe. Only a few months ago, I danced the night away among laughing townspeople at a thatch-roofed tavern at the heart of Bolvet. Now, I can’t even make out the rubble that once was that circular building.
No one is dancing now. This place is war-torn. This place is a graveyard.
We reach the main street and pass by what remains of Ariadne’s dress shop. It’s mostly ash, although her door remains, painted with a large red X. “What do you think that means?” I ask Damien.
“It’s a decree. The red X means she was marked as a traitor. She was executed.”
I gasp, and my eyes instantly fill with tears. “Should we—” I gesture toward what used to be her building, but if her body is in there, it has long since burned and is buried under a ton of rubble and ash.
“Nothing can be done except to grieve.” He glances back at me, and I see tears in his eyes. All the blue has drained from the illusion I’ve disguised him in under the swell of his emotions, leaving his pupils pale and diamond-hard. I feel it along our bond—a deep, heart-wrenching loss. Ariadne was a friend. I’d met her once, but he’d known her for a lifetime.
He places a hand on the shoulder of the dead man we came here for. It’s hard to believe any of his family lived through this, especially his children, but we trudge on, toward where the general store once was.
“I can still smell the smoke,” I say.
He sniffs. “This happened recently. Days ago.”
I stop Romulus and dismount, needing to be by his side if I am to face this. Damien waits for me to catch up and takes my hand in his. We walk together toward the remains of the general store and then past the ruins of the tavern at the town’s center. “Does Bolvet have a cemetery?” I finally ask. We still need to bury the man slung across Borus, and the stench of his body tells me we shouldn’t wait.
Damien nods once, understanding immediately, and starts for the back of the village. Unlike the cemetery behind Stygarde Castle, which is meticulously landscaped, this one is simple, mostly prairie with a few trees. But as we move closer, I see similar sculptures nestled in theovergrown grasses, sculptures that depict the person buried beneath them. In Bolvet’s case, the sculptures aren’t life-sized. The effigies stand about eighteen inches tall and look like they were handmade by loved ones rather than professional artists. Although I can feel the sacredness of this space, these are modest graves.
Silently, we navigate to the back of the cemetery, passing a few mounds of freshly turned earth. New graves. No sculptures to mark them. I wonder who dug them? I wonder how long ago they were made. I wonder who was brave enough to stay behind to bury the dead.
We reach an unused area peppered with tiny purple flowers at the very back. I’m about to offer to use magic to dig the grave when we both spot a shovel abandoned against a nearby tree, as if left by the last gravedigger who worked here. Without a word, Damien picks it up and begins to dig.
The magical disguise I’ve wrapped around Damien makes him look soft, but under it all, he is anything but. He has a suitable hole dug in no time. Together, we pull the unknown man off Borus’s back and carefully lower him into the grave. We fall into an uneasy vigil in our grief. The only sounds that break the heavy silence are the skittering animals in the forest beyond and the occasional rustle of leaves on the wind.
“Should we say something?” I finally ask.
Damien frowns. “The time for words is past, little bird. Now is the time for action.” He digs the shovel into the dirt and tosses it on the grave. “I will avenge you, unknown friend.”
“Who are you, and where did you find his body?” a raspy voice asks from behind us.
We both whirl to find the owner and barman of Bolvet’s tavern, Warbill, watching us from the shelter of the neighboring trees. He looks even older than the day I met him, all bones and torn garments. His face sags, and his eyes are red-rimmed.
“Warbill,” Damien says softly. “Is that you, old friend?”
“Thank the goddess,” I add.
He looks confused. Warbill’s rheumy gaze shifts from me to Damien and back again. “Do I know you?”
Of course, we’re still in disguise. I reach for my bond with Phantom and follow my ancestors’ advice to drop the illusion. Flipping my hand over, I whisper, “Revelverte.”Damien’s blond hair turns dark again, and his body bulks into its natural form. I hold up my hand and see my fingers are my own.
Warbill drops to one knee, head bowed. “My king.”
