I expected the guys. Maybe Zira. Maybe a handful of the Feeders who’d been at the other funerals this week, the ones who seemed to understand what I was trying to do.
Not this.
Hundreds of them.
Every Feeder in the sanctuary, from the looks of it. Standing in neat rows across the courtyard, heads bowed, silent. Waiting.
My breath catches.
These are the Feeders who lived under Riley’s rule for five years.
The ones she enslaved. Manipulated. Controlled with black Ether and whispered lies. The ones who thought they were serving me while she used my face to break them. The ones who flinched when she walked by, who couldn’t look her in the eye, who woke up screaming because they couldn’t tell the difference between me and her.
They have every reason to hate her.
Every reason to spit on her grave, to curse her name, to celebrate her death.
And they’re here.
“Bree.” Seth’s hand on my back. Steady. “They wanted to come.”
“I didn’t—I didn’t ask them to—”
“You didn’t have to.” I look at him. At all of them—my men flanking me like an honor guard, faces solemn.
“They’ve been watching you all week,” Thane says quietly. “Every funeral. Every family. You showed up for strangers, Bree. For people you’d never met, people who died fighting on both sides.” His jaw tightens. “They noticed.”
“And you asked them to forgive,” Stellan adds, his voice low. “Not demanded. Asked. Explained Riley acted because Ethos got to her.” He pauses. “Some of them aren’t ready. Some of them may never be. But they came anyway.”
I scan the crowd.
Some faces are wet with tears—and I don’t think they’re tears of grief. Some are hard, closed off, jaws tight with the effort of being here. A few won’t meet my eyes at all. I see hands clenched into fists, shoulders rigid with tension, mouths pressed into thin lines.
They’re not here because they forgave her.
They’re here because they’re trying.
Because I asked.
Because showing up to seventeen funerals for their people meant something.
Because grace is a choice you make over and over, especially when it hurts.
“For you,” Stellan says. “They came for you.”
My eyes burn.
This is what I wanted. What I asked for. What I begged them to consider in the hours after the battle, when anger was still hot and vengeance felt justified.
She was a victim too. He broke her the same way he tried to break all of us. The only difference is he got to her first.
I didn’t know if they believed me. I didn’t know if it mattered.
Apparently, it did.
My hands shake as I carry her forward.
The pyre is beautiful.
