Page 68 of Sky’s Edge

The path we took edged the coast, and it was a good fifteen-minute glide, so probably an hour plus walk, to the cove.

The minute the males stopped the Sprints, I knew why this was a favorite spot of Darynda and Tanyn.

It was beautiful.

The water in the cove was shallow, and the color of Tanyn’s eyes, and snowflake-patterned clear ice limned the edges that touched the shore, and when the sun hit them, prisms of light reflected off the water.

There was a white marble conical funeral plinth that, if you didn’t know what this place was, and as such, to look for it, it would be lost in the blinding white of the snow that surrounded it.

Mangold and Zyra approached first, with Zyra putting their bouquet of flowers at the base of the plinth, while Tanyn and I hung back.

We gave them time.

They took it, in silent reflection.

It was only when Zyr let out a little sob that Manny led her away.

I turned to Tanyn to hand him the bouquet.

He took it without looking at it.

No, he was staring in my eyes.

“Cold?” he asked.

I was freezing.

I made my lips curve up. “I’m totally getting used to it.”

“Liar,” he whispered.

Caught.

I shrugged.

His head dropped and he touched his lips to mine.

He was killing me.

When he lifted away, I said, “Say hi to her from me.”

Instantaneously, red lightning crackled through his now black eyes.

But he nodded and moved to the plinth.

Hurley went with him and sat down in the snow beside Tanyn’s feet.

It took him a while to lay the bouquet by the plinth, and watching him standing there, staring at the space where, under the snow, his mother’s body lay, it was too much. Too intimate. Too private.

I turned away, walked to the shore and stared out to sea.

And I thought of the pic of the female on that couch, smiling.

The lynx in their pen, healing.

The lynx outside their pen, roaming.

I thought of welcoming small rooms in a tiny portion of a vast castle that made a happy home.