Page 34 of The Reaping Rose

“Where do you think he’s buried?” Greer asks, her gaze roaming over the clearing.

“I have no idea, but it’s going to be a long day.” I slide the shovel off my shoulder and strike the ground closest to the marking. It’s frozen and unyielding, and it takes all my strength to pull up each shovel of dirt.

Letia returns to the village to help the villagers pack when the first hole comes up empty, while Greer grabs a shovel and helps.

Sweat drips down both our faces as we work. In the Ley Court, I wouldn’t break a sweat, but we’ve been without magic for four months now, and my heartbeat is fighting to resist the Beating. If the sea was passable, I’d have returned to Ruse Village by now to refuel my magic stores, but it’s not.

All I can do is dig and hope.

The first body we uncover isn’t Fae. Emual chose to be buried in a human graveyard, proving just how resistant he was to the beliefs of his people. I hope that works in our favor, and he was as paranoid about trusting anyone with the rings as he was about trusting the gods with his soul.

Greer uncovers another body. Fae this time, but it’s not Emual. His Guard armor is rusted from years in the ground, and he’s no more than bone and vines.

Static warns of a storm rolling in, but there’s no time to wait it out, so I keep digging. Rain pours, drenching us as we cut through dense, stony dirt and slop through mud from the sudden downpour.

Swinging my shovel, it clinks against something metal.

“Found another one,” I yell for Greer, who is digging at the other side of the clearing, working her way toward me.

She swings her shovel over her shoulder and comes my way to help. The rain thins just as we uncover a sheet of metal in the ground.

“Why do you think this one is covered?” Greer slams her shovel into the dirt, creating a post to lean against.

“I’m not sure, but those look like protection runes.”

“You think he was guarding his corpse?”

I grab the metal and lift. “Or hiding what was beneath it.”

There’s nothing to indicate this is Emual, except that his armor suggests he was a guard. In his hands is a pouch that clinks when I peel it from his skeleton.

“Is that⁠—”

I open the pouch and grin. “We found them. Now let’s hope they work.”

Greer and I rush back to the village just as the storm finishes its second surge. Letia is helping Seren pack food stores, but her eyes light up when she sees the bag in my hands.

“Is that them?”

I hold the bag out for her, and she peeks inside. From my rough count, there are well over the twenty we’ll need. But I didn’t pull them out to check because the metal was unsettling when I touched it. It didn’t burn or hurt necessarily, but it pushed against something inside me. Like the sting of the aeraliss resisted my very being.

It makes sense with how aeraliss repels magic to protect humans.

Letia reaches in and pulls out a single silver band. The metal is covered in glowing veins that remind me of the ones in Elorie’s mother’s sword. Her eyebrows scrunch as she turns the ring over in her hand.

“I feel it.” Letia holds it up to the sky, and the metal shimmers. “Almost as if it’s saying something.”

Around us, a few have stopped to watch Letia with the ring. She slips it on, wincing.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Letia clutches her hand to her chest. “It just stings a little. That’s all.”

“It might be the effects of the metal,” Greer guesses.

“Probably.” Letia holds out her hand.

Where the glowing veins once shone through the metal, they’re dark now.