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She placed a hand against the mound, tentatively, almost as if it had no right to be there.
“If I forgive you, I’ll come back,” she told him. “Perhaps I’ll have some words then.”
She kneeled by the graveside for a long time, the sun thickening in the sky.
Slowly, carefully, the roots cocooned themselves around her, the tip of one reaching up to brush away the one tear that had dared to form.
It jerked her from the numbness of thought.
“I can’t,” she said, standing clear of the roots. “Not yet, not right now.”
She wanted to scream and cry and wail and break in his arms. But she couldn’t imagine sleeping right now, and she didn’t want this imitation. She had ground to cover.
She had to move.
Unable to stomach a proper meal, she drank the dregs of the last of Mabel’s potions, chewed on some dried fruit, and kept walking.
She kept walking until she’d lost all sensation in her feet, until her body and mind had turned to rubber, until there was nothing in her but the dull, desperate need to place one foot in front of the other and just keep moving. She thought of nothing else. Her mind wasn’t capable of thought, wasn’t conscious of anything.
It still wasn’t thinking when she arrived back at the hut she had once shared with her father, now a nest of dust and cobwebs.
A part of her had missed it over the years, a part of her longing to return. It was simpler, here. Nothing to be frightened of.
Because whatever her father’s flaws, whatever hard lessons he had taught her, she had always felt safe with him. No matter what peril she’d faced, dimly in the back of her mind she’d known that if she couldn’t get herself out of trouble, he would.
And he had.
But not anymore. Or ever again.
She set herself up a bed and made up a fire, forcing a little more food down.
On the counter top were two crisp letters, waxed-sealed and undisturbed. One was addressed to her mother, the other to her.
Markham must have known what he was going to do almost as soon as Ladrien told him, and he’d come back here to prepare. Perhaps he’d taken one of the winged mounts Maytree had used, picked up Juliana’s trail and followed her to Winter, and afterwards, watched over her at Mabel’s.
The presence she’d felt had been his.
Juliana picked up her letter. She held it for a long time before cracking it open. A part of her didn’t want to. She wanted to lock those words away, unread, unheard, unspoken. If she never read them, his last words were still out there. She’d never havenothing.
But she had to read. She had to know.
Exhaustion took over grief, and somehow, Juliana slept. She woke up with Hawthorn beside her, and within a shard of a second had launched herself into his arms so hard she felt she could have broken his ribs.
She said nothing. She just sobbed, breaking occasionally to mumble awful, guttural words that made no sense.
Hawthorn held her and stroked her hair as she clung to him like a raft in a storm, and held her until the worst of the tempest was past.
“It didn’t even work,” she wailed into his chest. “All that and it didn’t even work.”
All that, and she was parentless, all that and she was completely alone.
She gripped onto the front of Hawthorn’s shirt.
No,she realised,not alone. Don’t forget that.
“I know,” Hawthorn said, kissing her forehead. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why it didn’t. Ladrien can’t lie, the spell looked flawless—perhaps some of the ingredients weren’t potent enough?”
Juliana knew as soon as he spoke that that had nothing to do with it.
