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“No,” I said. I still wished to find Ana before High Council, and in truth, I was not hungry, and everything she brought still smelled burnt. I did not know if it was grief or if the memory of being burned so long ago lived in the back of my throat.
Despite this, I took a piece of the bread she had sliced open.
“I will eat as I walk,” I said and dismissed them, leaving my room for the great hall, finding the foyer quiet and cold. The doors of the palace were open and overlooked a raging fire. For a moment, my stomach soured, thinking that perhaps they’d begun to burn bodies in the night, but there were no corpses in the flames.
As I entered the hall, I halted in my tracks, and my earlier relief about the fire evaporated. Nearly half of the wounded were gone. Those who remained appeared to be villagers who had only been scratched or hurt themselves fleeing the aufhockers.
“My queen,” said a voice, and I turned my head to find Isac standing nearby. He bowed and moved to stand beside me.
“So few are left,” I said.
“Many were bitten.”
I swallowed hard. I had been bitten too, and I was still alive though very much changed.
“Was there no hope for any of them?”
“Aufhocker bites infect fast,” he said. “There comes a point where there is no coming back. Perhaps if the battle had not lasted as long…”
His voice trailed away.
“Where are the bodies?”
“The last of them were just moved to the sanctuary,” he said.
“Is Lady Ana there?” I wondered how she was doing, knowing she had been the one to administer the poison that had taken their lives.
“I believe so,” he said. “She must prepare them for burial.”
I thought it was strange that Ana had the task, but perhaps she had insisted.
“Thank you, Isac,” I said.
He offered a small smile. “Of course, Your Majesty,” he said and bowed. “I am glad to see you are well.”
He had no idea how much guilt his words would create within me, but as I left for the sanctuary, it only grew.
The sanctuary was technically part of the castle, though only accessible from the outside. It was from Dragos’s reign, back when the old gods were worshipped, though it had been clear Asha was the center of worship within. Initially, I’d been surprised to learn that the space still existed within Adrian’s castle, given his contempt for the gods, even Dis, who created him, but Adrian had seen that no iconography dedicated to the goddess of life remained within the cavernous room. It was merely a quiet place to mourn the dead with no allegiance to any god.
I paused outside the doors of the sanctuary. They were slightly ajar, and I hesitated, choosing to peer through the small opening into the cavernous room. There were no windows, just great, arched alcoves where paintings of the old goddesses once hung. Clusters of tall, wax candles provided pockets of dim light, enough to illuminate several still bodies that rested among the shadows of the floor.
One body remained separate from the others, elevated on a stone altar. It was Isla, Ana’s vassal and lover, who had been corrupted by the crimson mist and killed during the attack on my coronation day.
A wave of emotion raced from my chest to my throat as I watched her. I felt guilty for my own thoughts when faced with Ana’s unbearable pain, but I was grateful I had not lost Adrian. It was selfish and not becoming of a queen. I needed to focus on finding a way to fight the mist.
Ana stood among the dead, her back to me, and as I slipped through the door, she turned to face me, brushing tears from her cheeks.
“Oh, Ana,” I said, embracing her.
She took a deep breath and then looked around the room, her eyes continuing to water.
“Did you…did you have to do this by yourself?” I asked.
She shook her head and swallowed. “Killian helped.”
A thickness gathered in my throat. I would have to check on him today.
“It was awful,” she said, wiping her sleeve across her eyes. “If we could, we held them until they passed.”
