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Her dark eyes studied me for a long moment.
“Only someone who has carried that burden many times over would recognize it was a lesson he needed to learn.” Her lips barely moved as she spoke. Her eyes broke from my face and focused on the backs of Riven and Nikolai, who’d become ants along the trail.
“We will wait for you back at the safe house. Do not linger long.” Syrra clucked her tongue once and her horse cantered away, leaving me alone with the Shades.
Each step back to the fire was a struggle. My boots turned to iron, almost too heavy to walk in. My breaths were ragged by the time I reached them. The blade I’d given Riven stuck out from Alys’s chest, matching the knife that had ended her partner’s life. Elinar’s face was untouched, as if she’d been sleeping too. Her black hair was pulled back behind the sharp points of her ears and fell in a loose spiral beside her. Where her braid ended, Alys’s blond plait began, trailing back up to her soft face.
They were tied together in death, as they had been in life.
Had they been friends despite everything the Order preached? Alys’s sobs for her partner rang in my ears, my throat raw like I’d cried them too. Memories I’d spent so long trying to forget scratched at my chest until my eyes stung. My body was a shell filled with nothing but loss. It was all I knew. And all I gave.
Perhaps it had been a kindness to end Alys’s life instead of forcing her to live in the world without Elinar at her side. Friends or not, they were all each other had. All each other knew. Life after a loss like that didn’t feel like a life at all.
I built a single pyre, large enough for the girls to lie side by side. I picked up Elinar first. Her body was light and feeble in my hands. I hadn’t realized how short she was until then, how fragile. Alys was next.
I fixed their braids back in the connected swirl and joined their hands. The knives were still buried in their chests, but I didn’t remove them. If there was any chance of revenge after death, I wanted them armed. Every Shade knew her life would end in violence. It was an honor to know death came in one hard blow rather than the sum of a thousand pricks.
I hummed a sad melody I didn’t know the words to. Low, soft tones like the rumble of night rain. I stopped halfway through, unsure of how the song finished and lit a piece of driftwood in place of a torch. I lit the pyre in five places just like I’d seen Hildegard do for the fallen Shades whose bodies made it back to the Order. I stood, staring at the flames and didn’t move until their bodies were nothing but ash.
Whatever strength I had shattered when I watched those girls burn away. I’d left Koratha in search of the Shadow to save initiates from an early grave. I’d made the alliance with Riven to saveallthe Halflings. But not even a full day in the kingdom and two Shades were dead. How many more Halflings would die before the king was killed? How much more blood could my hands carry?
In the smoke of the pyre, I saw the shadowed faces of all the lives I’d taken. Most were innocent Halflings who called out to their names etched into my skin. My flesh seared with the hundreds of deaths replaying in my head.
Their pleas for mercy reverberated through my skull. The wails of parents knowing their children were being taken. Or worse, killed by my blade too. All the deaths the king had ordered. All the lives I’d been forced to take in his name.
I fell to my knees, warm ash coating my trousers as I screamed. I wanted to swear to the woods, to whichever creatures hid among the trees, that I would never kill again. But I couldn’t. That was all I’d been trained to do. My days taking lives in the name of the king were over, but my days of killing were not.
My shoulders bowed under the weight of that truth. My steps scuffed the dirt as I walked to my horse and slumped over the saddle. I could only manage a soft tap with the stirrup, but she set a trot back to Caerth without need for reins.
I reached the edge of the city just as the suns began to set. I didn’t turn down the narrow street that led to the safe house where Riven and the others were waiting. Instead, I kept on the main road in search of a pub.
I stumbled into the first building that smelled of cheap ale and spilled wine. The floor was tacky as I meandered to a table and waited for the barmaid to find me. A young woman with curly black hair and rouged cheeks materialized beside the table. Her skirt brushed against my leg. It left an ashy mark on her apron.
I doubted it was the worst thing she’d ever had on her clothes.
“I’ll take your strongest drink.” I slammed a small pouch of silver coins on the table. “And keep them coming.”
She stared at the coin for a moment before she swiped it away. She reappeared with an ale so dark it looked like night turned to drink. I held the vial ofwinvraelixir in my hand. I pictured myself tasting the sweet liquid and marching out the door, but my legs couldn’t carry the weight of the pain anymore. They needed rest. They needed oblivion.
I seized the goblet and swallowed it in one gulp.
I woke up in a bed. A hard one, but better than the sticky floor of the pub I remembered crumpling onto. The room was dark and small. I felt the familiar pull of my tunic along my scars and the weight of blankets. My boots were off, but my long socks were still on.
I lifted my head and my skull split open. Someone lit an oil lamp across the room. I blocked the light with my hand and saw the outline of a person as I squinted. I wanted to ask who was there, but a large belch bellowed from my stomach instead.
“There is a bucket beside you.”
Syrra.
I threw my body over the edge of the bed and vomited into the slop bucket. It was already partly full.
“What happened?” I was too nauseous to care that I couldn’t remember.
“You binged half the ale in Caerth.” Syrra crossed her legs.
I felt like I binged half the ale in Elverath. I wiped my mouth. “Are we at the safe house?” The curtains were drawn, and I didn’t sense any sunlight behind them. We could be anywhere in the city.
“No,” Syrra answered.
