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CHAPTER SEVEN

I FLEW TO M YRELINTH . My chest ached with relief when I landed at my burl and saw that Riven was not there waiting for me. I needed a shower. To wash away the swirling thoughts of him and focus on the two enemies we now faced.

I stepped under the branch and let the thoughts run down the drain.

My stomach twisted with guilt for fleeing from him just as he had done to me. But I was home. I was present. And I had been waiting for weeks. Riven could stand to wait a few hours until I knew exactly what I wanted to say to him. Until I knew I could do it without maiming him.

There was someone more important I needed to talk to.

I dressed and plaited my hair into a wet braid. I jumped from the burl, wearing nothing but a pair of training pants and a loose tunic. I wasn’t allowed to bring my weapons into the crypt, and with a couple hours left of sunlight I wouldn’t need them.

Fyrel was standing at the base of the tree. Gwyn stood in front of her whispering something into her ear, so close her lips brushed against Fyrel’s skin.

I cleared my throat.

Fyrel gasped and shoved Gwyn away. Her stare became permanently fixed on my boots. “We were discussing rooming options for the new Halflings, Mistr—I mean, Keera.” Her voice shook with such panic I was surprised the ground wasn’t quaking.

I had wondered if those long looks Fyrel gave Gwyn were more than admiration. Though Gwyn’s smug smirk hid it better, I could tell she cared for her too.

My stomach lurched. They were both so young, so full of life and hope. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Brenna. Of the short time we’d spent whispering into each other’s ears and hiding in the shadowed halls of the Order.

At least here they didn’t have to hide if they didn’t want to. But Fyrel’s nervous shaking made it clear that was not a conversation she wanted to have. She picked at the corner of the book she was holding. I recognized it as one of the tomes Vrail had brought to the council.

Gwyn saw how I was dressed, and her face turned serious. “You’re visiting the crypt?”

I nodded.

Gwyn’s eyes narrowed as she looked up at my burl for the briefest moment before pointing to the closest winding branch of the Myram tree. “There’s fresh food in the kitchen from lunch. I doubt she’s eaten since yesterday.”

“I’ll go fetch something for her.” I squinted at Fyrel’s shoulder and stooped. I pulled the long piece of ribbon that Gwyn used to tie back her curls from the edge of her leathers. “I think this is yours.” I passed it to Gwyn.

She smirked. “I was just looking for that,” she said too sweetly.

Fyrel looked like she was about to vomit.

I headed to the stairs and heard Fyrel slide to the ground at the bottom of the trunk. “I told you it didn’t fall out in the wind. We need to be more careful.”

Gwyn’s singsong laugh followed me all the way down the stairs.

I found Syrra in the lowest levels of Myrelinth. Only one tunnel led to the crypts. We were far into the Dark Wood, underneath layers of rock that pulsed with turquoise and silver light through its veins.

Stone petals bloomed along the cracks, filling the circular chamber with the fresh scent of river water and honey. With closed eyes, I could imagine that I was outside along the lake and not deep into the earth where it was cool enough to keep bodies before funeral rites were performed.

She had become a statue guarding her sister until then. In the dim light, the scars along her arms looked more like moss, dark and shadowed lichen that grew on stone standing still too long.

A haunted expression was carved forevermore on her face. I’d watched a part of her die the day I brought her sister home in my arms, only weeks after her miraculous return. Since then, the living part of Syrra had slowly begun to fade. Perhaps she truly was a tombstone and not a statue at all.

“The mission was a success,” I said in way of a greeting. Even though Syrra’s face did not move, I knew she’d heard me approach. “We saved a few dozen Halflings before a waateyshir came to Silstra. Well, we saved all but one.”

I glanced around the room. Had the beast not turned Victoria’s body to ash, I would have given her an Elvish funeral. She had certainly helped enough of us to deserve one.

But life so rarely gave justice to the deserving.

A blink was the only sign that Syrra had heard me. Her hands stayed tucked behind her back, and her eyes were locked on the wrapped linen that covered Maerhal’s body. The Elverin had ways of preserving the body, but the longer Syrra waited, the longer Maerhal had to wait to be returned to the earth to join her ancestors.

Feron had wanted to light her pyre alongside Lash’s, but Syrra had refused. She would not allow her sister to be buried without her son. It wasn’t what Nikolai would have wanted. It was he who would wear her diizra and no one else.

My stomach clenched. I wasn’t sure Nikolai was capable of wanting anything at all. I was certain he was alive, but that didn’t give me any comfort. Damien was too cruel to those in his keep. He had more than one way to make a person wish for death and nothing else.

I fought the urge to run out of the room and fly from city to city until I could feel Nikolai under my feet, but that would be playing directly into Damien’s hand. He wanted us fractured; he wanted our focus on our friend instead of our rebellion. He wanted us in a desperate frenzy, but I refused to play his game any longer.

I had trained my entire life for this. Balancing the hardest decisions, choosing between two false choices even though both ripped at my soul. Nikolai just needed to survive long enough for us to have a solid plan of attack.

I owed him that. I would keep my head even as the others lost theirs.

But it would be easier to do it with Syrra in fighting form.

“Feron told me about the Elvish warriors of old.” I took a step closer to the stone slab Syrra guarded. “The first ones to fight the waateyshirak . The ones who started Niikir’na before the palace ever stood on the island.”

Syrra’s neck tensed but she still didn’t speak.

“We need warriors like that again.” I stood at the edge of the slab, turning myself so Syrra had no choice but to look at me. “We need you.”

Her full lips were set into a frown I thought might be permanently etched into her face. Even her eyes seemed to droop at the corners. She was no longer an Elf, no longer a person, just a shell—and her shell was beginning to collapse.

Tears pooled at the corners of my eyes. She had been there when my sorrows lashed at me and wouldn’t let go. She had found me, drowning in my guilt, and reached out her hand until I could breathe on my own again.

I tapped the backs of my fingers along the edge of the slab. It was my turn to find a way to reach her. But how did one make a statue breathe with hope?

“Syrra,” I whispered, my desperation echoing against the stone walls. “You have waited long enough. There are so many who are still …”

That last word caught in my throat.

Syrra’s head turned, curving toward me like the owls she found so frightening. “Alive?”

I nodded. “A warrior protects the living; she doesn’t haunt the dead.”

“She is not truly dead until her pyre is lit.” Syrra’s neck flexed. “Until then, my sister rests in the in-between.” Her lip trembled.

The in-between was a cold cave, much too close to the hole Maerhal had spent the better part of her life in. She deserved a burial, to have her body turned to ash so it could grow again under the warmth of the sun and the cool of the rain. It was wrong to keep her underground another day.

My fingers turned to a fist along the stone. “Who will save the Elverin if their leaders are caught between grief and hope?”

Syrra scoffed. “I am not certain there is any hope left.”

I tapped my fingers again. What good would it do to admit to her that I struggled with the same fear, that each day I woke with a mountain on my chest, burying me under the weight of everything we had to lose, and I was nothing but fractured pieces waiting to fall, praying that the war ended before I did.

I took a deep breath. The damp air smelled of earth and spring water. “If we don’t continue the fight, then Maerhal and Lash died for nothing.”

Syrra’s dark eyes cut to me.

“They died believing that Elverath would be ours again.” I lifted my chin to keep my voice from breaking. “They died with the same dream we all had. Of our freedom and our magic, returned to us.”

A tear welled along Syrra’s bottom lash. I watched it swell and fall onto her cheek, leaving a river of grief along her skin.

She lifted her chin and the tear fell to the ground. “I no longer believe that dream is worth all this suffering.”

My heart tore as I reached for her hand. Her skin was cold like stone.

I opened my mouth, but no words came. I had been so sure that breaking that last seal would solve all our problems. I was not thinking of the army that waited for us in every major city. The battles still left to fight, the losses still to come. I had moved forward, focused on one singular goal, but now that the seals were broken and there was still so much left to do, I couldn’t help but wonder if Syrra was right.

Had this fight been worth it at all?