Page 62 of Shadows and Flames (Twin Blades #2)

She shrunk a moment, a minute curling inward, like she’d done on the dais in Queen Sarya’s throne room.

But a quick cut of her eyes to Meline beside her kept her from going into the full defensive crouch of a Lylithan in Frenzy.

“I’m…” her voice was still scratchy, unused. “I’m feeling okay. Better. Thank you.”

I nodded, trying to give her my attention but failing. “I am glad. I would like to speak privately with Meline, if that is all right.”

Francie swept her gaze left and right, as if translating and deciphering my words.

My queen’s spine went rigid, but she managed to slowly place a hand on her friend’s shoulder, giving time should she want to pull away.

Francie tensed but ultimately accepted the touch. “Do you need me? Or will you be okay?”

Though she’d been cautious of Meline’s gesture, anyone touching her really, she did visibly relax the longer Meline’s hand remained on her shoulder. “Yeah. I’ll go nap in my room.” She even tried for a wooden smile, one that was all effort.

Meline returned the gesture with one much more organic, but the worry was in the strain around her eyes.

Francie scuttled off to her room, leaving me in the corridor, facing Meline. Alone.

“Um,” she cleared her throat, “what is it that you want to talk about?” I gave her a long look, one that needed no words to express my feelings about her question.

Meline shook her head and chuckled dryly.

“Of course. Ah, sure. Where…” She looked up and down the small area of space around us, between us, at a loss.

But I agreed, this was not exactly private, nor the best place for this conversation. “Walk with me?” I remembered to form it as a question, even with the restlessness in my bones.

I waited, watching, as she fidgeted and bounced slightly from foot to foot, as if readying for an attack. Had I the ability in that moment, I would have laughed. Living as a Shadow for so many years, with the power of Zoko in my veins, I’d long become accustomed to people being afraid of me.

If there was anyone in this realm I wanted to feel completely safe with me, though, it was her.

She agreed wordlessly, after a moment, but her gait was charged as we walked from the inn to the forest surrounding.

The leaves forming the thick canopy overhead were no longer a fringe of greens and yellows but now a tapestry of oranges, reds, and purple.

Some had made the end of their life cycle, turning to brown, falling and now a soft, crackly cushion under our feet.

Meline was the first to speak as we progressed with no destination in mind. “So…is there something specific you wanted to ask me? To talk about?”

I kept my eyes ahead of us, on the moss clinging to trunks. On dead grass and the insects flitting past. “I would like to discuss…” What did I want to talk about? “Our son.”

She sucked in a breath but did not stumble. “W-What—” she cleared her throat and picked up a long stick in our path “—what about him?”

Everything , I wanted to say. But that was not sufficient or specific enough.

I wanted to know every detail about him, how she’d prepared for him, how she’d healed physically from him, and how we were going to move on with his absence like an ever-present wound in our lives.

Instead, I asked, “How do you feel about him? Now.” Because as much as I longed to know him, Meline was here.

She began to slowly twirl the wood in her hand.

“Now…well, I miss him, obviously. But it is difficult? The grief is…more about what could have been. What,” her voice grew thick, “he could have been. Rather than mourning what we had.” Quickly, she added, “There is grief over that loss as well. It was the first time I’d properly slowed down.

” I made a noise of understanding, urging her to continue.

She chuckled. “Had I not been forced to, I probably never would. Rest as much as I did in those months.” The echo of my own grief that was slippery and ill-defined.

All I had to miss was what could have been. A faint outline.

I hesitated with my next question, worried how she would take it, but, “How did you—d-did you bury him?”

The lazy arcs she was making with the stick immediately halted.

Her steps did as well, and I stopped, turning back to finally look at her.

She faced me, almost as if purposefully challenging herself to.

“Tana and I, we…” Her lips trembled, and she brought the heel of her free hand to her chest, rubbing.

“It is traditional in Rhaestran culture to cremate, s-so, we wrapped him. And I spread the ashes over the Ralthan River and a meadow where I spent many of my days of rest.” Aside from the brief stumble, Meline mechanically recited the words, as if she’d already prepared them for me.

Shielding herself from my objection to the way she’d said goodbye to Soleil.

But I was not upset. I was… surprised. Shocked and thankful and suspicious of just how much the Goddesses were involved in our fate. Meline always bemoaned Rhaea in particular, for ‘cursing’ her with the power of Death with no guidance at best, or purposefully making her suffer at worst.

I did not respond, combing over all she had told me, but my queen stepped closer, twirling the stick again. “Is that—is that not what you would have wanted?” Her fear filtered through my awareness. Not quite the sour scent so common in my line of work. Something softer, deeper.

“Yes. Cremation is my people’s custom.”

She loosed a breath, and her shoulders inched down from their heightened position near her ears. “I figured, but I had still worried.”

“The Ralthan River. A meadow,” I repeated. Where she’d returned our child’s ashes to the earth of my father’s homeland.

Where I’d played as a child myself.

Meline switched hands, winding the stick with her left, now.

She nodded. “I didn’t have much to do, and the little cottage where Tana and I lived was nearby.

Spent a lot of time reading and drawing.

” Then, much quieter, Meline looked down and admitted, “The meadow was when I first felt him move within me. The river was where I first noticed his scent. The beginnings of it, anyway. I would talk to him quite a bit. About everything, anything. You.”

A tear, sudden and unstoppable, dripped out of my eye. I swallowed. “My father was from Ralthas.”

She offered me a small smile. “I remember.”

Speaking this suspicion out loud felt… strange.

“I am uncertain if we are thinking of the same places. B-But I—I spent much of my time with my brother and father playing in a Ralthan meadow. Swimming in the Ralthan River.” I almost did not want her to confirm or deny it.

Without that, I had room to believe I’d been close to him, to Meline and Soleil.

That I’d played on the same soil, splashed in the same waters, if only separated by time.

Was my family caring for him now? Playing with him in whatever afterlife awaited our kind?

The stick snapped within Meline’s grip, breaking cleanly in two pieces and falling to the forest floor. She stared up at me with wide eyes, and I did not look away. “Y—I thought you were from Zonoras?”

I liked the sound of my homeland on her lips.

“I am. I was born there, and because of our gift, my father agreed to primarily raising Leandro and me in Zonoras. He and Mamá were lovers but not companions. They loved one another but also had their own lives. His primary home away from the Well was in Ralthas.”

What piece of information she hung onto, though, I did not expect. “And, do you want that, then? To be like your parents?”

It took me some time to catch up to what she asked, my mind still reeling by yet another unexpected connection we shared.

I seldom prayed to Zoko, my mother’s piousness never something I’d picked up, but I sent a silent one, now.

Quickly but emphatically thanking Her and Her siblings for whatever part they played in bringing Meline and me together. From the beginning.

“To be like…” My parents? I loved Mamá and Papá very much, still to this day.

And when they’d reunite, they would embrace and kiss and go off on their own, a testament to the centuries they’d been friends and shared pleasure.

But when they had my brother and me, they were older than Meline and I were now.

Other than just not being something they wanted in life, I’d never gotten a clear answer as to why they did not want to marry or mate.

My brother and I used to tease them, when they shared affection after time apart.

But, just as they’d alluded to knowing they wanted to remain untied, free in that way, I’d known even as a boy that should I find someone who looked at me the way Mamá did Papá, I would want them with me.

“No. I do not. I’ve told you what I want from you. ”

Her heart picked up, thumping against the inside of her chest, ringing in my own ears. “You want my love.”

“Yes.”

“My presence. My words and my body.”

Without realizing, I’d stepped closer as Meline repeated my words back to me. “Yes.”

My hands reached up, gently brushing her sides, and she whispered, “To be . To share pain.”

“Yes,” I repeated again.

“Even after—after Soleil.” Could there be such a thing? He was no longer in this realm, but he was forever marked on our souls. On us .

I pulled Meline closer to me, until there was nothing left between us. Using the backs of my fingers, I caressed the edge of her jaw, dusted with a faint cluster of freckles. Twelve of them. “Our son does not change how I feel about you. What I want.”

She was crying. Not the thick wails of last night, but a silent release, now that we’d finally reached past the valley and met one another on the other side. “I want that, too.” Her voice cracked.

I bent, but before my lips met hers, I spoke into them, “I love you. My queen.”

A gust of air swept my skin, and a burst of her peppercorn scent bloomed. Her scent carried a gentle twine of the breeze over waves. And, faintly, a flowery sweetness I had not focused on before. One that was not there three years ago.

Fingers tightened in the front of my tunic, sharp fingernails scraping against the skin above my waist. “I—love you, El.”

I kissed her. Pressed my lips to hers. But the way she craned up into me, the way we melted into each other, it was truly more than just a kiss. When I had found my queen, seeing her across the ballroom in Morova, I had thought my search ended. The start of my life with her beginning on that day.

But, as our lips parted and joined, over and over in an unhurried pace, I knew I had been wrong. Surrounded by towering ash trees, sunlight dappling through the crimson autumn leaves, I knew that this was the true end to our journey back to one another. Ushering in a new beginning.