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The bonfire claws at the night sky, throwing off sparks that wink out like dying stars. I make my way toward the circle of firelight on leaden feet, each step an effort.

Aithinne crouches in the dirt, sifting leaves and twigs through her fingers. She’s scattered them in whorled patterns radiating from the pyre, transforming the barren earth into something almost beautiful. Almost sacred.

“There should be flowers,” she tells me. “We always bury our own with flowers. Petals in every colour carpet the ground for miles. We did it for you when we thought you were gone. So everyone would know how loved you were.”

Swallowing, she offers me a small box, but I can’t move. Can’t reach out and take it, because the moment I do, this becomes real. Derrick is truly gone. Ripped away like everything else, everyone else. Leaving me in pieces.

Catherine presses on the small of my back, a gentle nudge. “I’m right here,” she murmurs.

Aithinne settles Derrick’s coffin into my palms, the wood smooth beneath my fingertips. It’s intricately carved, covered in curling fae symbols—a latticework of lines and whorls.

“We had no flowers,” Aithinne says, “so I gave him this.”

With careful hands, she lifts the lid. Derrick is nestled in a bed of shimmering indigo silk, eyes closed. He could be sleeping. Just drifted off, ready to wake at any moment with a biting quip and a wicked grin.

But he won’t. He isn’t sleeping or resting. He’s gone. Snuffed out. And he’s never coming back.

I squeeze my eyes shut against the hot prickle building behind them. Breathe in, out. Holding myself together by fraying threads.

“What do the carvings say?” I ask, voice scraped raw.

“They tell his story.” Aithinne skims her fingers over the dense tangle of markings, reverent. “Here is his beginning. His birth, centuries upon centuries ago. And these, these are his many battles. The foes he’s felled and the realms he’s roamed.”

She takes my hand, guiding it to rest over Derrick’s still chest. There, the carvings grow more intricate, the symbols layered and overlapping until they’re nearly indecipherable.

“This is you,” Aithinne says, so soft it aches.

“Who changed everything for him. The mortal he loved enough to die for.” Tears glint in her lashes.

“You’re etched closest to his heart. So when Derrick is reunited with his kin, they will see your name.

They will know you as he did—as friend, as family. ”

Aithinne leans down to press her lips to Derrick’s brow.

“We believe our spirits journey to Ti′r na nO′g after death. It’s a land of perpetual warmth and plenty.

Of youth that never withers.” She reaches out to curl her fingers around mine.

“You’ll find him there one day. We’ll all be together again where war and grief can’t touch us. ”

Her hand drops away, and she gestures toward the platform she’s constructed at the edge of the bonfire. Wood smoke stings my nose as I lay Derrick’s coffin down. The emptiness inside yawns wider, threatens to swallow me whole.

Aithinne doesn’t flinch as she steps into the blaze, unscorched. She lifts the platform high. For a moment, it looks almost like an offering.

Then she gives Derrick to the flames.

We keep vigil as the fire feasts, watching as wood chars and silk curls. As the last earthly remnant of Derrick is reduced to embers and dust.

Later, curled in my narrow cot, I feel the mattress dip as a familiar weight settles behind me. A strong arm bands around my middle, pulling me close.

Kiaran presses his face to the nape of my neck. Holds me as though he can keep me from fraying apart if he grips tight enough. But he doesn’t offer me platitudes or whisper reassurances. He seems to know that words have no place here.

And so we just breathe. Inhale, exhale, hearts beating in tandem. Clinging to each other against the dark.

Finally, I speak, voice little more than a thready rasp in the hush. “I miss him.”

Kiaran makes a low sound, arms tightening. “Shhh. I know,” he murmurs into my hair. “I know, sweet lass.”

“I’m going to kill her, MacKay. Rip her heart from her chest and crush it in my fist.”

Kiaran turns me in the circle of his arms until we’re nose to nose. Until I can just make out the glow of his eyes, fixing on me like I’m the only thing left tethering him to the world.

“Together, Kameron.”

“Together,” I breathe.