Page 28 of The Rivaled Crown (The Veiled Kingdom #3)

CHAPTER 28

VERENA

T he sea was still that night.

Not a ripple stirred its darkened surface, no wind to carry the scent of salt through the city’s battered streets. It was as if the ocean itself was holding its breath, waiting, watching, as we prepared to send the dead home.

Torches lined the shore, their flickering flames casting light over the gathered crowd. The rebels stood in solemn ranks, their armor battered, their faces streaked with soot and grief. Those who had once fought for my father stood farther back, their expressions unreadable.

And in the water, drifting silently beyond the shallows, the boats waited.

Dozens of them.

Eiran, the rebels who had fallen, the innocents my father had slaughtered.

And the boy .

The hanged child who had burned in the streets, his lifeless body swaying as the flames swallowed him. His mother had been waiting when we found him, clutching his toy he’d left behind against her chest, her screams raw.

She stood beside me now, her fingers clutching the edge of the boat that bore him. She hadn’t spoken, not since she had laid him inside, smoothing back what was left of his burned hair with shaking hands.

I felt her grief like a physical thing. It pressed against me, wrapped around my throat.

He should have had more time.

I swallowed past the sharp ache in my chest, my breath shuddering as I stepped forward.

The torch in my hand flickered, the heat licking against my fingers, but I barely felt it. My legs trembled as I waded into the water, my dress clinging to my legs, heavy with seawater and grief.

I pressed a hand against the edge of his boat.

Then I pushed.

The tide caught him, pulled him into its embrace.

His mother let out a broken, keening sob, her knees buckling beneath her. Someone caught her before she could fall.

I did not turn to see whom.

My fingers were trembling as I lifted the torch, as I let the flames kiss the wood.

Fire bloomed, a golden glow against the night, and then the boy was gone, drifting toward the horizon, carried beyond my reach.

Tears streaked down my face and the wind picked up, whispering against my skin, against my heart.

I turned my head to see Dacre where he stood just beyond the water’s edge, watching me, his torch still burning in his hand.

His lips parted, and though he didn’t say the words, I felt them.

We will honor them .

I swallowed against the lump in my throat, my fingers tightening around my torch.

A few feet away, another boat waited. Eiran’s body lay atop it, arms crossed over his chest, his face shadowed beneath the glow of the flames.

Dacre moved forward, stepping into the water beside me. He hesitated only for a moment then he set the boat aflame.

Neither of us spoke as we watched the fire spread, licking at the edges of the wood, curling over the man who had once been his brother and his enemy.

He had betrayed Dacre. He had saved Wren.

Dacre’s father stood on the beach, his lips pressed into a thin line, and his eyes never leaving the flames as Eiran’s body was carried out to sea.

I didn’t know if Dacre and his father’s relationship would ever heal. Even now, I could feel Dacre’s hesitation through our bond. I could feel his desperation and confusion over whether they could ever repair what they had lost.

Dacre exhaled sharply, lowering the torch to his side. His knuckles were white where they gripped the handle.

I looked at him then, really looked at him. At the war still raging inside him, at the grief that tangled with his fury.

His throat bobbed as he swallowed, and I reached for him, my fingers brushing against his wrist.

He let out a breath. Then another.

Then he turned away, his torch falling into the shallows with a soft hiss.

I looked back at the boats, at the flames now drifting farther and farther into the dark, until they were only distant specks of light, swallowed by the horizon.

And I wasn’t sure if the ache inside me would ever fade.

I tried to breathe, tried to force air into my lungs where guilt had taken root, but I didn’t think it would ever let go of me.

The fires burned, the sea carried the ashes, and still, the weight remained.

They would never see this kingdom rise. Never see what we would build from the ruin left behind. But I would carry them with me, in every stone, in every whisper, in every breath.

Their names would not be forgotten.

A sharp wind carried over the sea, stirring the flames, sending embers dancing across the waves until they danced above, carrying over my face, and whipping through my hair.

I lifted my chin, and I let them crown me.