Page 79

And We Lived…

The heat of the sun is like a physical touch, sinking into my skin anywhere it’s exposed by my fancy clothes, even as evening creeps into the eastern horizon, turning the sky shades of peach and pink. I did this so recently—a Wanderer funeral—something I never expected to do once.

This time is so much harder.

Today I don’t bury an enemy out of respect for his children. Today I bury people I love. My friends. My true family.

These last days have been maybe worse than any of the many, many long, chaotic, fear-filled days that came before. It turns out I’m not very good at saying goodbye.

Honestly, I haven’t managed to do that yet.

I’ve spent the hours burying my grief under so many tasks that needed sorting out. The goddesses fixed the damage from resetting the magic that ran amok through their dominions. The sight of Wildernyss lowering from the skies in a single day, visible even from the northernmost parts of Aryd, was…incredible.

I think if I’d known a single goddess could do that, I might have been too terrified to release them in the first place.

The Devourers no longer rule the seas, returned to mere consorts at their goddess’s sides. I guess we’ll have to rebuild our seafaring trade, ships, and so forth, a navy, too. In the meantime, though, the goddess Aryd and I have added to the portals all over the dominions. One in every city for easier access and communication.

Before even burying our dead, we’ve held three coronations in rapid succession with Allusian there to bless these new beginnings along with the goddesses of each individual dominion.

The goddess Tropikis killed King Panqui, furious with the way in which his line has used their power to heal and then bring death upon their people. A new king now sits in his place. Trysolde and Istrella of Wildernyss remain rulers, as do Altani, the Queen of Mariana, and Hakan’s mother, Wynega, who has reconciled with her son.

“The voices are gone,” Wynega whispered to me at my own coronation. “Do you still hear them?”

She’d asked me that once when she thought I was Tabra, and now I know what she must have been hearing. Eidolon’s Shadows. “No. They’re gone forever.”

She nodded, eyes clearer than the first time I saw her.

With Aryd’s blessing and Bene at her side, Tabra has been re-coronated as the Queen of Aryd, plans for her wedding to Achlys are well underway, and they will rule together.

I, however, relinquished my Arydian crown. Instead, I am now the crowned Queen of Tyndra, ruling at my king’s side.

The goddess Tyndra has yet to show her face, but she also hasn’t cursed us or come for us. I don’t know if it’s because she’s been weakened by Allusian, or because Reven may no longer be the son she remembers, but he is still a piece of him. Regardless, after the funerals, we will travel to Skom to take our thrones in icy dominion.

King Reven Shadowraith I and Queen Mereneith Evangeline I.

Together.

I guess I’ll have to learn to live with the cold, but I foresee frequent visits to Aryd and piling up sand everywhere in our palace, of course. Just in case I need to get away quickly. I’m not sure I’ll ever break that habit now. Not even in the peace that’s been hard-won.

Maybe because I haven’t found peace within myself yet.

Not while my friends lie as though sleeping inside the glass coffins I have made for them.

The lid of Horus’s coffin is hinged open to the air and the dying light of Aryd as the sun sinks behind the dunes in the distance. He wears the blue-layered clothes of his home zariphate of Wanderers who welcomed him back. Too late, as far as I’m concerned. But his sister, Lana, who stands with a new zariphate from the Lazuli desert, approved. Who am I to say otherwise?

Beside Horus, in two coffins with the lids still up, Cain and Tziah lie side by side.

It goes against Wanderer tradition to bury a non-Wanderer, let alone a non-Arydian this way, but Tziah isn’t just anyone. She spent months with the Cainis zariphate, gaining the trust of his people. I wasn’t there for most of it, but Tziah was the mediator between the Wanderers and the Vanished, who are also all here to say their goodbyes. She’s fought beside them, protected them, cared for them, just like she did for us.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that they asked for her to be buried with their people.

Vos stands beside Tziah’s coffin, holding her hand, head bowed. He hasn’t left her once since the battle ended. I’m half afraid he’ll follow her to the grave.

Pella stands beside Cain, her mouth moving and yet no sound emitting. Saying goodbye. After a moment, she draws her shoulders back, then comes to my side. “It’s time.”

I try to close the lids of their coffins, but I can’t make myself do it. I stand there long enough, no glow, no nothing, that Reven glances my way, his worry and a pain as deep as mine reaching me through our bond. “Meren?” he asks softly.

I shake my head. “There’s something I have to do first.”

Crossing the distance between where we stand and the coffins, I move first to Horus. The lines of his weathered face seem smoother somehow, as if peace has finally found him in death. I hope that is true. From the sands at my feet, I create a tiny glass rosebud that I place in his palm. “In case you should ever need to call for me,” I tell him.

Fanciful thinking, I know. But this man survived desert exile twice. Somehow, I believe that I might actually hear from him again.

Then I go to Tziah’s side. She’s dressed in Wanderer clothing, her appearance otherwise unchanged. Allusian left the two small pieces of her heart inside Tziah. A gift, she said, so that Tziah could take with her a choice of afterlife.

Removing the signet ring that was given to me as a child, I slip it onto her pinky finger. Just a small token that in this life, she was as much a princess in her heart as I ever was born to be. “I pray that you choose to return to this world and find us again.”

Vos reaches out and traces the symbol on the ring. He doesn’t say anything, but I think he’s telling her the same.

Leaving him with her, I move again.

To Cain.

I don’t know if I can do this. Say goodbye to the boy who was the center of my world and happiness for so long. The man who will always be my hero.

I slip off the cuff Cain once gave me before he ever knew I was a Princess of Aryd, when he loved me as simply Meren. Made of pure, gleaming gold with the symbol of a sand fox—Cain’s family sigil—etched into the center, I decided to wear it as I said goodbye to him, but this bracelet was meant for his heartmate. His wife.

Someone I can never be. Not even in our next lives.

He should take it with him, and hopefully he’ll know I’m sending a piece of my heart with him, too.

I slide it under his hand and whisper words to him that are and will always be only between me and Cain.

Then I force myself to walk away.

Reven takes my hand as I return to him, and drawing strength from him, I do what I must. I close the lids and sink their coffins into the sand, forever to lie at the foot of my city.

The second Tziah disappears, Vos walks away. Not back to the palace, but farther into the desert. I want to go with him. Maybe we’ll find peace out there in the vast open spaces.

But I can’t. I have to finish this.

The sands continue to shift while I send them deeper into the ground. I don’t look away from Cain’s face until the sand obscures it from view. Until the desert swallows him.

Pella stands tall and stoic beside me, like she did once before with her brother when we buried their father and her mother. Hakan is at her side like he always is. She looks not at where the dead have gone, but straight out into the desert, to the east where the sun will rise again tomorrow as it always does.

When the sifting in the ground stops, I nod.

Pella doesn’t move for a long moment. Long enough that I glance at her, which is when she lifts her chin just a smidge, gathering the strength she needs before she steps out and does a military-esque turn to face her people. She waits until the last rays of sun disappear, then raises her voice. “The sun has set for the last time on these lives, reclaimed by the desert!”

As one, the people of the zariphate raise the weapons they’ve held the entire ceremony to the skies. “May the sun rise on a glorious new day!” they shout to the moons.

They shake their weapons, calling and yelling and whistling in a loud din until their voices gradually coalesce into a single word. Pella.

Tonight, they chant her name.

Tomorrow, they will call her Zaripha.

She will make a wonderful leader.

Pella, the only other person who feels Cain’s loss the same way I do, looks at me over her shoulder and offers a smile that is filled with both grief and love. Then, with Hakan at her side, my friend moves into the heart of her people and disappears from view as they envelop her into their fold, their chants growing in fervor and turning to something more like joy.

Reven, Tabra, Achlys, and I have been given permission to stay for this part of the funeral this time, to witness what comes next, what Cain once told me was a true honoring of life.

The Wanderers’ mourning is found in celebration, it turns out. Life is a gift in their eyes, and death is not an end. And somehow, from under the loss that wants to steal the happiness waiting for me when the sun rises tomorrow, I begin to find peace surrounded by his people. Our people.

This moment is only the beginning. Bittersweet and painfully beautiful.