“I don’t think she’s up to this,” Nidia interjects, sending a reproving look at all the elders, lingering on Cassian the longest. She knows what’s really bothering me—that Cassian’s emotions are crippling me.
“She said the same thing we all did,” Will comments.
“Even Corbin,” Nidia says pointedly, surprising me. Corbin told the truth? If Jabel’s own son implicated her, they have no reason to doubt our version of events. Not with Corbin corroborating it.
“We have what we wanted. Let’s leave her. She needs her rest,” Cassian announces.
Everyone files from the room except Cassian. He hesitates, adjusting his weight from foot to foot. “I’m glad you’re all right.” I notice his hands shut into fists at his sides. “I should have been there for you.” His gaze slides to Will, and I know he’s thinking that Will was there. He gives him a slight nod, acknowledging this.
“You don’t owe me an apology.”
“Yeah, well, I’m glad Will and Tamra were with you.”
“That was the plan when we agreed for you to go into the pride. We would stay behind and wait. I knew the risks coming back here. None of us—” I stop abruptly just before saying no one got hurt. We lost Miram. My eyes sting at the reminder. It shouldn’t have happened but it did. “I’m so sorry about Miram, Cassian.”
The vertical pupils vibrate with the magnitude of his pain. “I shouldn’t have left her—”
“No, I should have protected her better. You left her with me—”
He shakes his head. “She was my responsibility. I failed her.”
“Your own aunt killed her.” Nidia’s voice is soothing and firm at the same time. “Just as we’re all sure she is the one who betrayed Magnus. There’s not much you can do when you’re in bed with a serpent and don’t know it.”
Cassian nods, but I know he’s unconvinced. He’ll forever suffer guilt for his sister’s death.
He inches toward the door. “I’ll come by later.”
Part of me wants to ask him to stay, but then I’ll have to endure all his emotions, terrible as they are right now. Selfish or not, I’d rather he go.
I smile tentatively as his gaze sweeps over me propped up in the bed. And in that look, I know he senses my hope. For me, for himself, he’ll stay away.
Will looks nervous as we take the first step outside Nidia’s cottage into the swirl of mist.
“Stop looking so worried,” I say, bumping him lightly with my hip. Not too strongly. I wouldn’t want to lose my balance and fall over.
“Seeing as you only just woke up today and can barely walk, I’m the one who’s going to get into trouble if we get caught.”
“Then hurry before Nidia notices I’m missing.”
One arm around my waist, Will takes the bulk of my weight and guides me through the township, following my directions north through the town center and then west, past houses toward the burial grounds.
I inhale deeply the night’s cool, loamy air, letting it feed my spirit. I feel the burial grounds before they come into sight. The songs of the dead reach me through the stones that bear their imprint. We pass through a screen of pines until we reach the clearing … where all draki are laid to rest. Gems of every variety cover the ground—some on the surface and some buried, nestled deep in the earth and ashes of draki long since passed. They glow, coloring the night, suffusing the air in a rainbow of muted shades.
Will gasps beside me.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I murmur.
“I—I …,” he stammers.
“You feel them,” I supply.
He blinks several times, overcome. A feeling I understand. They’re here. All of them. Miram, too. The memory of every draki, whether I knew them or not, lingers here. Their energy crackles on the air and reaches deep inside me.
“Dad needs to be here,” I say. “Tam and I will have to pick a stone … leave it for him.” It’s hard uttering these words. Without proof of his death, without his ashes, we’d never considered doing such a thing before. But the time has come.
Will nods in agreement, his expression solemn. “You should do that.”
The gems wink from their earthen beds. One in particular catches my gaze. A topaz. Miram’s gemstone. I breathe her name. There are several topazes in the graveyard of ash and jewels … but this one speaks to me, calls to me as if it were Miram herself. And I can’t help thinking it might be.
I blink burning eyes. My legs suddenly give out and Will catches me, swings me up in his arms.
“I’m sorry.” I weep into his shoulder, loathing that I should be so weak. After everything, shouldn’t I be tougher than this? Immune to such loss?
“Don’t apologize.” He eases us down, holding me like a child in his arms and crooning nonsense in my ear. His hand is strong and firm at my back. His touch moves to my head, strokes my hair. “She deserves to be remembered … and missed.”
I hiccup through my tears. “We set out to save her … and she ended up dead anyway.” The reality of it only makes the grief that much more bitter. “One of us murdered her … not the enkros or hunters. A draki. Her own aunt killed her. And my dad.”
I beat my fist on the ground, striking a gemstone, the edge of which cuts my hand. I hiss. Shimmering blood, almost black in the night, the purple hue undetectable, wells up on my skin. Will mutters a curse and uses his shirt to dab it clean.
“Hey, be careful. You’re injured enough,” he chides, pulling my head down to his shoulder, and I spend myself, crying not over the pain in my hand but the pain in my heart.
“I’ve soaked your shirt,” I point out, plucking at the wet fabric stretching over his shoulder.
“And bloodied it,” he mock accuses.
I sniff and smile, smoothing a hand over his shoulder. We’re quiet for some moments, sitting together in the gemlight.
“What’d they do to her?” I ask, and clarify, in case he mistakes my meaning, “Jabel.”
He sighs. “There was to be a trial …”
“Was?”
“According to Nidia, she knew what the outcome would be.”
My heart thumps faster. “The sentence would be death.” For what she did … pride justice would be swift and merciless. “Nothing less than she deserved for gutting her own niece like she was garbage to be discarded.” I shake my head, aware that I sound hard, but on this matter I don’t care. “I’ll never forget the image of Miram being flung into that water.”
Will holds me closer. “Jabel escaped before they could—”
“She got away then,” I state, the words hard as I think about her. Out there. Unpunished. For Miram. For Dad.
“She’ll hardly be happy, Jacinda. All alone among humans. She’s not you. She killed to protect this life.” He motions around us. “Now she’s lost it.”
It’s not enough. “Forgive me if I fail to feel satisfied. I still think execution would be better.”
“You’re going to have to let it go.” He brushes the hair back from my cheek. “Don’t you think there’s been enough bloodshed?” The sentiment echoes my own not that long ago, and I fall quiet, pensive, unable to argue the point.
Will reaches for my hand and laces our fingers so that I feel the thud of his pulse. His hazel eyes search mine, trying to see inside me. Almost like he’s concerned I’ve come out of all this damaged … or maybe just the girl I used to be. A girl who’s on a mission to save everyone—without room enough in her life for him because she’s busy seeking justice that’s not always there to be had.
I cover our linked hands with my free one and lean forward, hungry to reach him, touch him—be as close as I can get. And leave the old Jacinda behind.
24
It’s a rare sunny day as I walk through the township with Tamra’s arm wrapped around my waist. A slight mist that has managed to survive the greedy rays floats above our heads, thin enough for the sunlight to filter down and warm my hair.
It’s my first sanctioned outing since I woke, since Cassian and the elders visited me three days ago. Before that, I was unconscious for four days. Unbeknownst to me, in that week, my world was reborn.
“It feels different,” I say as two girls rush past us toward school. Late, presumably.
“Since Severin stepped down, it is different.”
Remy walks by and nods hello. I notice his patrol armband is gone.
“No armband,” I murmur.
“They got rid of them.” The armbands represented a divided pride to me. Those who wore them had been the enforcers, the rest of us the subjugated.
“Can’t say I miss the sight of them.” I nod in satisfaction, knowing who was behind the order. “Cassian will do good things for the pride,” I add.
Tamra gives me a funny look but says nothing.
A group appears in the distance, seven or eight draki returning with the fresh catch of the day. I blink when I recognize two among them.
“Will? Deghan?”
They break from the group when they see us. Grinning, they hold up their stringers of fish. Deghan ducks low to kiss Tamra, right there in the middle of the township, in broad daylight. I try not to stare but it’s not a common sight. And it’s no little kiss. It’s the kiss a man gives to a woman when he’s freed from prison.
I can’t help but smile because I guess that’s an apt description for Deghan. They’re still kissing when I look at Will.
And then I forget about them.
I never could see much else when he was around. I look into his changeable eyes … right now they’re a goldish brown. His hair falls down his forehead. It needs cutting. Or maybe not. There’s just more for me to touch, more to slide my fingers through.
He lowers his head and gives me a slow, easy kiss, his lips smooth and cool as the mountain air. “Hi,” he says in that velvet voice that sends shivers through me.
“Hi,” I return, gesturing to the fish. “Nice catch.”
“Yeah. I’m kind of impressed with myself. I always thought redheads were sexy.”
“Ha-ha. I meant the fish.”
“Ah. Yes.” He pulls back to lift his stringer aloft and admire his haul before looking back at me. “How are you feeling today?”
“Good. Nice to see you earning your keep around here,” I tease.
“Nice to know I can … and not, you know, be—”
“Killed,” I finish.
He nods. And the strangeness of this isn’t lost on me. Will. In the pride. Doing ordinary things. Belonging.
“C’mon, Will. Let’s go clean these,” Deghan says.
Will nods, still holding my gaze. “I’ll come by later tonight.”
“Great, but you smell like fish. Clean up first.”
His smile broadens, and I feel light, buoyant just to see him happy here. Here. A prospect I always hoped could happen but never really imagined possible.
Tamra and I move on, both reveling in the aftermath of moments with boys we love. Who would have ever thought this would become our reality? Even now it feels like a dream … something that might be snatched away at any moment.
We stop at the small playground outside the primary school. A dozen children play, zipping down the slide or climbing the rock wall. The teacher supervising smiles and waves at us. I wave back awkwardly. It feels weird to be accepted again.
Two girls race to the last available swing. The one who reaches it first hops on with a triumphant smile. The other girl sticks out her tongue and sashays off like she has something better to do.
I grin. “Remember when we were like that?”