Only there was now a wall at one end, he noted. He moved through the trees, trying to see the palace that had been his for a short time at the other end. He thought he glimpsed a marble wall and hesitated, peppered by memories and magic. He and Damian were born here, and their worlds had fallen apart here.
Darian started towards the palace. His pace quickened as he ran, his heart pounding with eagerness to see the magnificent hall that had been his. The marble he saw came into view as he crested the hill in the center of the orchard.
It was all that stood in the place where the palace had been. Darian stopped. A single marble obelisk marked the bloodline and legacy of a once powerful clan. All signs of the palace were swept away, replaced by neat lines of apple trees that ran all the way to the beach beyond.
Darian felt something else die within him. He'd remembered the immortal world with fondness, for it was the only place and time he'd ever been happy. He recalled growing up and running around the apple orchard with his little brother and the children of the palace. He recalled meeting Claire for the first time, right here.
She'd been wearing pale pink, as innocent as the flowers that fell from blooming apple trees and caught in her hair. From a lower immortal noble House, she'd been sent into the Guardians at a young age, a spare child to a House too poor to support her. She'd excelled as a warrior and been present in the orchard at the celebration of his twenty-seventh birthday along with half the city. Now, he suspected her presence was on purpose, their meeting not so much fate as manipulation by her father.
Darian looked around, expecting to see her again beneath the shade of an apple tree, as beautiful as she was deadly with the daggers she wore at her waist. She might as well have been swept into the sea like the palace. The fury he'd felt since awakening from the dark place the Black God kept him started to fade. He doubted he could ever forgive her, but he could at least pity her.
She'd never look upon the obelisk or her immortal home again. A traitor, she'd no longer be recorded on any obelisk in the immortal world, even her own family's, especially the way Damian killed her. No one would remember her. No one would mourn her.
Except maybe Darian. The tightness that filled his chest whenever he thought of his betrayer and lover unfurled. Damian had killed her for her betrayal, left her soul in her body and burned her. She'd killed one White God and been killed by another. She died with the greatest shame: her soul imprisoned for all time and her memory erased from the immortal world.