Danial frowns. “She ran off right before I found Valoria and the others . . .” He grimaces. “I wasn’t fast enough, and she disappeared on me. Before that, she was acting strange. Erratic.”
Maybe she’s still nearby. Even if she was in a feral state when she ran off, it may not last long. I’d better find her before someone else does. Someone who might not understand why she’s growling at them like a bear.
“We were looking for her when we found you,” Valoria adds in a small voice. “We thought she might’ve been drawn to the crowd.”
Jax nudges my shoulder, startling me. “Look.” He points to an oddly shaped shadow moving toward us through the late-afternoon gloom. My muscles tense as I wonder if another Shade got loose somehow.
But as Jax reaches for one of his blades, I shake my head. It’s not a Shade, but a large creature dragging a smaller one by the back of her cloak.
Lysander, and—
“Meredy!”
For the second time since leaving the palace, I forget everything happening around me. The steely water of the harbor at my back. The city already starting to heal.
Meredy looks so small and pale when Lysander drops her at my feet. I kneel beside her in the ash and dirt, pressing a hand to her cheek. “Meredy?” When she says nothing, staring at me blankly, a knife of panic plunges into my chest.
“Can a beast master’s magic make them forget their humanity for good?” I ask Valoria over my shoulder.
“I have no idea,” she says, her eyes glistening.
As I cradle Meredy in my arms, racking my brain for something that might help her return to herself, she pulls my face to hers and kisses me.
I kiss her back. Lightly, and then not so lightly, rubbing my thumb over the scar on her cheek the way she often does. She tastes different from before, like the wilderness, like new beginnings, like surrender. I run my hands up and down her back, over her hips, then slide my fingers through her hair.
And her heart beats against mine like it remembers.
She kisses me with a wolf’s hunger, hard and needy, breathing fire into my mouth. Her body bends and presses against mine, finding new ways for us to fit together as we trade kisses like bites of something sweet that only make us ravenous for more. I don’t ever want this to stop, because I’ve found a part of me I didn’t know was missing.
Someone gasps, breaking the spell. Meredy. She buries her face in my hair and whispers, “What are we doing?”
“You tell me.” Drawing back to give her space, I force myself to smile. “Welcome back, Master Crowther.”
I risk a look at my friends. They’re all gazing tactfully away. All except Valoria, who, glancing from me to Meredy, grins her approval.
Then she turns to Jax and starts a conversation that makes him laugh, his voice deep and rich. It’s a sound I haven’t heard since Evander left us. A sound that makes me smile, if only for a moment.
I help Meredy to her feet, gazing around once again at all the destruction. Smashed windows and broken buildings, bits of ash, lives in tatters. Only now I see the hope among the rubble, glittering in Valoria’s keen eyes, in Danial’s selfless hands healing the wounded, in the voice of the girl beside me as she whispers, “I wish Evander could see this. How we fought, and won. But I’d bet my mother’s fortune he already knew we would.”
Hand in hand, Meredy and I hurry to the shop fronts where Simeon and several children are sweeping up glass. One of the Dead, a slender woman with hardly any voice, hands us spare brooms and works quietly beside us.
It’s time. For change. To clean up all evidence of destruction, but not to forget the cause. It’s time to rebuild all that was set ablaze. And maybe, in the days to come, everything that rises from the ashes will be better than before.
XXXII
The palace courtyard is more crowded tonight than I’ve ever seen it. Standing around bonfires and feasting tables, commoners mix with nobles while Valoria’s younger siblings mingle with weather mages, beast masters, and healers from all over the province. And among them all, at every fireside, at every table, holding glasses of the finest elderflower wine and plates piled high with the tastiest dishes, are most of Grenwyr’s remaining Dead.
I watch the merrymaking from an alcove at the back of the courtyard, near the garden where, not too long ago, I sank to my knees and mourned the death of who I had once been.
In the distance, Jax and Danial escort Valoria around as she talks to all the guests as their queen for the first time, though she hasn’t yet had her coronation. And nearby, Simeon leads a group of children in a dance. One he’s making up as he goes along.
Tonight and from now on, there will be new dances, new recipes, and even new fashions on display, because this is the first Festival of Change in over two hundred years. It’s a celebration of everything new and will be the first of many under Valoria’s rule, she says.
Catching Simeon’s eye, I wink and raise my glass to him.
Time is a funny thing, I realize as I take a sip. I thought Evander and I had so much more than what we were given.
And that’s what we all want, really, from the newest child in Karthia to the Dead who have stayed around to witness many generations of their family: more time.
Just a few paces away, a shrouded female figure tries to embrace a hesitant, tearful boy about my age, perhaps her son or brother. She must be one of the Dead who has chosen to return to the Deadlands tonight, who’s using the party to prepare herself for moving on to whatever comes next.
After all, this festival is a night for celebrating their lives before Simeon, Jax, and I lead them through a glowing blue gate.
“Oh, come now! There’s no room for tears here! This is a party!” Valoria pushes up her glasses, glancing worriedly between the boy and the Dead woman.
The boy throws his arms around the shrouded figure at last, and I smile. I’m surprised Valoria’s brown eyes haven’t spotted what I can see already: that in between the boy’s grief and the Dead woman’s quiet sobs is love.
And nothing, not time or distance or the Deadlands themselves, can change that. Or even make it fade.
I’m no stranger to sadness. I still cry for Evander in the long weeks since he’s been gone. I can’t smell fresh-cut grass or leather without thinking of him. Of what we had. And what I lost. But I only cry because his love is still with me, a familiar ache in my chest. I’ll carry it with me, always, something no one can ever erase.
“So?” Valoria waves a hand in front of my face, making me jump. I don’t know when she got so close. “What do you think?”
She spins around, and it’s clear she means her new trousers and strange, stiff long-sleeved jacket, with its high collar, pointed shoulders, and gleaming brass buttons. It’s a far cry from her usual party gowns, and when I say so, she flashes a wicked grin worthy of Jax. “I know it’s not fancy. But it’s what I plan to wear to my coronation.”