“I’m so sorry.” My whispered words were loud in the misty cold of the morning.
Lucus’s eyes shuttered for a moment, then he nodded. “Thank you for your condolences, my queen.”
I’d known him long enough to realize the formality in his tone helped him to speak instead of breaking down into tears.
“May we say something about the fallen?” Hekla stepped forward, her gaze on Aurelio.
Kaippa was oddly silent. I expected him to say something offensive, but so far, he had held back. If he so much as grinned, I was going to end him.
“Please.” Lucus dropped back, his wings brushing a pine tree’s trunk and lower branches.
Hekla knelt at Aurelio’s feet. “Aurelio was the kindest of us.”
She was right. I remembered him helping at the bakery, how he spoke to everyone with respect and gave old folks a hand getting in and out of the door. The only time I’d been frightened of Aurelio was when he’d lost control and fed on my aura. But starvation due to the long-standing curse cast by my own ancestor was the cause. I couldn’t blame him for becoming a monster in his desperation. No, I blamed Mage Duke Sforza.
“I’ll miss you, new friend,” Hekla said at last before rising. She went to each body and mentioned their strengths. Corliss’s bravery for living through her mother’s abuse. Sebastian’s devotion to his son. Baccio’s courage in admitting he had been a traitor and his efforts to fix the relationship between him and his brothers.
When she was through, Hekla threw her arms around Lucus’s neck and squeezed him. Lucus set his cheek on the top of her head and returned the hug, saying something I couldn’t catch.
I wished I could offer comfort, but my mind was fuzzy. I worried that anything I said would sound stiff or awkward. Hekla was so much better at feelings. She came up beside me and stood close enough that I could feel her warmth through my filthy clothing.
Lucus looked at the pink sky, the Adam’s apple in his throat bobbing. “My brothers, I will miss you. I speak your names to seal your fate, to ask the earth to welcome your bones. Baccio, Irunta Katu, Dark Forest, I will miss your darkness, the shadow that reminded me to seek the sun. May you bond with the earth and grow as it does, eternal and green with life.” Fae magic shimmered from Lucus’s palms and fingertips like emerald smoke. Wildly leafy vines slid from the small forest’s floor, enveloped Baccio’s body, then dragged him underground.
Kaippa’s eyes widened, and he glanced at Hekla, who had her fingers pressed against her lips.
“Aurelio,” Lucus continued, “Tanka Maram, Golden Forest, I will miss…” He bowed his head and fisted his hands.
The shards of my heart pricked my chest, and I went to him. I kissed his shoulder and put a hand on his lower back. I didn’t know what to say, so I kept quiet.
He inhaled and raised his chin. “Tanka Maram, Golden Forest, I will miss your light, the innocence of youth that never quite left you, the wonder you reminded me to seek and to honor. May you bond with the earth and grow as it does, eternal and green with life.”
As his magic called up vines that encircled Aurelio’s body, drawing him into the ground, Lucus turned away. Under my hand, his arm shook.
“I was lucky to know him,” I whispered. I hoped with everything in me that it was okay to say that.
Lucus took a quick breath, then turned to place a kiss on my forehead. “He was lucky to know you.” I felt his sad smile against my skin. “I don’t know Corliss’s true name. She needs to go home to be buried.”
I pulled away. “Back to Arleigh’s court?”
“It’s no longer hers. Perhaps she has living kin there who know her name and can honor her properly.”
I thought about the dark unicorn. Corliss is dead, I said to him in my mind. Is there anyone there who knows her true name and can bury her?
The unicorn’s voice sang through me. Yes. Send her. I will see it done. Be warned. The Mage Duke has taken over the entirety of this magicked region. I retreated into the wood, Corliss’s kin with me. The Duke is strong. And he will come for you and for your mate soon.
I swallowed. “Thank you. For everything.” Looking up at Lucus, I told him what the unicorn had said. “I’ll portal Corliss home, to the edge of the wood.”
Kaippa and Lucus lifted the unseelie’s body and moved it a few feet away from Sebastian’s. I lifted power from the earth, from the Bow, then released a storm of pale purple that clouded around Corliss’s form until she was gone.
“May you have peace,” Lucus said, his gaze on the place where Corliss’s body had disappeared.
Since Sebastian was the mage who’d trained me, I felt an odd sense of responsibility to say something. “Sebastian, the Binder, was an amazing mage and even better father. He survived a horror and showed nothing but love for his son.” I sucked at this. I wished I knew the right words…
Hekla leaned close. “That’s right, Coren. So true.”
Lucus bent and ripped a piece of Sebastian’s shirt. He held it out to Hekla. “For the boy. To remember.”
My throat swelled, and tears blurred my view of him handing the cloth to Hekla.
Lucus buried Sebastian in the same manner as his brothers but without the sendoff phrases that seemed only fit for fae.
We stood in silence around the
