Song of the Dead

by Sarah Glenn Marsh

  “I asked Valoria for a favor this afternoon,” she says, watching my face carefully. “She’s going to set my mother free tomorrow and banish her from Grenwyr Province for good.”

  I squeeze her shoulders, letting her know I support her decision. “What brought that about?” I ask gently.

  “Hadrien’s rock. It got me thinking about prisons,” she says, grabbing a brush from a nearby table and starting to fix my hair. “The ones we choose. The ones we create. Don’t get me wrong, I think Hadrien is right where he belongs—he more than earned his place.” She strokes the brush through my hair with a tenderness I’ve never known from anyone else. “But my mother isn’t any unhappier in her cell than she was in her mansion. She’ll still suffer when she’s free, and perhaps more so. Wherever she goes, she’ll be reminded of everything her cruelty cost her.”

  As she pins tiny, glittering butterflies in my hair, we talk about who might be at the party tonight. Already, Azelie’s black fever cure is being made by every apothecary from here to the Idrany Islands. That’s definitely something everyone should want to celebrate, though Azelie herself won’t be around to enjoy the festivities.

  She left this morning with Kasmira, bound for Sarral as Valoria’s newly appointed ambassador to the dragon kingdom, to help reforge our old alliance and broach the subject of peace talks with the Ezorans. Of course, she only took the job with the understanding that a greenhouse will still be built near the Temple of Change in her absence, and a promise she’ll have plenty of time to tend the plants between diplomatic trips.

  “Suppose Kasmira is giving her trainees a hard time already?” Meredy asks, sticking the last pin in place. She holds up a small mirror so I can admire her handiwork.

  Nipper coos her approval from the spot she’s claimed in the middle of the bed.

  “No doubt in my mind,” I answer after a moment, grinning at her. “I’m sure she torments them daily—when Elibeth isn’t keeping her busy.”

  Valoria insisted that Kasmira take two gray-eyed apprentice weather mages to guide the winds on their voyage to Sarral. Partly to give her hands a break, and partly to allow Kasmira to focus on her new role as royal explorer and cartographer for Karthia. Naturally, Elibeth insisted on accompanying the captain as her new girlfriend, bringing a familiar leather-bound book of maps and notes with her. One I’ve known in Evander’s hands, then Meredy’s. There’s no question that Evander’s dream of seeing the world is still alive and well—and through it, so is he.

  “Oh! Let me fix one thing . . .” Meredy murmurs, stepping forward to adjust a pin in my hair.

  I grab her around the waist as she does so, stealing a kiss. Several, in fact. Not just on her lips, but down the side of her neck, too.

  Someone clears their throat in the doorway.

  Turning, I meet Valoria’s gaze as she smiles at us. Beside her, Jax has a hand over his eyes. “Are you two decent?” he grumbles.

  Valoria rolls her eyes and pulls his hand away from his face. She’s wearing a new crown, I realize. It’s the first time she’s put one on since the old five-jeweled one fell into the sea with Karston’s body. At first, I think tonight’s crown might be a relic from before King Wylding’s time, but the metal looks too shiny-new for that.

  Following my gaze, she smiles and pats the crown. “What do you think?”

  It’s simpler than her old one. Instead of five gems set into the silver filigree, one for each of Vaia’s faces, there’s only one enormous stone. At first glance, it appears to be milky-white, but as she tilts her head, hundreds of flecks of every color imaginable dazzle my eyes where the stone catches the lantern light from our room.

  “I thought this was more fitting,” Valoria says uncertainly, reaching up to run a finger over the smooth stone, “seeing as the old one didn’t really represent every eye color.” Sure enough, as she turns, I catch a flash of violet and think of Karston. I see amber, too, and remember Bryn. Light reddish-brown reminds me of Noranna, and the swirls of color bring to mind Sarika’s ever-changing eyes. There’s even a blue so dark, it makes me think of Evander. The members of our wolf pack may be scattered now, and in some cases gone altogether, but every mage is represented forever in this new crown.

  “I love it,” I say truthfully.

  Valoria beams as Meredy and I join her and Jax in the hallway, beginning the walk to the palace courtyard. “Don’t want to be late for my own party,” she says lightly, though there’s a quiver in her voice. “Though I wonder if anyone will bother showing up besides us.”

  I arch a brow. She invited not just the denizens of the palace, but the whole city and then some—even sending ravens to the nobles from other provinces who ignored her requests for meetings, who never bothered to send aid when she needed to start building an army. Surely some of them are bound to come, whether she’s well-liked among her subjects or not, given the number of wine barrels she’s emptied from her ancestors’ generous cellar.

  Today is the Festival of Grapes, a perfect time to celebrate with friends and enemies alike.

  Of course, Simeon, Jax, and I can only stay until midnight, when we’ll need to slip away with our new trainees and Nipper to have a quick peek around the Deadlands. Simeon and Jax spent the entire week leading up to Azelie’s departure begging and bribing her to bring them back dragons of their own.

  We enter a courtyard resplendent with all the usual party fare. Strings of sparkling lights—one of Valoria’s inventions, surely—try their best to outshine the torches and bonfires spewing clouds of multicolored smoke into the starry sky. But more shocking than the dragon-shaped fireworks that greet us outside and make Nipper bark—more shocking, too, than the ten-tier white cake whose every layer is adorned with grapes and flowers—is the crowd that welcomes us to the party.

  There are people everywhere. So many, in fact, that the courtyard can’t contain them all, and several have taken the festivities to the garden as a result. Orsa’s wife and commander, Ilyra, and a group of Ezoran warriors stand near the wine barrels closest to us. Some have kept their furs, while others have donned gowns or robes. I’m sure Orsa would have enjoyed the party, too, but she needed to accompany the first boat of settlers to Karthia from Ezora in person.

  The more we learn about them, the more I realize the importance of never judging by rumor alone.

  Sweeping my gaze past the Ezorans, I spot Simeon and Danial near the musicians, spinning each other around in a fast-paced and impressively complicated dance. Danial lifts a laughing Simeon over his head, then lowers him for a kiss as a group of onlookers, mostly children, whistle and applaud. The show-offs. They’ll have to teach me the steps so I can try that one with Meredy at next week’s Festival of String Instruments.

  Near Si and Danial, fishermen dance with nobles I only vaguely recognize from portraits in the palace gallery. Barmen dance with other barmen, with apple-sellers, with barons and baronesses, with liars and lovers and overly perfumed people from all over Karthia.

  “I can’t believe it,” Valoria whispers, drawing my gaze back to her. As she surveys the crowd, she grabs my hand. “There’s the new Duchess Aventine! And there’s the latest Countess Rykiel! And isn’t that the young Duke Bevan?” She glances from me to Jax to Meredy, as if hopeful one of us can confirm her guess.

  We all shrug. She gives a quick, nervous laugh in response.

  “Oh, I don’t know! I’ve never even seen half these people!” Valoria bites the nails of her free hand, something I don’t think she’s ever done. “These nobles . . . they wouldn’t even answer my letters, and now they’re here? Drinking my wine and eating my—oh, stars!” She squeezes my hand in alarm. “I don’t think there’s enough food! It looks like half the city is here! And I know that duke over there came all the way from the Idrany Islands.”

  “Breathe,” Meredy advises her gently. “I don’t think they came for the food.”

  She ba
rely gets the words out before a young woman with her auburn hair in a braided crown calls, “Time for a toast!” She’s the new Duchess Aventine Valoria pointed out earlier, taking the place of her aunt who died at Simeon and Danial’s wedding. She raises her glass of elderflower wine toward the sky. “To Her Majesty, Queen Valoria!”

  A blond man in a handsome set of red robes raises his tankard—Devran, rebel leader turned ambassador to the people of Grenwyr, and Valoria’s critic turned friend. “To the queen who made our enemies into allies! The queen who saved us from war!”

  “To Queen Valoria!” everyone echoes—Jax’s shout the loudest of all.

  He hooks an arm around Valoria’s waist and kisses her in front of the crowd. As they draw apart, he flashes her his wolfish grin, and her face glows like embers in the torchlight. I have a feeling they’ll be leaving the party together tonight, just like they leave all our gatherings a few minutes early, hand in hand.

  After that, Jax is in such high spirits that he demonstrates his uncanny ability to procure drinks in the blink of an eye, pressing a glass into Meredy’s hand, then mine. We join in the toasting, and I’m about to drink my first sip of honeysuckle wine when a voice beside me shouts to the night, “To our Sparrow, who twice defeated the mad king!”

  Valoria winks at me as she finishes her toast.

  “To Queen Valoria and her Sparrow!”

  “To Meredy Crowther, who fired the shot that finished him!” I raise my glass.

  The toasts go on and on. The wine is still flowing when our small group of necromancers goes to make our usual rounds in the Deadlands.

  It’s still flowing when we return.

  Meredy sweeps me into a dance, and we don’t stop even when it’s light.

  After all, we Karthians love a good party.

  * * *

  * * *

  There are flowers blooming on Evander’s grave. Long, purplish stalks of budding sage cover the earth under which his body is concealed, though they sprout no farther than the boundaries of the graves beside his—his father’s and his grandmother’s.

  “Look at all those,” I tell Meredy with a yawn, still exhausted from the Festival of Grapes yesterday. Maybe it was two days ago. Everything’s a bit hazy thanks to Valoria’s wine.

  “That’s a lot of sage. Pretty, though,” Meredy says, squeezing my hand as the late afternoon sun disappears behind a bank of clouds. She’s been coming here with me every day since Hadrien’s defeat.

  Softer, she adds a moment later, “Sage flowers mean eternal life, if memory serves.”

  I nod, grateful for Meredy’s steadying presence as we kneel together among the out-of-season blossoms. I begin to pluck the stalks around me, weaving them into a crown as I think. Flowers, real flowers, only bloom on someone’s grave when their spirit has a message for someone in the living world. But the spirits that send those flowers are in the Deadlands—or so we’ve always believed.

  Maybe Evander really is gone for good, but I don’t think there’s any mistaking why these flowers are here, with him. Maybe his spirit is wherever the spirits from the Deadlands go after the water there carries them away. Maybe there are worlds upon worlds we can’t and won’t know until we’re done with this life. Maybe we have forever to learn and love and exist—or perhaps, like I’ve always thought, we only have the now.

  But if the past few months have shown me anything, it’s that the world is so much more than what I’ve been taught, so I’ll have to side with forever.

  Tying off the ends of my flower crown, I nestle it gently in Meredy’s wine-red hair as Nipper and Lysander chase each other among the surrounding headstones.

  “Want to talk about anything?” Meredy offers, lacing her fingers through mine. Her emerald eyes skim the sea of sage flowers before returning to my face.

  There’s no shortage of things to discuss. How the necromancer trainees swear they saw their first Shade today; how the provinces with the richest farmland are preparing for the arrival of the first Ezoran families; how Simeon and Danial are about to have the time of their lives on a much-needed quiet getaway to Dargany’s warm southern coast; how Jax managed to buy the Rotten Rose with his savings and move his things into Valoria’s chambers in the same day, no doubt the best day of his life; how Grenwyr City will be rebuilt with Valoria’s designs; how so many citizens have been hired to do the job; how they’ll be building air balloons next.

  But what spills from my lips as I hold Meredy’s gaze is “You. I want to talk about you and me, and what we’re going to do with this gorgeous afternoon.”

  “Suppose we should take a romantic trip to Dargany, like Si and Danial?” she asks, snapping off a flower stalk and blowing the petals into the wind.

  “Why not take a tour of every province?” I counter, pulling her into my arms. “We can start now, if you like. But honestly, I’m not in a hurry . . .”

  I kiss her carefully, slowly, until the stars come out. There’s no real rush to go anywhere, because we’re already home. Better still, we’re alive. And if the flowers in my love’s hair are any indication, no matter what darkness may be lurking on the path ahead, we have all the time in the world—and then some.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Like Odessa, I am lucky to have a fierce team of people in my corner whom I’d be glad to have by my side during a zombie apocalypse—and without whom this book wouldn’t have been possible:

  Lucy Carson, my agent, to whom this book is dedicated. I appreciate your wit, warmth, and expert guidance on a daily basis.

  Julie Rosenberg, my editor, who constantly taught and inspired me throughout the editorial process with her keen eye for detail and her great ideas.

  Everyone else at Razorbill and Penguin Teen (hi, Elyse, Ben, Casey, Alex, Felicity, Elora, Kara, and Friya!), who are so hardworking and who have been in Odessa’s corner from day one. You all deserve an unlimited supply of coffee beans.

  The Sparrows, my street team, and other wonderful folks who tirelessly helped to spread the word about all things Reign: Brittany from Brittany’s Book Rambles, Mana from The Book Voyagers, Becky G from Life of a BookNerd Addict, Katie from Mundie Moms, Rae from A New Look on Books, Amanda from Nocturnal Reading, Kelly from BookCrushin, Becca from Becca’s Book Realm, Kat Kennedy, Bethany Pullen, Christy Jane, Katherine Moore, Diana Dworak, Melanie Parker, Destiny Barber, Melanie Parker (TBR and Beyond), Shealea I., Julie (DailyJulianne), Heather Cilley, Heather Lane, and many more! I’m convinced that some, if not all, of you are actually magic.

  The dedicated staff at Chop Suey Books and One More Page Books, two of my favorite indies. You all make being an author an absolute joy with your support and enthusiasm.

  Jessica Khoury, who brought my vision of the world of Reign to life in beautiful map form. You’re an awesome friend and artist.

  Jo Painter, who once again created stunning versions of my characters. You make such great art.

  Gwen Cole, who over the course of writing this book has laughed with me, listened to my worries, celebrated with me, and shared many tasty breakfasts at our favorite places.

  Erin Cashman, KT Bucklein, Eve Castellan, Jessica Spotswood, Jodi Meadows, M Evan Matyas, Meagan Spooner, Alexandra Christo, Atia Abawi, Anna Schafer, Rachel Pudelek, Chelsea Bobulski, Dee Romito, Heidi Lang, Carolee Noury, Brian Schwarz, and the ladies of 16 to Read, who are my fellow authors and also amazing listeners, readers, editors, and friends.

  Erin Oliva, Lenore Bajare-Dukes, Joe Sparks, Megan Placona, and my PoGo family, who all raised my spirits throughout the process of writing this book, whether it was through visits, texts, meals, or sighing/cheering with me when I had news to share. Thank you for liking me enough to help with the big move this year and listen to my stories!

  Erica Kellar Brown, whose kindness and compassion are boundless.

  Chris, who is always pushing me to dream bigger, who is my partner in all
things. I love you more than words on a page can contain.

  Mom, Dad, my sister Lindsey, and the rest of my family, who support me in everything I do. You’ve shown your love in so many ways this year (and always!). Thank you.

  Last but certainly not least, my readers, who have made me smile more often than they know. I am deeply grateful for you all.

  This book is also dedicated in the loving memory of Kiowa Josephine (aka Khaleesi), who left us on April 2nd, 2018, to race among the moon and stars. Rest easy, my Roo.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sarah Glenn Marsh has been an avid fantasy reader from the day her dad handed her a copy of The Hobbit and promised it would change her life; she's been making up words and worlds ever since. When she's not writing, Sarah enjoys painting, ghost hunting, traveling, and all things nerdy.

  She lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her husband and their menagerie: four rescued sighthounds, a bird, and many fish. She is the author of Fear the Drowning Deep and Reign of the Fallen.

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