by J. R. Ward
The butler bowed low and then headed down the corridor, disappearing through the office's glass door.
iAm looked around even though he was still alone. His eyes just needed something to do, and in that regard, he understood why Rhage and the Brothers had been begging for a duty--also why the females of the house who were not out working in the forest had gone upstairs to help prepare a meal of ceremonial dishes traditionally served at mourning meals. And why the Chosen and the Primale had shut themselves into the gym to perform ancient rituals, the perfumed smoke from the sacred candles they were burning permeating the training center with a fragrance that was both dark and sweet.
It was such a hodgepodge of belief systems and traditions, all inter-mingling around the nucleus of grief.
His brother.
And so iAm waited here.
Sometime in the next three hours, the male was going to emerge, naked and dripping in his own blood.
The marking of a male mourner's chest and abdomen was the very last part of the preparation ritual for a departed female mate.
And as the next of kin to the sufferer, iAm was the one who was going to seal the wounds with salt, making them a forever-in-the-flesh kind of thing.
He jogged the heavy black velvet bag that was full of Morton's best in his hand. It was tied with a golden rope, and the weight was substantial.
In the back of his mind, he couldn't help looking to the other side of all of this. To nightfall on the following eve.
To the end of the s'Hisbe's mourning period.
For quite some time, he'd been mulling over that solution which involved a lifetime of travel. Any debt that had once been owed to Rehvenge had been discharged, and with Selena's death, Trez was arguably free to cash out of his businesses here in Caldwell and hit the road.
The Shadow Queen could not claim what she could not catch.
And that option was the smartest thing to do.
The problem now . . . was his thing with maichen.
iAm refocused on the closed door, imagining his brother wrapping up his beloved--and for a moment, he tried to picture Trez being in any shape to hit the road.
Probably not going to happen.
Shit. It was entirely possible that Trez was going to solve the situation for all of them.
By putting a gun to his head.
SEVENTY-ONE
Trez had no memory of being born.
But as he approached the door of the exam room, he felt as though the experience was coming back to him firsthand. After hours upon hours of nothing but pain, dogged by an exhaustion that was existential, he put his palm upon the cracked surface of the panel and realized that, even if there had been no tangible barrier between him and what was on the other side, stepping out was going to require a pushing, a forcing, a constriction that popped him free of the dense time capsule he'd been in.
Lifetimes separated the male he had been when he had come down here with Selena in his arms . . . and where he was now.
Lifetimes.
And similar to the womb, he couldn't stay here anymore.
There was one last duty he had to fulfill; not that he had had the strength for any of this.
"Selena," he whispered.
Her name spoken out of his dry lips was the key that unlocked the exodus . . . and out he arrived, into a world that was as new to him as it must have been when he had been birthed.
He was no more capable than he had been as a babe.
And similar to his birth . . . iAm was waiting for him.
His brother looked up so fast, the male knocked his head into the concrete wall he was leaning against. "Hey . . ."
Those dark eyes did a vertical sweep, and Trez glanced down at himself. His black slacks were stained with his blood as well as candle wax and gauze fibers from the wrapping. His chest was a raw pattern of wounds. His free hand was matted with what was on those pants.
"Salt," Trez said. "Salt, we need . . ."
His voice was like a clarinet with a bad reed in the mouthpiece. Then again, he'd been talking to his queen for how many hours straight? So many prayers, and the odd thing had been the way they had come back to him . . . even though he had neither spoken nor heard the verses or the Shadow dialect in--
What was he doing out here again?
As iAm held up a black velvet bag, he thought, Oh, right.
It was so damn easy to let his Bojangles body fall to the floor, his knees absorbing an impact that must have been hard, but was something that didn't register.
Leaning his head back, he arched his sternum forward, the pattern of cuts that he'd dug into himself pulling wider, reopening so that the wounds began to weep blood anew.
"Are you ready?" iAm asked over him.
He made some sound that even to his ears could have been a yes or a no or . . . something else. But his ready position clearly spoke for itself.
Breath exploded out of his raw throat as the salt hissed out of the neck of that bag and hit him on the collarbones. The flow carried with it a stinging pain that was so great his heart skipped in his ribs and his lungs spasmed up--and yet he bore the sensations willingly, telling himself that it was in service to Selena.
After this, he would be forever marked for her.
It was, he supposed, what happened in a mating ceremony--only in his case, his female was no longer with him. And with that sacred joining ritual flipped on its head, it made sense that instead of great joy, he knew only crushing sorrow; instead of becoming one with her, he was marking his solitude without her.
When there was no more salt left in the bag, he stayed where he was, out of choice and necessity. The necessity part was that the muscles in his back and shoulders had seized up on him, maybe in solidarity with his female, more likely because he'd been bent over for the last ten--or was it fifteen?--hours straight. And as for the choice part? As much as he hated the rituals because they were like a loud, screaming she's dead in his head, he didn't want them to be over.
Each moment that passed, every minute under his belt in this new reality was a step away from her. And these small increments, with enough of them strung together, soon would turn into nights, which would become weeks and months . . . and that passage of time was the measure of his loss.
It was taking him away from her.
While he'd been caretaking her in the final way, part of his mind had been obsessively playing back everything. From that black-robed figure coming and finding him at his club, to him picking Selena up from the bright green grass of that other place, to them fighting for her life that first time she was here. And then the collapse upstairs in iAm's bedroom.
The first thing he was going to do, after the final part of all this was done, was race upstairs to see exactly where her knees had been on the carpet.
"Tell Fritz not to vacuum," he blurted.
"What?"
He forced his head level and opened his lids. "Tell Fritz--he can't vacuum your room."
"Okay." The word was said with the kind of calm-down someone would use to a jumper on a ledge. "All right."
Trez looked down at his chest. There were granules all over him, some white, some pink or red from his blood.
He prayed that the doggen hadn't been efficient about cleaning tonight. He just needed to remember exactly where it had happened. He needed to . . . remember the trip down to the clinic, and where the chair beside the exam table had been, and what he'd said to her. What the needle with the shots had looked like. How . . . everything had happened.
It wasn't out of some morbid fascination. It was more the conviction that he didn't want to lose anything of her.
Not one memory.
Struggling to his feet, he mumbled, "Need to build a--"
"It's done."
Trez shook his head and motioned with his hand. "No, no, listen. I need an ax . . . or saw . . ."
"Trez. Listen to me."
". . . and some gasoline or kerosene . . ."
"Here, why don't you give me th
at."
"What?" As his right wrist was gently captured by his brother, he frowned and looked down. He still had his dagger in his hand. "Oh."
He ordered his fist to release.
When nothing moved, he tried harder. "I can't let go."
"Turn your hand over." iAm pried the fingers loose one by one. "There you go."
As the male tucked the weapon into his belt at an angle, Trez tried to get his brain to work. "But I might need that for--"
"The Brothers and their females have taken care of the pyre."
Trez blinked. "They have?"
"They've been building it for the last three hours. It's all ready."
Swaying in his loafers, he closed his eyes and whispered, "How will I ever repay them."
*
"Here, put this jacket on, you must be freezing."
Rhage looked down at his Mary. "I'm sorry? What did you say?"
She held up a parka. "Rhage, it's thirty-two degrees out here. All you're wearing is a muscle shirt."
It wasn't that he doubted her, but he glanced at his bare arms. "Oh. Guess you're right."
"Let me put this on you."
He was very aware that she was treating him like he was a child, but somehow that was okay. And when she threaded one of his arms through a sleeve, and then wrapped the body of the coat around him, he let her do as she wished.
Coat. No coat.
Didn't matter to him.
His eyes drifted over to the pyre. It was higher than he'd anticipated, rising up like a small house off the flat section of lawn beyond the gardens and the pool. They'd had to construct a stair-like rise so that the top level could be reached, and after a discussion and following Rehvenge's advice, they had doused the base in gasoline.
Along with everyone else, he was standing upwind of things.
Quite a crowd, he reflected. Everyone who lived in the house. All of the servants. Also all of the Chosen.
"And I brought you some gloves," his Mary said.
As she reached for his hand, he shook his head. "I'll just bleed into the insides of them."
"It doesn't matter. You may already have frostbite."
"Is it that cold?" Wait, hadn't she already told him what temperature it was?
"Yes," she whispered. "It's unseasonably cold."
"Seems right. I don't think it should be warm . . . that wouldn't be . . . I think we should hurt, too."
Which was why he really would have preferred to be without the parka. But he was incapable of denying his shellan--
From out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of white.
As he twisted around, his breath caught in his throat. Trez had emerged from the same door they had all been using in the library; iAm was behind him.
And so the final walk began.
Carrying that which was so precious to him, the Shadow took step after step down the lawn, closing in on what they had been laboring over. Without any conversation, but through some kind of group-think, everybody who was assembled formed two lines, providing him with an aisle.
Trez was transformed, and not in a good way. Like someone who had been on a monthlong trek with insufficient food and water, he was a shrunken, exhausted echo of himself, his face hollow, his aura that of illness, even though he was not sick in a disease sort of way.
As he passed, Rhage shivered.
The makeshift stairs they'd built creaked as Trez went up them, but Rhage wasn't worried that the steps were going to fall apart. He and Tohr had tested them together a number of times.
And hold they did.
Silhouetted against the moonlit sky, Trez's dark shape blocked the stars that had come out for the evening, cutting a swath from the galaxy sure as if some god had taken a pair of scissors to the fabric of the universe.
Bending down, he placed her in the center. Then he stayed up top for a while, and Rhage could imagine he was arranging things. Saying a final good-bye.
It was good that that kind of stuff was out of sight, out of hearing. Some things, even in a supportive environment, were best left to privacy.
The torch they were going to use to light it all had come from the Tomb. V had flashed over to the sanctum sanctorum and taken one from the many that lined the great hall--which was yet another way to honor the Shadow and his loss. Tohr set the thing afire when Trez finally stretched up to his full height and backed down the slats, the flames leaping to life on its head, ready to spread further, undaunted by the cold wind that was blowing.
At the foot of the pyre, Trez accepted the torch and the two males spoke. In the flickering light, it was clear that Trez's chest had been brutally cut and sealed, and there was salt and blood and wax all down the front of his slacks.
Funny how the passage of time could be noted on something other than a clock or a calendar: The condition of that clothing and that flesh spoke about the hours the male had spent tending to his dead.
And then Tohr was falling back in line beside Autumn.
Trez stared at the pyre. Looked up to its top.
After a long moment, he went around to one of the points of the triangular base, leaned in and--
The fire took off as if it were a wild animal freed from a cage, racing over the gasoline pathways, finding its version of nutrition and commencing its meal.
Trez took a step back, the torch falling to his side as if he'd forgotten it still burned.
With a quick lunge, iAm stepped in and removed the thing, and just as he turned away, Trez began to shout.
As chalky wood smoke and orange sparks and fingers of fire cascaded into the night sky, Trez screamed in fury, his torso jutting forward on his hips, his legs sinking down as if he were about to throw himself into the heat.
Before he could think, Rhage jumped out of line and ran to the guy; iAm certainly couldn't, what with the torch in his hand. Locking his arms around the Shadow's pelvis, he picked Trez up and backed him away about ten feet.
Even with the wind still coming from behind them and carrying things off, the heat was tremendous.
Trez didn't seem to notice--not the fact that he had been relocated, nor the reality that if the gusts shifted, he could still be incinerated.
He was just roaring at the pyre, his neck muscles sticking out, his chest pumping up and down, his body jacked forward against the iron bar of Rhage's hold.
There was no tracking the precise words, but there probably weren't any.
Sometimes language couldn't go far enough.
All you could do was scream.
SEVENTY-TWO
"Actually . . . I think I'd rather stay here."
As Paradise spoke, she looked up from her desk. Her father was standing in front of her, the report she'd just given him lowering down to his side as if he were stunned.
"But surely you should wish to return home."
There was no one in the waiting room--for that matter, there wasn't anybody in the house except for Vuchie and the other staff. Something had happened at the Brotherhood compound, and Wrath had canceled all appointments for the following several nights as he and the Brothers went into mourning. She knew no details, but whatever it was had happened suddenly.
She prayed it wasn't somebody dying in the war.
"I'm really . . . happy here." That wasn't exactly true, but it was close enough. "I like having my own space."
Her father glanced around, and then brought over a chair. "Paradise."
Ah, yes. His "be serious, darling" voice. And usually, when he started off like that, she got sucked back into whatever seat she was sitting in, as if his pater familias tone held a centrifugal force enough to beat gravity.
Not tonight. "No," she said. "I'm not coming home."
Oh . . . great. It turned out there was something even worse: The pain that flared in his eyes now.
She put her hands up to her face. "Please don't."
"I just . . . I do not understand."
No, she imagined he didn't. "Father, I need something that's m
ine--and I'm not talking about a mate and young and a big house somewhere."
"There is no shame in having a family."
"And there should be no shame if a female wants a life of her own, either."
"Perhaps if you meet the right--"
She dropped her hands down onto the desktop, hitting the edge of her keyboard and making it jump. "I'm not interested in getting mated. Ever."
At that, he paled. Sure as if she'd told him she wanted to run out naked at noontime.
"Your presentation season is approaching."
"I have a job now."
There was a long period of silence, in which he measured her and she didn't waver. "Is this because we argued?" he asked.
"No."
"So what . . . has changed, Paradise?"
"I have."
Defeat curved her father's shoulders, and that was when she realized that as much as he was her ghardian according to the Old Laws, in fact, he couldn't force her to do anything.
Sadly, this was probably long overdue.
"Is it about the training center program?" he asked.
"Yes and no. It's about me making choices in my own life, instead of having things forced on me. I just . . . I want to be free."
Her father shook his head. "I suppose I am from a different generation."
Crossing her arms on the desk, she leaned into them and thought about what that civilian male had said, the one who'd come for the application--and told her his name, but refused to shake her hand.
The one she found herself looking for every time that front door opened.
"It's about safety, Father."
"I'm sorry?"
"Me wanting to take the training course. I think I would like to know how to defend myself. It doesn't mean that I'll end up downtown, fighting slayers. It does mean, though, that if something were to happen to me, I'd be a heck of a lot more prepared to deal with it."
"You are totally protected. Whether you are here or at home--"
"But what if I want to go other places?"
As the next wave of quiet hit, she knew where he was in his mind. Although he rarely said it out loud, it had always been clear to her that, among the many things the male missed about the passing of his beloved shellan, he wished that her mahmen could have partaken in awkward conversations like this. He seemed to assume that having a female intercede would yield more harmonious outcomes--a conclusion that was always available to him because it could never be vetted.
