Crown of Cinders

by Rebecca Ethington

  Carefully restraining a shiver, I sighed, letting my body collapse into the sand, keeping my eyes closed as I focused on his touch, on the sound of the waves, on the heaven that I had suddenly found myself in.

  “Open your eyes,” Ilyan said with a laugh.

  I smiled. “What if I say no?”

  “Open your eyes,” Ilyan repeated, his laugh growing into a deeper chuckle as his touch continued making intoxicating trails across my back.

  I listened to the sound, getting lost in the rhythm, getting lost in the sensation of his touch against my skin.

  The soft tickle of his fingers moved down my back, over my arms, across my cheek, touching all of me. Igniting all of me.

  “Open your eyes.” This time, he said it softly, and with a soft, little flutter, they opened. Not to the bright sunshine that I had been expecting, but to a beautiful overcast day, like the many that were taken for granted on a beach.

  Everyone always wanted the sun; they always wanted the warmth. But warmth could be there even without the blazing rays of the sun. Warmth could be there even if it was hidden. Sometimes, when it was hidden, just knowing it was there could make it all the more pleasurable.

  “You should take your own advice.” Ilyan laughed, reading my mind. “Warmth, life, happiness, joy, fear—it’s all the same, my darling. Joy is still there. It’s just hiding behind a cloud right now. Just like Dramin.”

  “Are you saying Dramin is behind a cloud?”

  “No, I’m saying Dramin has found his warmth. Maybe he has moved past the cloud and found a sanctuary in his own Tȍuha, lying together with his wife. Together for an eternal life of perfection and bliss.”

  It was a bittersweet happiness, but one I let overwhelm me. It was a good thought, a beautiful picture, for a man who very much deserved it.

  “I can accept that,” I said, wiggling myself over the sand, nestling myself against Ilyan’s chest.

  Lying there, he ran his fingers over my skin while mine traced the deep scars that crisscrossed over his chest. I had followed them so many times before that they were memorized now. Their movements, intersections, and odd imperfections were already a perfect map in my mind.

  He gasped, shivering beneath me as the same passion that I was feeling began to affect him.

  “Did I ever tell you that that tickles?” Ilyan asked.

  “No,” I replied with a laugh. “That makes me want to do it more, you know.”

  “Then maybe I should have told you that long ago.”

  I sighed, never ceasing in the gentle touch against his chest, letting my mind run free and calm.

  We lay like that, forgetting all the troubles and doom and losses of the world we had left behind. But, as always, we both knew that this could not last forever. Not yet.

  “Someday, it will,” Ilyan said, answering a question that really didn’t exist between us. “Someday, this will be our every day, and there will be no wars, no more blood, no more death.”

  “You say that like it’s a daydream.”

  “To me, it is,” he responded, his voice suddenly strained. “I have been lost in this war for hundreds of years, my darling. To me, the future beyond can only be a daydream.”

  “What if I make it a reality?” I asked, knowing the weight of what that really meant, knowing the impossibility of what was before us.

  “What if we do it together?” Ilyan asked, his soft touch leaving, replaced by a strong palm against my back. The weight was pleasant and warm as he pushed me into him, my arms and legs tangling around his in a comfortable pretzel against the sand.

  “I would like that.” I sighed as his magic swarmed into me with that same unparalleled power you could only find in the Tȍuha. I gasped at the impression and the raw vulnerability that filled me.

  “Then perhaps you will finally allow me to show you my house. Your real house, not that one.”

  I couldn’t restrain the laugh. He had been trying to get me to visit the house on the beach for months. I was certain it would be as clear in the Tȍuha as it was in reality, but that didn’t matter.

  I wanted to see it within the real world. There were too many parallels in my life, sights of the total futures that were unsure, Tȍuhas that let me live in the daydream that Ilyan longed for.

  But that moment—walking into that house that Ilyan had built for me, for us, and for our eternity—I wanted it to be real. Not something from the confusing spaces that my life had given me, that my magic had created for me. Not sight, not Tȍuha.

  “Yes,” I said with a laugh, pulling away to look him in the eye, those bright blue eyes that danced with the love that had been missing lately. “When we create this reality, then you can show me.”

  He didn’t smile, although his eyes were happy.

  He held me close, his face glowing with an immense love as he moved his thumb over my back, each swipe of his skin against mine sending the same intense ripple of need over me.

  I knew what was coming.

  “Kiss me,” I begged, knowing it would be more than the tickle of his lips against mine this time.

  It was.

  It was strong and powerful. It was skin against skin. It was his tongue dragging over my lower lip as his hand tangled in my hair. It was his gasp in my ear as I kissed his neck. It was my giggle as he tickled mine.

  “Ilyan,” I sighed as I pulled myself away.

  A small groan rippled deep inside his throat, the desire clear.

  The desire was the same as had filled me.

  However, I could already feel the dream shattering. I could already feel reality pressing against my chest. Some invisible clock was ticking down beside us, as if warning me what was coming.

  I already knew.

  “I love you, Ilyan.” I gasped out as I dragged my thumb over his lips. “I love you more than the world. More than life itself.”

  “I know,” he whispered. “I can see it in your eyes, even if you don’t think so.”

  I smiled, and his own grew to match mine as he pulled me back into him. His lips met mine once more before dragging over my cheek and down my neck.

  “I have loved you all of my life, and I will love you until the end,” he said.

  I closed my eyes, letting the warmth of the beach fill me just as the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, and the warmth of this life found us inside of the Tȍuha, if only for a moment.

  20

  Wind blew through my hair, pulling at the strands like some demon that was trying to whisk me away. What hair the beast managed to pull from my braid blew around my face in a mêlée of black. The bright gold ribbon moved with them, as if it alone was battling an invisible foe.

  I just didn’t care.

  I walked against the wind, through the chill, holding the thick wool blanket that had been on Dramin’s bed around me, wishing it were enough to block the chill. Regardless, it was still biting, moving through me with every step. I didn’t even bother to heat my magic to warm me. At least with the cold I didn’t feel quite so dead inside.

  Normally, this close to the barrier, everything would be hot and stifling, the air so thick and muggy you could feel it press against your skin like mayonnaise. Right now, with the way the wind rushed around us and the snow beat against the barrier feet from us, it was cold. The air was a brittle chill as the outside world found a way in, as the earth itself felt the bitter agony of losing someone so great.

  The earth knew why we were here, she knew why we were gathered on a little hill, surrounded by miles of farmland with enough of a rise in the earth that it lifted us above the hell the city had become, looking over it like the rulers we were.

  It was the city Dramin had called his home, the city we would bury him in. Up here, I could see why he loved it so much. I could see his home. I could see my home.

  “I’m sure it was beautiful,” I sighed out, my voice broken as the sobs tried to quiet briefly. “When it was first built … before all of this …” I waved my hand over the city, di
splaying the ruins before us, as though Ilyan hadn’t seen them before, as if he didn’t know how it had been.

  Ilyan pulled me into him as he pulled the thoughts from my mind, his own comforting words drifting to me through our magic. The warmth of his power settled into my bones.

  It was. It was his home.

  Sobs stuck in my throat, I turned into him, my cold cheek pressing against the warmth of his arm as he held me, tangled awkwardly in the cold. He was the only comforting thing this hilltop had for us, so I held on to him, watching our ribbons dance and tangle in the angry wind.

  Ryland stayed back, the wind attempting to devour him as he stood between two fresh dirt mounds, his hands and knees covered with the dark earth. His sobs swept into the wind like the howl of a demon, his mourning knell hitting me in the chest.

  Watching him there, watching his heartbreak, knowing what was still to come, ripped open my heart again, and the sobs came. Deeper and louder this time, the pain stifled by Ilyan’s arms as he wrapped me up in him.

  His sobs increased as Wyn and Thom began to drag Ryland away from the two people he had considered family and toward the last one, following the few of Ilyan’s people who had come up here with us.

  “I’m not sure I can do this,” I said between sobs.

  Ilyan’s hand was soft as it ran down my spine, the blanket shielding the touch from view. “Do what, mi lasko?” he asked, his tall frame bending over me as he whispered in my ear.

  “Step over there. Say good-bye.”

  Ilyan stiffened with the shake in the words, the reality hitting him as it did me. As wrapped up in him as I was, I could feel him shudder. His magic pressed against my heart as I felt his lips press against my hair. His breath was warm as it flowed with the wind that still tried to move into me, warm breath and cold wind tugging and pulling at my hair.

  Good-byes are never easy, he whispered in my mind. Nor are they final. His magic is all around us, my Joclyn. You saw it as it left him, and you will see it again … whether it be in this life or the next.

  “Or the next,” I echoed, my voice muffled as I pressed my face into the crook of his arm, burrowing into the blanket that was wrapped around us.

  I didn’t want to watch Ryland as he walked closer to us, all broken again. I didn’t want to think of the next life, the life that might be too close thanks to the premonitions and fathers who lie and mess everything up.

  At first, it was me, and then it was Ilyan. Now it might be any one of us.

  It was already Dramin.

  And Risha.

  And Jaromir.

  “I have told you of how we release our kind, the Skȓíteks, into the earth, yes?” Ilyan’s voice was an accented rumble as he whispered against me, pulling my mind from the flashes of sights.

  “Into the underwater river that flows throughout Imdalind,” I answered, the imagery clear in my head, just as it had been when we had buried Risha a few moments ago: The large cavern; the quick flow of icy water; the way the body, all wrapped up in white, was placed in the flow, swallowed beneath the surface to return the physical body back into the earth that gave it life and allowing the soul and magic to find their final resting place amidst the rock and sky and air of the world that had created us all.

  “Do you think they will get lost?” I asked, knowing Ilyan was tuned in to me. “That they will get stuck in the barrier and never find their way home?”

  I knew it was a silly question. I didn’t even know where home was after this. I didn’t know if there was a heaven or a hell or some combination of the two. I hoped Dramin’s soul would find what he was looking for, find his way back to whatever blissful eternity he wanted.

  Barrier or no.

  “He will,” Ilyan whispered as Ryland’s loud cries passed by us.

  I listened to his sobs before the wind drowned them.

  “Skȓíteks are released into the earth.” His voice was calm as he pulled me from him, the blanket falling from one of my shoulders with the slow, mournful steps we took toward the final mound where Ryland and all the others were. “Drak’s are released into sight. We release them from their past so they are free to find their futures.”

  My heart fell to my toes, my gut twisting painfully as Ilyan pulled me back to the horrors of what we were moving toward.

  The small group was already making a circle around his body.

  The icy air sucked the oxygen from my lungs, my heart twisting and cracking. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to see this. Nevertheless, I couldn’t stop moving forward. I couldn’t stop everything from dying inside of me.

  Everything from hurting.

  Dramin lay in the middle of everyone, the sheet pulling against the icy blast that made it hard to stand, hard to breathe. Everyone was huddled under blankets and ripped coats, gathered around my brother as though we had come to hear him tell a story.

  Risha and Jaromir had stayed covered as we had buried them and said good-bye, their bodies wrapped up tightly. In two steps, though, Ilyan went to Dramin and ripped the loose covering off, leaving him lying there, freezing in the winter air.

  Freezing.

  “He’s cold.” I didn’t think anyone could hear me.

  I had been to one funeral before these. I could still vividly see my grandmother lying in a casket, her arms folded against her stomach, against the pretty white dress that my family had chosen for her to wear. Her skin had been strangely pink, a lipstick that was far too red coating her lips. I could see the white satin of the casket and the rose-colored wood of the lid as they had closed it over her.

  To me, that was death.

  That was the end.

  That was good-bye.

  I had been wrong.

  There was no fancy satin-lined casket. There was no fancy suit or gunk in Dramin’s hair to make him look like he was going to a dinner party and had fallen asleep on the way. There was no makeup to cover the death that had taken over his face, his eyes sunken in, his lips shriveled and black, his skin gray and stretched over sallow cheeks, and a jaw that had shrunken.

  He looked forgotten.

  There was no soul left in him. Seeing him like that, seeing the life stripped from him until he was nothing but a vacant shell, made me wonder why the mortals tried to make their dead look like there was life still in them.

  Yes, there was something to seeing a body the way that you remember them, but then, they are just a person in a box.

  This man, he was gone.

  You could tell he was gone. All that was left was sallow gray skin stretched over bones. The life was already lost.

  “Please, if you knew this Drak’s past, we ask you to join us, to step forward and help us to send his soul away.” Ilyan pulled a large bottle and a handful of white handkerchiefs out of a large burlap bag one of the others had handed him.

  They were handkerchiefs I recognized at once, and I tensed, the muscles in my shoulders tightening as my already pained heart began to beat faster.

  Thom nodded, his body shaky as he moved away from the support Wyn was giving him in an attempt to reach his friend. Wyn, realizing he couldn’t make it on his own, rushed to his side, flinging her arm around his waist in a bolster of support.

  “You can be a man later,” she scolded, and a small chuckle escaped from the dreadlocked man.

  “What am I now, a goldfish?” Thom retorted, reaching toward his brother as Ilyan put the six handkerchiefs in his outstretched hand.

  “If you keep acting like that, then yes,” Wyn said.

  They stood, Ryland joining them, as the handkerchiefs were passed between them, their smiles beginning to fade.

  I stood, staring at them, at Dramin, at what was left of life, everything bathed in red.

  I didn’t know how long I stood there before Ilyan came over, pulling me toward the others … pulling me toward my brother.

  Wyn smiled sadly, her eyes swollen and red as she handed me a handkerchief, and the pace of my heart inside my chest accelerated. I wa
s not quite sure what I was supposed to do with it or even if I wanted to touch it after everything I had seen.

  Wyn moved back over beside Thom as, together, the four of them arranged their handkerchiefs in the palm of their left hands, the open palms extended out as though they were handing it to Dramin, yet he didn’t see them.

  I expected the brutal wind to pick up the light squares of white cotton and send them into the air like a scarf at a train station, but they stayed, still and calm, magic holding them in place while hair, coats, and blankets kept flying.

  Without a word, I followed their example, ready to secure the handkerchief with my magic. The moment it hit my palm, however, the white cloth sagged against my skin, any life that was in it, any life the wind would have given it, sucked dry.

  It was as dead as everything else.

  The parallels were heartbreaking.

  My mind did not need the whispered words that Ilyan provided, his words and magic calm and soothing in my mind.

  Thank you, I whispered in response, my voice shaking inside of his mind.

  His lips twitched before his focus lifted to mine, his bright blue eyes sad as they locked me in place, holding my confusion and heartbreak captive.

  I wanted to tell him it was okay to cry, but I knew at once it wouldn’t matter. He wasn’t trying to avoid crying because of who he was or because of some image he had to portray. He was trying not to cry because he knew Dramin wouldn’t want him to.

  “Life is frail,” Ilyan began in Czech, his voice a lullaby that rang across the icy air.

  With those few words, everyone’s attention turned to him. Those beside Dramin still stood with our hands outstretched.

  “Our lives are strong, but they can be lost within a moment,” Ilyan continued, and everyone nodded in agreement of the stark truths Ilyan was presenting.

  I was left in the dark, the same dark I had been swimming in for days. The uncertainty put me on edge, made the emotions harder to handle.

  “We have lost this life,” Ilyan’s voice broke, tears beginning to stream down his face.

  He wasn’t the only one.