Page 85 of The Midnight Death Match
But that’s impossible.
Yet the marble has an iridescent glimmer. And I would swear the stones are healing themselves. That can’t be. Can it?
“The city is still beautiful.” Harek’s voice pulls me from my thoughts.
“Look at the sanctuary.”
He gives me a funny look before complying, then his brows lift. “The building is fixing itself.”
I wasn’t imagining it. Grief isn’t stealing my sanity.
Harek squeezes my hand. “Perhaps the entire city will return to what it looked like when we arrived.”
That almost seems like too much to hope for. I wish Einar could see it.
A fresh wave of pain washes over me, and tears blur my vision.
Harek pulls me into his embrace and holds me tightly. I let him comfort me, and he feels like home. He runs his palm over my hair. “I miss him, too.”
A tear lands on my scalp.
We stand in the quiet for a while. After I’ve sobbed, we sit at the edge of the cliff, our legs hanging over the hill where the sanctuary overlooks the valley. The birds return slowly, cautious against the lingering weight of magic. Smoke still clings to the leaves. The scent of blood is faint now.
“I only had a handful of weeks with him. And most of that time, we were training to fight each other.”
Harek puts his arm around me. “You got to know him, and he got to know you.”
My throat tightens. “He believed in me, even when I didn’t.”
“I always have,” he says. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
I glance at him, but he’s looking toward the valley, where the path winds down Mirendel’s wilderness.
Where war still waits.
The wind shifts.
I straighten. My grief doesn’t fade, but it settles for now. I’ve been through this before—still am going through it—with my mother. The pain of losing her is still fresh, and now I have this added onto it.
None of this can be in vain. I won’t let it.
Harek rests his head on mine, and we sit in silence for what could be hours, or just moments. His voice breaks through my shattered thoughts. “I hate to ask, but are you ready to head back? Sapphire and Vash have already flown overhead three times now.”
As much as I want to stay here until the rawness of my father’s sacrifice goes away, that isn’t an option. We need to check on the dragons and Mirendel itself.
We walk away. Leaving feels like tearing away pieces of myself.
I turn back once to see the pile of stones we built over Einar’s body. They’re pale gray against the dark earth, carefully chosen and fitted together with the kind of precision he would have appreciated. Each placed with purpose, with love, with the weight of everything we couldn’t say while he was alive to hear it.
Harek’s hand rests on my shoulder, steady and warm. “He would have liked it here. Overlooking the valley. Close enough to the sanctuary to feel the magic, but far enough away to have peace.”
I nod, not trusting my voice. The cairn looks so small from here, just another arrangement of rocks in an ancient landscape. But I know I’ll carry the image of it with me forever—the way the light caught the edges of the stones, the single wildflower Harek found to place on top, the sound of our breathing as we worked in silence to give Einar the honor he deserved.
The sky overhead is a bruised blend of silver and soft blue, still bearing the scars of last night’s magical storm. But the bruises are healing, fading from the violent purples and blacks of the curse’s breaking into something of recovery rather than destruction.
The city doesn’t feel hostile anymore. Just tired.
Harek walks beside me in silence, his boots finding their rhythm on the familiar path. But it’s not an empty silence—it’s full of shared understanding, of grief that doesn’t need words. Occasionally he glances my way like he wants to say something, his mouth opening slightly before he thinks better of it and looks ahead again. His hand grasped around mine speaks volumes our words can’t.
