Page 108 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
“If you try really hard?”
“Maybe,” she said. “What do you want me to say?”
Caer raised a hand to her cheek and cupped it, fingers warm and lingering against her skin. She wanted to weld his flesh to hers, to keep him there forever. His touch was lightning.
“I don’t want you to say anything,” he said, his voice a hushed whisper. “Not right now.”
Aislinn angled her face towards him, her eyes fixed on his lips, to the dark space between them. They were parted ever-so-slightly, and his breath tingled across her face.
She leaned upwards—
“Ah, there you are, lad,” said Minerva, rounding the corner through the still-open door. Aislinn jerked back, wishing she could melt into the shadows. “I thought we better do a quick gathering before we all split up for the night. You know. For Fort’s sake.”
“Right,” Caer said, voice tight. He was leaning against the wall Aislinn had vanished from.
Minerva raised an eyebrow. “Not interrupting something, am I?”
“No. Not at all.”
Minerva snorted and turned to look at Aislinn. “Good job I asked him and not you, right?”
Aislinn blushed.A very good job indeed.
Theyheadeddowntothe crypt, where the rest of the party had gathered. A few others were there as well—a handful of faces Caer didn’t know, along with Prince Tiberius. Venus, Caer noted, was nowhere to be seen.
He kept close to Aislinn’s side as the others crowded round a stone that had been etched with Fort’s name and date of birth, and the inscription ‘the luckiest dwarf we knew. May the stone hold what we cannot.’
She’d been one hundred and eleven years old. He tried to take some comfort in the years she’d had, but that was not old for a dwarf. Not at all. There had been much life left for her.
Not your fault,he told himself, as his thoughts turned dark.Not your fault, not your fault—
Aislinn seized his hand.
“I have many a truth I can whisper to you if you need it,” she said, her voice unwavering. “Or… I can just do this. You need only ask.”
Caer wasn’t sure he could speak at all, so he clutched tightly to her fingers in answer.
“Are we all here?” Minerva asked. “Not waiting on anyone?”
There was a murmur of confirmation, and Minerva nodded. One by one, dwarves came forward and lit candles around the stone, the crystals in the rest of the room dimming.
“Fortuna Springshard,” Minerva began. “A fine woman. A force of nature. An excellent friend. A light in our lives from her first breath until her last. There was never a situation she couldn’t make funny in some way, never a darkness she couldn’t dispel, if only a little. It seems impossible that she should not be with us now. I keep expecting her to pop up with some wise-cracking remark. But she will not. So I must imagine her voice instead. I will imagine it, I think, until the end of my life, and if she haunts me, so be it. It is a worthy price to pay for being her friend.”
Minerva’s voice trailed off, though her expression remained set, jaw tight. Bell got up next, listing a long spiel about Fort’s life, where she was born, her family, her childhood in Avalinth. Others spoke after her, listing their tales of her, their fond remembrances. Caer couldn’t speak his—how she was the first person to make him laugh again after he came to the cottage.
His fingers played with her bead on his necklace. She would stay there forever.
Someone came round with mugs of ale. They were passed out; Fort was toasted to. Flora wept silently throughout the entire event, but she smiled when Luna suggested what Fort would be saying now, if she was here. Everyone came forward with their suggestions, and suddenly almost everyone was laughing and crying and drinking, and a party of sorts began in the crypt itself. An old dwarven hymn was sung, and then bawdy music began to play. Some people danced, others payed their final respects and left. Minerva came round and handed everyone a few coins to go and have fun in the city.
Caer crept away to a corner, trying not to cry and failing rather miserably.
Aislinn appeared at his side.
“Sorry,” Caer wept, trying to wipe away his tears. “You must think—sorry.”
“Why are you apologising?”
“Because, well…”
