Nothing good ever comes from hope.
CHAPTERTWO
“Are you sure this is going to fit?”
The square of stone came off easily. The interior of my mother’s grave smells dusty but not dank. Dry and old. I had no difficulty sliding my father’s ashes inside. Cata’s body, however, was a different story.
“No.” Unlike my father, Cata’s body is partially intact and sealed inside the rough-made box. Said wood box does not want to go inside the crypt. I’m not sure what the rules are as to giving her a vault of her own. As the last living representative of Auralia I suppose I can make my own rules. Letting my father, mother, and their closest friend lie separately for eternity was not quite what I had in mind—but the damn box will not go in.
“What if we take her out?” I asked.
Lorcan, who has been hoisting the box mostly alone for the past twenty minutes, dropped it onto the bench, breathing hard. He must be feeling the climb, and my fall surely strained even his seemingly limitless endurance. Not that I noticed the rise and fall of his chest or the way his shirt pulled across his shoulders.
I totally noticed, and promptly felt both stupid and ashamed. Disrespectful of the dead, and of myself.
“The box must go.” I contemplated seeing Cata’s remains for a few seconds, then added, “In. It must go into the hole. Without opening it. I’ve seen enough dead bodies in one lifetime.”
Lorcan chuckled mirthlessly and scanned the wall. “What about relocating her over one?”
“It’s not quite what I had in mind, but it will do.”
“It doesn’t have to be forever.”
“Um. Lorcan. The point of burial is that it’s final.”
How are we finding humor in this grim process? I don’t understand. Nor can I imagine trying to make this work without him. It’s morbid, it’s miserable…and yet I’m not sinking into overwhelming despair over it, either. His presence is more of a comfort than I want to admit.
“What I mean, Princess, is that we’ll have to come back with a stonecutter to carve their names anyway.”
“True.” Assuming there are any skilled tradesmen left alive.
“What if Cata takes this slightly larger space for a while, and when the time comes, we can move her in with your parents? Or, ideally, have someone else do it for us?” Lorcan patted the fractionally larger square one column over. “I have had enough of death and dying, too. I want to get on with living. I can’t imagine Cata would protest.”
“My father would.”
Nothing I did was ever good enough for him.
Lorcan was already popping the face off the niche next to my parents’. Not ideal, perhaps, but better than the alternative.
Together, we wedged Cata’s makeshift coffin inside, not that I was much help. Lorcan did most of the work. I dusted my hands and sat back while Lorcan fastened the stone facings into place. I can hardly lift them. I doubt I could have when I was in my prime; they’re very heavy. Ordinarily this is a task that falls to the temple priests, but most of them have been slaughtered, and none lived up here before the war.
“What now?” Lorcan asked me when he finished.
“Now I sit here and wait until dawn.”
His face falls. “You won’t sleep? At all?”
I shook my head. The diadem pinched my temples. I rubbed them and adjusted its position. “It’s a night of quiet contemplation for the surviving family. Which, at this moment in our history, consists solely of me.”
“Your father didn’t make you do this when your mother died.” He phrased it as a sentence, but I heard the question in his voice.
“Of course. He stayed with me. I wasn’t alone.” It was the last time I ever wept.Nobody wants a queen who cries, Zosia. A goddess doesn’t weep. She is strong. You must be strong for your people.
I was nine years old.
I spread my deep violet skirt over my knees and knelt on bare stone, muscles screaming in protest. I’m hardly going to be able to walk tomorrow, much less climb back down the Plateau.
“You don’t have to stay out here. Go ahead. Get some sleep, Lorcan. I’m fine. The dead can’t hurt me.”
