Page 9 of Court of Talons

Nazar lays Merritt’s body on the soft earth. With a strange, almost surreal detachment, I realize the priest has already removed the gray feathered arrow from Merritt’s body, already bound my brother’s wounds with long strips of his cloak. Merritt’s hair is matted to his skin, his brow caked with sweat and dirt, but no life remains in his pale face.

I tear my gaze away from him, stare at Nazar. “They’re all dead?”

“All. Five Tenth House soldiers and Adriana, six attackers.” His face is drawn, and he looks impossibly old to me. “When Merritt was struck, I was on the ridge with you. The others were down at the water, on foot, most with their swords still strappedto their saddles. By the time I reached them …” He grimaces. “Our fallen are avenged, but they are still dead.”

He speaks as if he holds himself to blame for the death of five fighting men and an untrained handmaiden—him, a priest of the Light. But I don’t deny him his guilt, any more than I can deny myself my own.Five Tenth House soldiers…Adriana…

And by the Light…Merritt.

The world wavers, darkness surges, but before I can slip away completely, Nazar’s voice brings me back into focus.

“There’s water in the skins,” he says curtly.

I nod. My brother shouldn’t go to the Light dirty and broken. He should be sanctified, his face wiped clean, his hands clasped over his heart. Pulling my own tattered cloak from my shoulders, I use its cleanest sections and gently, so gently, prepare my brother not for a life of tournaments and champions, but for eternal Light.

Nazar returns sometime later, his tunic stained with fresh dirt, no doubt from the graves of our fallen retainers and Adriana. Numbly, I watch him lift Merritt’s still form and carry him to where he’s made a makeshift pyre of branches and the cloaks of our retainers.

“Pray over your brother, Talia of the Tenth, and we will give him a warrior’s death,” the priest says. “Then we must be gone before anyone else comes to this place.”

“Adriana?” I whisper.

His voice is hard as flint. “Struck in the first pass. Her grave remains open; it’s yours to close if you wish it. You can say your goodbye to her but remember—every moment with her takes you from Merritt, and he is your brother and lord.”

“My…lord.” I swallow hard, but glance to where he points, and stumble over to where there are five mounds in the dark, crumbling soil. Five mounds and one trench, with an oddlysmall, heavily wrapped form lying within it. How can death shrink a person so quickly?

I pick up the small shovel Nazar has left beside the trench. It’s meant for covering over campfires, not graves, but it clearly has done the job. I push it into the rich earth, pull up a surprisingly light mound of loose dirt. The forest is willing to take our offering, it seems, even if we don’t want to give it.

I drop the first mound of earth upon my only friend.

“Adriana,” I whisper. I can’t get past her name, tears falling thick and hot as I shovel dirt over her. Sorrow washes through me, chased by anger, then pain, then more anger, over and over again, rolling tides of loss and rage. With each scoop, I feel a part of us is being covered over and hidden away, obliterated forever. Our laughter. Our chatter over visiting bards and lords. Adriana’s hissed warnings whenever someone came too close while I was battling shadow warriors in the dark. Our giggled assessments of men and boys. Our wishes and hopes. Our fears. Our plans for a shared future now buried in rich forest soil.

“Adriana,” I manage again, the words of the Light a blur to me, mumbled and hissed and moaned over her. I finally drag myself away from the freshly formed mound and trudge back to Nazar.

For a second time, I stare down at a body prepared for death as Nazar begins the sacred rite of passage, his chant as haunting as the wind on a barren winter’s night. Merritt seems impossibly wrong, lying there. Like Adriana, he’s too small, too still, especially on his pyre of gathered branches, his body offered up to the open sky. When Nazar strikes flint to stone and sets the pyre ablaze, I can almost hear Merritt’s laughter once more, can almost see him riding, proud and strong. Can almost see him leaping into the air to jump—knowing he would be caught. Knowing he would never die.

Tears well up again, and despite the dishonor and my own returning fury, I let them fall. Here is my brother, my only brother. Here’s all the hope I’ve ever had.

Nazar doesn’t speak for several long minutes as the fire burns down. Doesn’t move, in fact, from my side. But when I finally step away from the darkening embers, the priest lifts a hand to stop me.

“You’re banded,” he says, his voice as punishing as a fist.

And just like that, I know.

There’s still more dying to do this day.

Chapter 4

“Ididn’t want it,” I protest, already hot with shame as Nazar glares at me beside my brother’s smoking pyre. “I didn’t.”

“No?”

I wince, this single word a new and deadly cut. Because Nazar, of course, would know.

Though I’d always tried desperately never to be seen, Ihadmimicked Merritt’s movements in the hidden corners of the keep when I thought no one was looking. Nazar has caught me more than once in my shadow dancing. He could have—should have—had me lashed for my transgression. To my surprise, he never did, merely watched me with the same dark-eyed gaze he so often turned on Merritt. A few times, he even corrected my form with the barest word, the slightest shake of his head.

I treasured those secret, stolen instructions more than he probably ever imagined, rose-gold threads embroidered into the endless gray tapestry of my life.

Now those threads ensnare me as damningly as the cuff upon my arm.