Page 231 of Of Iron and Moonlight

Satisfied he had been seen, Merrick slipped deeper into the cemetery, keeping to the darker margins where the light could not reach him.

He passed the graves he should have visited long ago first.

Alaric.

Garriden.

Corwin.

He brushed each marker with his glove. A quiet greeting for the man who had sheltered him. For the brothers he had lost. For the lives that had shaped him. And a wordless apology settled in his chest, an acknowledgment of absences he could never mend.

At the far end of the graveyard he reached the newest mound of earth, where the soil still lay uneven beneath the snow. Isander’s grave. Resting beside their mother.

Grief cut first.

Anger followed close behind.

Soft footsteps.

Merrick pushed the feelings down, slipping back behind a mask of ease.

“You came,” Duncan called as he and Kora approached.

“You invited me,” Merrick replied to the ground, not yet ready to meet his eyes. “Did you not?”

“I wasn’t certain my invitation would reach you.” Duncan cast him a pointed look. “You are a difficult man to find when you don’t wish to be found.”

“Garric found me easily enough.”

“Garric is…” The explanation was not needed. Duncan shook his head. He opened his mouth, searching for words. He closed it. Then, not accusing but not kindly either, “You slipped away after Gryon without a word.”

Merrick absently scraped the snow from Isander’s stone. “Ashfell Quiett business,” he said, though he knew the explanation did not quite hide what lay beneath it.

Duncan nodded, the gesture implying more questions than agreement. “You could have joined us,” he said. “You did not need to stand apart.”

“It did not feel right.”

Kora’s expression softened. She stepped a little closer. “Merrick,” she said gently, “you always have a place at Emberglade. Whatever paths you walk outside of it.”

He cleared his throat and looked away, finding it easier to focus on anything other than the sincerity in her voice.

“Bran was…” he said after a moment. “He and I did not always agree. But there are few men I trusted more to stand beside me in a fight.”

“Him and Isander both.”

Merrick returned his attention to the marker before him. Winter’s hush pressed around him loudly. The confession surged to the surface and scraped on its way out. “Our final conversation was an argument.” Merrick closed his eyes. “He… He wanted…”

Kora placed a steadying hand on his arm and the center of his back.

“He wanted to know why,” Merrick managed. “I will never forgive myself for not…”

Duncan hesitated. “I had not wanted to press you. But I find myself circling the same question.”

Merrick slipped from Kora’s touch and crouched, brushing his gloved fingers along the cold earth above his mother’s grave. He imagined Isander standing there with them.

It began with the simple truth that they should never have been born at all.

“It was your father’s idea,” he said at last.