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Amyrah’s mouth tips in a small smile, but she doesn’t look at me. “So, you loved him.” She pushes in the final blossom and rests back on her heels to admire her handiwork.
I close my eyes and exhale slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.” Releasing those words makes my chest burn, like a thick casing has been torn off somewhere inside me.
“And if you could, you’d take the fall for him again.”
The tears come, hot and acidic. “In a heartbeat.”
It is silent for a while, save for my strangled sobs, until the rustling of shoes scraping stone compels me to open my eyes. Amyrah no longer faces the carved rock but settles down beside me with her knees pulled up to her chest, the shining necklace concealed as it presses to her heart. I rotate on the balls of my feet and allow myself to fall against the unforgiving granite, resting my head on the stone and staring at the sable sky. “What do I do now?”
“You let go. Let go of all the anger. Of all you think you were owed. Of all you owed him.”
I shake my head, the pain shooting through my temple again. She has no idea of the debt I’ve incurred. “That’s not so easy.”
“Isn’t it?” She rests her chin on her knees and stares at me, maddeningly placid.
My fingernails creep into the flesh of my palms, but as I look at her and see the midnight dew beading on her halo of lazy curls and thick lashes, they relax.
Amyrah sighs. “No, I suppose it isn’t. But whether you face it or not, his part in this story is over. Except for how you choose to let him exist in your memories.”
I mull on that for a beat, surprised when my brother’s name passes through my mind without nausea overwhelming me. I never considered how my memory of him has been tainted by all the guilt and hatred I’ve been harboring.
Amyrah is right. Whatever my part is in this, I need to let him rest.
I shake my head, awestruck. A few simple words from a practical stranger, and it’s like a great stopper has been dislodged in my heart. The grief has been allowed to flow at last. I lift my arm to wipe my face on my sleeve. Rhun is gone, yes, but it no longer makes me feel like I will drown. Some of the blame will always fall at my feet for his death—that knowledge has already changed me, and I can’t pretend otherwise. But it can’t become me.
A heavy sigh squeezes from my chest, and it echoes in the waves that crash against the rocky shore.
“How do you know so much about grief?” I ask, wincing as soon as the words leave my mouth. I’m leaning against her mother’s gravestone. “I mean, you’re not old enough to ...” Everything I say sounds stupid and insensitive.
She doesn’t appear to be offended but turns her face to peer between a crevice where two boulders meet. I can imagine, at a time when the ténesomni isn’t so thick, one could see out across the loch from that viewpoint. She runs her hands down her shins, letting them rest around her bare ankles.
“Maybe it’s because I’ve spent my whole life watching what the lack of it has done to my father. He would rarely even mention my mother’s name, let alone share any of his memories of her. He kept it all to himself, but there were also moments when it would not be contained.”
She stops, and I feel oddly eased by the sound of her sucking in a shaky breath. Her weakness makes me feel less alone.
“And now that this ... this fantasy he contrived around her has been torn to pieces, it’s like he is lost.” The heels of her shoes scrape stone as her legs slide down. She crosses them and rests her hands in their crater. “I think he can’t come to terms with how pointless her death was. He needed to blame someone, or something, for it. And he spent all that time hating the wrong thing.”
It’s Amyrah’s turn to cry. I want to catch each drop as it falls, but I resist.
“He won’t forgive himself for demonizing the one thing that mattered most to my mother.”
A weight drops into the pit of my stomach. I clear my throat, almost afraid to ask. “What was that?”
She sniffs, tugs her sleeves so they cover her balled fists, then uses them to soak up her tears. “The solas.”
Unable to keep still, my feet find their way under my shaky legs. I don’t want to hear about the Light Creatures anymore. I never want to hear about them again.
Amyrah continues quietly, “He blamed them for her death, you know.” A little huff of disbelief emerges as she shakes her head. “Can you believe that?”
My palms start to sweat. I stuff them into the pockets of my trousers. “They can be pretty dangerous,” I say, like an insufferable know-it-all.
She laughs as if I have told a joke. A soft, light-drenched sound that fills me with shame. She cocks an eyebrow. “Have you ever seen one—alive, I mean?”
That stills my steps. This is the moment when I get to decide who I’m going to be with her, this strange young woman who makes me feel like I’ve never truly seen the world before. As my eyes take her in, the glare from her necklace seems to me like a puncture in her flesh, spilling incandescence and growing brighter by the second. For a moment, I don’t see a person sitting before me, but a shadowy form lying at my feet with my arrow lodged in its still heart. My throat is rough as the lie croaks out. “No.”
Her eyes find mine, searching my face until perspiration gathers along my hairline. She senses my confliction, I’m certain. But her watery gaze is gentle. “I have. And she was the most resplendent, yet humble being I’ve ever seen.”
I gulp, a fresh surge of guilt filling me. Here I am, standing before someone who makes me crave light like I never have before, and all I can think of is darkness.
