Her face colored. “All right.” She swept upstairs, her gown brushing over the carpet.
Talia still didn’t move. She heard the clatter of wheels over stone in the courtyard, the carriage heading back to the village.
“How is she?” said Caiden, turning his glance to Wen.
Talia drew a sharp breath.
Wen looked his brother square in the face, anger hard in his eyes. “Are you so indifferent to our father’s death that you dare ask me that?”
“Please tell me. Is she … well?”
“If you’re asking whether she’s made herself sick for the love of you, I can assure you she has not.”
“Don’t mock me, Wen.”
“Mock you?” Wen’s jaw ground hard. “You threw her away like she was nothing.”
“You don’t understand!” Caiden slammed the heel of his right hand against the wall, making Talia jump. “Father would have disinherited me, cut me off from everything—”
Wen shook his head. “I realize that. I know, Caiden. I do. But Father is dead, now. How can you not even care?”
Caiden’s eyes flashed, wild and angry. “If he’d died two weeks earlier, I wouldn’t have had to marry Blaive!”
Wen cursed and punched Caiden in the face so hard he stumbled backward, blood springing bright on his lip.
Caiden swore at him and walked away up the stairs, his boots ringing loud.
Talia felt strange and confused and awful, to her core. Wen looked over and caught her eye. Had he known she was there the whole time?
He was shaking, and there was blood on his knuckles. “I can’t believe he doesn’t care.”
Talia swallowed and left her hiding place to go over to him. “He shouldn’t have said that. Any of it.” It hurt to see the tears brimming in his eyes. She lightly touched his arm. “He cares, Wen. Of course he does. He just doesn’t realize it yet.”
They laid Baron Graimed Dacien-Tuer to rest on the hill outside the garden, between his two wives, the headstones of his ancestors in scattered rows behind them. Wen and Caiden lowered their father’s casket into the grave, while an ancient priest from the village intoned the benediction in his dust-dry voice, and Talia and Blaive and Ahned looked on. Snow settled heavily on Talia’s shoulders, catching on her eyelashes, blurring her vision with white.
Caiden dropped a handful of earth into the grave, his face as expressionless as stone, his jaw swollen where Wen had hit him. Wen threw another handful, dirt falling and skittering like ice across the wood of his father’s casket. His shoulders were stiff, his eyes wet.
“May your spirit be gathered beyond the circles of the world,” said the priest, “and your body rest quiet until the end of time, when the world is unmade.”
The wind whirled the words around her, the same ones she’d said in the ship for her mother. The only eulogy she knew.
“Until the end of time,” they all echoed together around the grave, pale ghosts in mourning whites to match the snow. Talia couldn’t help but think that the Baron was at peace now, and her mother was not. Her throat caught, and she could barely finish with the others: “When the world is unmade.”
And then it was over. Ahned and the priest set to work filling in the grave as Caiden led the way back into the house.
The servants had tea and a roaring fire waiting for them in the parlor, but no one seemed particularly hungry.
Blaive settled into a chair near the fire and poured tea that she didn’t touch, while Caiden took up a post by the window, his back to the room. Talia sat down across from Blaive. Wen leaned against the fireplace mantel, fidgeting with the hem of his white jacket.
Snow fell on outside the window. No one spoke.
Talia willed Wen to look at her, but he just stared at the floor.
Blaive cleared her throat and curled her fingers around her teacup. “A very sad day,” she said, the silence evidently making her uncomfortable.
“It isn’t sad for him,” said Caiden from the window. “This is all he ever wanted. To be with them again.”
“Shut up,” said Wen.
But Caiden wasn’t finished. “He’s been dying for ten years. We ought to congratulate him on his success at last.”
“Shut up!” Wen cried.
Caiden jerked away from the window, rage hard in his eyes. “Or what, little brother?”
“Father deserves our respect.”
“Why? He certainly never respected you.”
Wen ground his jaw. “Because he’s our father, and whatever his faults, he loved us.”
“After his own fashion,” Caiden sneered.
Blaive twisted her hands in her lap, clearly out of her depth. “It’s unlucky to speak ill of the dead,” she said quietly.
“Don’t pretend you had any great love for my father,” Caiden snapped at her. “You used him. Manipulated him into forcing this marriage on me.”
Her face tightened. “You’re just a boy used to obeying his father. Now he’s gone and you haven’t any idea what to do.”
“Stars’ fire take you,” Caiden spat, and strode abruptly from the room. Blaive looked after him, gnawing on her lip, and then got up and followed, white skirts skimming over the floor in her wake.
Talia looked at Wen, who paced over to the window and stood staring out at the snow.
“I watched my mother drown,” he said quietly. “Did I ever tell you that? I ran out onto the beach that day in the storm. I saw her boat cast off from the shore and the wind catch her sail, tearing it to pieces. I saw her capsize, struggling in the water. I ran down the shore, tried to reach her, but I was too late—and too small to help her. I didn’t understand why she would leave us like that. She was my whole world, and then she was gone. It took both my father and Ahned to drag her body back to shore.” He shuddered.
Talia went over to him, laying one hand on his shoulder. Tears pressed behind her eyes. “I’m sorry, Wen. You don’t know how much.”
“We buried her on the hill, like we did my father, just now. I stood there at her grave and hated everything. My father. My brother. The earth, the gods. Because I didn’t understand. But I do, now.” He turned from the window, his blue gaze focused on her. “I understand that you should never throw your life away. Not when you’re leaving the ones you love behind. Life is precious. No matter what Caiden says, my father—my father shouldn’t have sought out death. Shouldn’t have wished for it. Shouldn’t have welcomed it when it came.”
Her stomach wrenched. “But what if the ones you love go ahead of you? What if you could bring them back?” It was unfair of her to ask him that, but she couldn’t help herself.
He blinked, and she was shocked to see a tear sliding down his cheek. “The dead are the dead, Talia Dahl-Saida. There’s no changing that. You can’t bring them back.”
But she thought about her dreams, about the myths and the visions she’d seen in the mirror, and she knew he was wrong.
Chapter Thirty-Four
TALIA?”