Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
It’s Mikros.
My stomach plummets toward the floor and I don’t want to believe it. I want to have seen wrong. His eyes, his one green and one blue, are not open. Are not lifeless.
He is not dead.
Makarios roars again. “Just for using pus to save this innocent, orphaned girl! Just for that—” Makarios glares across the luminarium at the glowing-white-robe who survived the plague. “That luminist thrust a spell that shattered through his shield and killed him!”
“He defied my order to stop!”
“He was doing the right thing. He was saving people.”
My hands grip my soldad, shaking hard. Mikros. Dead.
The thought doesn’t fit inside me. It stretches painfully against my ribs, against my lungs, against my pounding head. I have seen death. I have touched death. I have even caused death. But not his. Not for this. Died defying the luminists. Died using my warding.
“He died defending the right thing!” Makarios shouts, veins in his throat throbbing, tears in his one blue and one green eye—the eye from Mikros and now the only thing he has of him. “But he shouldn’t have died at all.”
I push through the luminists and catch Mikros’s body, holding alongside Makarios’s trembling arms. My hands curl under Mikros’s weight, my fingers pressing into the fabric of his robes. His warmth is fading fast. It’s already gone. A phantom.
Mikros’s arm falls and dangles against my cloak. This arm, these hands that showed me how to find my inner scales; his sharp tongue that joked, keeping every heavy moment light—gone. The boy who once let me practice transplantation spells on him, grinning nervously as he did. He was my vitalian brother.
Makarios’s teary eyes meet mine, searching for answers, for what he has to do next. He doesn’t have his Mikros anymore. He’s lost.
I have to keep strong for him. Have to lead the way. I look at the girl kindly. “Follow us.”
I speak quietly to Quin, who I feel has slid to my side. “Help carry him to the pyres.”
Quin’s cane slides over his back, and he uses the wind to sweep us out of the luminarium. I call to the luminists behind me as we leave.
“If any of you have conscience, you know what to do.”
Quin sets us carefully down at the pyres. Makarios slumps to the ground, his breath ragged, and the young girl coils her small arms around his neck. I step forward, carefully arranging Mikros’s body atop the dry stacked wood.
When I step back, Quin has returned with Florentius and Akilah. They rush to the pyre, gasping, and sink to their knees beside Makarios, swallowed by tortured, sniffling silence.
Quin strikes the flame. It catches, crackling, the light licking at the wood.
I kneel beside Akilah. Her knuckles bump against mine as she exhales a shuddery breath. “He was funny,” she whispers. “And so kind to me in Hinsard.”
Florentius murmurs his own quiet memories. When Makarios sobs, he shuffles over, wrapping him in a tight embrace, the young girl pressing in beside them.
Makarios stares over Florentius’s shoulder at the rising flames. His voice is hoarse, barely above a whisper. “He was like a brother to me.” A shudder rolls through him. “I wish you could hold me again. I didn’t know the last time would be the last.”
A hollow ache swells in my chest. I grab Akilah’s hand and squeeze. She’s like a sister to me, too. We’ve been through hell, but we’re still standing. I have to hold on—to her, to all of them. Who knows how much time we have left?
Akilah turns her damp eyes to me. Her hand slips from mine, and then, suddenly, she throws her arms around my neck, holding on as if she, too, is afraid of what might come next.
A sob rips from Makarios. He stumbles forward, out of the embrace, crawling towards the pyre. “We had plans,” he chokes. “What now? I do them alone?”
Silence. Only fire, answering him with its relentless crackle.
His fingers twitch at his eye—the green one. “Fine,” he rasps, the word like a blade against his throat. “You will miss out.” He trembles. “I will raise this orphaned girl. I will teach her all our spells. I will experience all her love.”
No one speaks. We only watch, grief clawing at our ribs.
Only the young girl moves. She rises, steps forward, and slips her small hand into Makarios’s. She tilts her face up to him, eyes wide and hopeful. “You’ll be . . . big brother?”
Something inside him cracks. His body folds, like the grief has finally torn him in two, and he pulls her into his arms, holding her tight. “I will,” he swears. “I’ll be your family, if you want me.”
The girl nods. Then she looks to the fire, pointing with a small, steady hand. “He saved me. Does that mean his spirit is in here?” She presses her fingers to her chest.