The Beauty of Darkness (The Remnant Chronicles 3)

My head still swam with the elixir the surgeon had given me. The tent was full of the injured. There were a dozen more tents like this one. I’d had to live with the wood in my leg for three days. There were too many wounded for the few surgeons here to take care of at once. I’d almost taken Orrin up on his offer to cut it out for me. Tavish lay on a bedroll opposite mine, his arm and neck swathed in bandages. Half of his long ropes of hair were gone. He lifted his good arm as a welcome, but even that small effort left him grimacing with pain.

Rafe sat on a crate in the opposite corner while Berdi brushed a healing balm on his hands. Someone else dressed a gash on his shoulder, then put his arm in a sling. I could hear Gwyneth through the tent walls, giving orders to Griz for more pails of water, and Orrin tearing fabric for bandages. The aftermath was as loud as the battle but with a different kind of noise.

“The Watch Captain?” I asked.

Pauline shook her head. “No sign,” she answered.

The coward had slithered away, and he and a half dozen of the Council were unaccounted for. It could be they were among the mass of dead bodies—not all were recognizable anymore.

“If they’re alive, they’ve crawled into deep dark holes,” Pauline added. “We’ll never see them again.”

I nodded and hoped she was right.

RAFE

“How are your hands?”

“Berdi just changed the dresssings,” I answered. “I should be able to ride in a few days.”

“Good.”

“And how is your shoulder?” I asked.

“Sore—but more than worth it. You may pull it out of joint anytime you wish.”

I had barely reached Lia before she went over the bluff with the Komizar and Calantha. My hands had still been wet with raw burned flesh, but I caught her wrist and pulled her back up. Even with our injuries, she and I were among the lucky ones. I’d told Kaden about Andrés, but his body had never been found, perhaps trampled beyond recognition by a brezalot.

Dalbreck’s toll was high. By General Draeger’s count, we had lost four thousand soldiers. Without Lia’s plea and her promise to the Vendans, there would have been no end to it. There was no doubt in Draeger’s mind now that the Komizar would have wiped Morrighan, and then us, from the face of the earth.

Dalbretch, Vendan, and Morrighese forces worked together during the aftermath, and Lia spoke to the Vendans daily, helping them prepare for their journey back home.

“We should be ready to leave in a few days too,” she said. “The last of the bodies have been burned. There were too many to bury them all.”

“Jeb?”

She nodded and walked away.

LIA

It had been almost two weeks. The last of the dead were buried or burned—including the Komizar. It was strange, looking at his lifeless body, the fingers that had clutched my throat, the mouth that had always held threat, the man who had looked out on an army city and imagined the gods under his thumb. Everything about him now was so ordinary.

“We can leave the dog for the animals,” a sentry had told me. I imagined my expression must have suggested such a thought. I looked at Calantha lying beside him.

“No,” I said. “The Komizar is gone. He is only a boy named Reginaus now. Burn his body alongside hers.”

Jeb received his own funeral pyre. I had found him alive the morning after the battle as we searched among the piles of bodies. I had pulled his head into my lap, and his eyes had opened.

“Your Highness,” he said, his face dirty and bloody but his eyes still shining with life.

“I’m here, Jeb,” I said, wiping the blood from his brow. “You’ll be all right.”

He nodded, but we both knew it was a lie.

His expression pinched with pain as he forced a smile to his face. “Look at this.” His gaze turned downward toward his bleeding chest. “I’ve ruined another shirt.”

“It’s only a small tear, Jeb. I can fix that. Or I’ll get you a new one.”

“Cruvas linen,” he said, his breaths choppy.