"You were discussing the funeral for Captain Alet," Naelin said. She had the skill of making a simple statement sound like a rebuke. Daleina admired that.
Chancellor Xanon looked, for an instant, like a toddler who had been caught with chocolate smeared on his face; then he composed himself. "She committed high treason. Surely such a criminal cannot be honored, nor mourned. Her death is a victory, not a tragedy."
"Every death is a tragedy, Chancellor . . ." She let the name dangle.
"Xanon," the chancellor supplied with another bow.
"She was our friend and our enemy, Chancellor Xanon," Naelin said. "We will mourn our friend who was killed by our enemy. Surely you understand that a life is more complex than a label. We can love who she was while we hate what she's done."
"Well said," Daleina murmured. She'd been searching for words like that for the better part of the last hour. She wondered briefly if Naelin was a better queen than she was. It doesn't matter if she is, she thought. The spirits chose us both.
"But . . . but the people . . ." Chancellor Xanon stammered.
It was time to end this argument, as queens together. Daleina caught Naelin's eye, then deliberately looked at the two thrones. Together, they both swept past the chancellors, climbed up to the dais, and sat side by side.
"The people can feel what they want to feel," Daleina declared. "We will bury our friend."
There were no more arguments.
That said, the funeral for Captain Alet was small.
Only Daleina, Naelin, Ven, and Hamon, plus Naelin's children and the wolf, Bayn. Arin had offered to come, but Daleina had told her she didn't have to-Arin had accepted the reprieve with relief. She was ready to move on from all the final farewells and go back to living.
Daleina couldn't let go just yet though.
Alet's body was wrapped in white linens and lay in a red cedar coffin. She wouldn't be buried in the forests of Aratay-she would be returned to her sister in Semo to rest in the mountains.
Daleina wasn't certain how she felt about that. After all, it was Merecot's fault that Alet had killed and therefore her fault that she'd died.
She could forgive Alet.
She couldn't forgive Merecot. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But Alet deserved to find whatever peace she could, amongst the remains of her own people. Even Daleina's anger couldn't refuse her that.
Each of them took turns speaking, sharing a memory of Alet. Even the children. Erian spoke about how Alet had taught her to punch, and Llor said he'd heard her laugh once and it was a nice laugh. Ven spoke of her skill and her confidence. Naelin told of the regret in Alet's eyes and all the conversations with the oblique warnings that only now made sense.
Daleina went last. There was so much they hadn't known about Alet, including the fact that Merecot was her sister, or that Merecot even had a sister. But today that paled in importance next to what they did know: who they thought she was. "Captain Alet was more than my guard. She was the one who filled the hole left behind when the heirs died, when I lost my friends. She was the friend I talked to, relied on, trusted, and loved, as a new queen who felt so alone."
Hamon took her hand in his. "You were never alone, Daleina."
"And you're not alone now," Naelin said. She took Daleina's other hand, and Erian took hers, then Llor hers, then Ven his, until they were all in a circle around Alet's body, holding hands.
The petals began to fall. And Daleina felt at peace.
Epilogue
Queen Merecot of Semo stood in front of her window and watched her spirits rip apart a mountain. Two earth spirits, each a hundred feet tall, hurled chunks of rock at each other. Air spirits caught the rocks and propelled them higher and higher, then dropped them so they impacted like meteors on the soft dirt below. Fire spirits blackened the earth, and water spirits loosened the soil until the face of the mountain slid away in mudslides that thundered toward the valley below.
Concentrating, she diverted the rushing mud from the village in the valley by using tiny earth spirits, and she steered the falling rocks away from her people with blasts of freezing wind from ice spirits.
She could keep her people safe.
For now.
But for how much longer? There were too many spirits in Semo, and it was only a matter of time before they tore her country to shreds. And then, how long before the rest of Renthia suffered the same fate? Everything they'd built, all that their people had created, would be destroyed. Their cities would fall. Their lives would be extinguished. Renthia would become worse than the untamed lands.