Fire (Graceling Realm #2)(55)
Author: Kristin Cashore

Still holding back on her smile, Fire spoke gently. 'I do think it's a very large question, Mila, and one you needn't rush to answer. You might do as he asks, and simply spend more time with him, and see how that feels. Ask him a million questions, if you have them. But no, I don't think it's mad. The royal family is . . . very flexible.'

Mila nodded, her face drawn in thought, seeming to consider Fire's words quite seriously. After a moment, she passed Liv into Fire's arms. 'Would you like to visit with her for a bit, Lady?'

Scrunched against the pillows of her old bed, Archer's baby sighing and yawning against her, for a short span of time Fire was shatteringly happy.

THE LANDSCAPE BEHIND what had been Archer's house was a vastness of grey rock. They waited until sunset streaked the sky with red.

They had no body to burn. But Archer had had longbows tall as he, and crossbows, short bows, bows from his childhood that he had grown out of, but kept. Brocker was not wasteful, nor did he want to destroy all of Archer's things. But he came out of the house with a bow that Archer had strongly favoured and another that had been a childhood gift of Aliss's, and asked Fire to lay them on top of the kindling.

Fire did as she was asked, and then lay something of her own beside the bows. It was a thing she had kept in the bottom of her bags for well over a year now: the bridge of her ruined fiddle. For she had lit a blazing fire for Archer once before, but she had never even lit a candle for Cansrel.

She understood now that while it had been wrong to kill Cansrel, it had also been right. The boy with the strange eyes had helped her to see the rightness of it. The boy who'd killed Archer. Some people had too much power and too much cruelty to live. Some people were too terrible, no matter if you loved them; no matter that you had to make yourself terrible too, in order to stop them. Some things just had to be done.

I forgive myself, thought Fire. Today, I forgive myself.

Brigan and Roen set the pyre alight and all in the party came to stand before it. There was a song played in the Dells to mourn the loss of a life. Fire took her fiddle and bow from Musa's waiting hands.

It was a haunting tune, unresigned, a cry of heartache for all in the world that fell apart. As ash rose black against the brilliant sky, Fire's fiddle cried out for the dead, and for the living who stay behind and say goodbye.