Page 136 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
She stood on the dark sand and looked at her mother’s body, now wrapped in a thin white blanket stripped from one of the keep’s beds. The fabric clung too gently to the stillness beneath it. Mal felt the pull—fierce and desperate—to run forward,to gather her mother into her arms, to press her face into her shoulder and beg her not to leave. Not to let this be the final shape of things.
But she did not move.
She remained where she was, far enough that when the flames came they would not touch her. Far enough to survive the goodbye.
Morthos guided one of his wyverns forward, the creature’s vast shadow stretching across the sand like a closing curtain. He turned to Mal, waiting. Always waiting for her word.
She gave a single nod.
Why prolong what could not be undone? Why stretch out the tearing of the heart?
The wyvern inhaled, chest swelling, and then blue fire poured forth, bright and terrible and absolute. It struck the white-wrapped body, and within seconds Queen Senka was consumed, the flames rising high against the grey sky.
Mal did not look away.
She stepped a little closer to the blaze, close enough that the heat licked at her skin and stung her cheeks. For a fleeting, foolish second, she let herself imagine it was her mother’s final embrace.
Across the beach, the creature lingered at the edge of the dunes, its hands curled into tight fists, its twisted features contorted with fury. It was still enraged that Mal had fled to her own realm to give birth, still seething at being denied what it had wanted. There was something almost satisfying in watching it squirm, in knowing she had outmanoeuvred it, even if only for a moment.
A darker thought stirred within her. The desire to reach out and drag that rage from it, to swallow it whole and feel it burn inside her belly. To replace grief with fury. To let angerconsume what sorrow threatened to hollow out.
Ash’s fingers brushed against her hand.
Mal stepped away.
She cast one last look at the body engulfed in blue fire, at the shape dissolving into smoke and light and then turned, walking back towards the keep without another word. She did not look at the hurt that flashed across Ash’s golden eyes. She did not acknowledge the quiet devastation etched into Morthos’ face. She did not meet the creature’s blazing stare.
She ignored them all.
If she stopped, even for a heartbeat, she might break.
Now Mal sat in the very chair her mother had claimed as her own during their stay in the keep. Since the body had burnt to ash, Mal had scarcely left the queen’s chambers. She would sit for hours, unmoving, staring through the open arch at the bleak horizon beyond, at the restless sea and the iron-grey sky, as if the world might rearrange itself into something kinder if she only watched long enough.
Morthos had come more than once with trays of food, setting them down quietly beside her. She had not touched a single thing. Wyverians did not require sustenance as often as others; hunger would not undo her. Grief, perhaps, but not hunger.
Ash had not come.
That absence hurt more than she allowed herself to admit.
Yet she felt it now. A shift in the air, a stillness that did not belong to wind or shadow. She did not turn when Thanatos crossed the room. She did not react when he came to stand at her side. Only when the tips of his fingers brushed her arm did her heart splinter anew.
‘I’m sorry I was not here sooner, Melinoe,’ he whispered, and there was something raw in his voice. Something almostmortal and living and real.
‘How did you know?’ she asked, her gaze fixed on the horizon. Every part of her longed to look at him, to look at Death itself, at the being who had taken her mother, yet she did not dare. She feared what she might see in his eyes. Truth. Regret. Or worse, nothing at all.
He did not answer.
‘Did you collect her yourself?’ she pressed, tilting her head ever so slightly.
‘I’m sorry,’ was all he offered.
Mal nodded faintly. Her attention dropped to her hands, to the ragged skin around her nails where she had torn at herself without noticing. ‘My daughter was born on the same day.’
‘I know.’
‘She’s in my realm. With Allegra and Vera.’
‘I know.’
