Marked Claws (Mystic Bonds #2) | COMPLETED

4. Arion

My head was throbbing.

My mind was fuzzy.

But there was a tunnel vision somewhere in that fog shining completely clear.

I needed the ale, the fuzziness and I needed the tunnel vision, the clarity to go through with this part of the evening.

Sera was going to be buried in the Royal Mausoleum. 

Members of my court came up to me, saying how sorry they were at the loss of such a good soul. That she'd be remembered. Some were lying, some weren't.

The moonlight had just started peeking out from the horizon where a full moon formed. A dark shade of blue surrounded us, soon to turn into an inky black. Stars twinkled in the clairvoyant sky, like dotted pearls with an unlikely shine trying to wrestle their light out of the dark ready to engulf them.

Sera would've liked the scenery.

Right.

I exhaled, running a hand through my hair and glad for the herbal concoctions and magical potions both the healer and Esmeralda had provided me with that helped in controlling the exhaustion and after effects of the tankards of ale I'd consumed in the past few days.

My gaze caught onto the stone-faced figure standing besides a tree in the shadows, his eyes dark and consumed with an unreadable expression as he stared at my sister's body too.

Leon and Sera were more than just bodyguard and Princess and I'd have been a fool not to realise it. I didn't think anyone else would be able to share a semblance of my pain but I suppose Leon felt a bit of what I was feeling with Cara gone.

Loneliness like I'd never known took hold of me.

I didn't even have my Angel besides me to ease the pain. No. She was gone too. Maybe just like Sera was. Forever.

I'd just barely started to form something between Cara and me, something I felt like I'd been deprived of my whole life. And then the only two females I ever cared about were wrenched away from me by a painfully abrupt twist of fate.

No one would forget Sera though. She would receive the utmost respect and love. From me and our kingdom because Valeryn was hers as much as it was mine.

It made an age-long ache settle deep in my bones.

I took in a breath as the ceremony was about to start.

Clenching my jaw, I realized how much I didn't want to do this. Say goodbye. That too, alone.

"She'll never be forgotten." A quiet voice from my left made my eyes snap towards Lucien. 

He looked forward, hand on hilt but his words made me feel like a hand had been extended.

A touch of firm comfort rested on my shoulder where Damien's coldness seeped in to provide me with a silent warmth that Valeryn's people and weather couldn't.

Glancing at him as well, I realized that they were out here not just to pay respects to my sister that they treated as her own but to tell me silently that we were in this together.

I don't know why I feel that way but I knew now that it had kicked in.

A part of me was lost forever.

But at at the same time, another hollow feeling inside my heart had filled in a little bit.

It was horrifically confusing to be torn between the feeling of being complete and incomplete.

And a friendship...a brotherly feeling that had seemed dormant inside of me came alive and I grasped onto it like a lifeline.

Without the jade-eyed girl who made me lose control and my mind a mess, I didn't think I could deal with a loss so potent after the aftermath of my kingdom's battle.