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JULY IS A THICK AND HOLLOW BONE and there are cracks running down the length of it, and an ache when it rains. The wind claws at the edges of his clothes, but Luka Korchak doesn't register the chill, even when the raindrops rake their cold fingers down his cheek, matting his light hair against his forehead.
When it rains, it pours, Luka supposes.
The funeral had been three days ago, but Luka hadn't attended. Just three years ago, his own funeral had been held in the same place, his coffin lowered into the same plot of land, and it still felt like a fresh wound.
At night the cemetery bleeds shadows, and although Luka knows better than to believe in ghosts, he can't stop seeing the flicker of something not-quite-there passing through the cracked tombstones. Something with a nervous heartbeat skitters over his shoes, and, in a flash, he brings a foot down on it, the crunch of a hundred breaking bones echoing in his ears. Lip curling in disdain Luka kicked the broken rodent's body away, and heard it land somewhere in the overgrown grass ravaging the space. Moss clambered over the tombstones, which were on the brink of crumbling apart with age, and weeds grew in the cracks. Even in death, there is always the reminder that things are temporary. Nothing sticks.
Luka stares are the inscription on his own tombstone. Three years ago, it'd been legible, but now all he can make out are the years he'd been alive and half the letters of his name, the other half had been eroded by time. It didn't matter much, though. If anyone dug up his coffin, they'd find it empty. But the gravestone beside his was new, a healthy tooth sticking out amidst the dead and the decaying in the gums of this plot of land, and the earth packed over the coffin smelled fresh, and the grass hadn't grown over it yet. Luka crouched down before Violet's grave, tracing a finger along the inscription of her name in the rock.
"It's just Wren left, Vi," Luka muttered, brushing off specks of invisible dirt off the top of Violet's tombstone. "Let's hope she doesn't turn out like us."
A distinct crunch of footsteps in the grass behind Luka caught his attention.
Luka straightened up. "It's been awhile."
"It has," Sam Uley said, his expression grave, but his tone light. He was older now, no longer the seventeen year old boy Luka knew like the back of his hand. Now, he was all hard planes solidified by the hardships of adulthood. That was a life Luka, immortalised in the chrysalis of youth and death, could not be a part of—Sam had outgrown him in the literal sense, and Luka knew what growing at different rates did to people. Sam jerked his chin at Violet's grave. "How're you holding up?"
Luka shrugged. In truth, everything hurt. His heart had stopped beating three years ago, but it didn't stop the tight feeling in his chest, or the way the anger gnawed at him. Victoria might be dead for good, this time, but now that there was no one left to direct his anger at, Luka didn't know how to find peace. She'd taken his life, and then she'd went on to take his younger sister's life, too. He'd thought that, by avenging himself (and, by extension, Violet's death), it'd bring some sort of peace of mind. Some semblance of absolution. But all it'd done was form a scab around the wound that kept cracking open every now and then. Luka didn't know what else there was for him to do.
