CHAPTER 45

Rhaxma stared at her brother’s lifeless body encased in glass. The parlor in the family home was brightly lit with candles, even at this hour of the night. They couldn’t leave their beloved Leeto in the dark.

She hardly registered the tears that fell, one after another, dark streams rolling over her cheeks and past her mouth that hung slightly open.

He was dead. He was dead. He was dead.

He was gone. How could he be gone?

Her mind flashed violently to that scene, to a table engulfed in flames, and Leeto’s body broken on the cobblestones. Her mother beat her to him and was already cradling his head and screaming for help. She could see it all in slow, vivid motion. She was right back in that moment, clutching his bloodied shirt, begging him to be alive.

She closed her eyes and reopened them, focusing on his face through the glass. His skin so white, his hair so orange. His yellow eyes open, staring at the ceiling. He looked like himself, except for the paleness of his lips and the vacant dullness in his unmoving eyes.

It was not normal to keep a body in the home for so long. Usually the dead were buried on the third day in a cemetery on the north side of the mountain. But, with the magical wall encircling the city, they could not reach the burial ground. Many friends offered solutions like burying Leeto in their gardens, but the Pyralis family was not satisfied. Leeto must rest with his ancestors in the cemetery. They would wait until they found a way through the wall.

He was dead. He was gone. Forever.

It had been several days, and until this night, Rhaxma had stayed away from the parlor. She couldn’t look upon her dead brother. She couldn’t see his lifeless form.

But tonight, as she lay awake in her large canopied bed, reliving his death repeatedly, she had a sudden urge to be near him. She wrapped herself in a silk robe and quietly descended multiple flights of stairs. No one else was awake, and she felt the vastness of the family estate. It made her feel empty and alone.

Now, as she stood over his coffin, her grief pouring from her eyes, she began to whisper.

“How could you leave me like this? I need you. I need you to be here with me.” Her voice broke, and she pressed her hands against the glass, wishing she could touch his face. “I’ve always looked to you for direction, always leaned on you for strength. I don’t think I can do it without you. Why did you leave me?”

Her crying escalated, and her shoulders heaved with each sobbing inhale. A face she had once loved flashed before her eyes, and a wrathful loathing ripped through her so ferociously that she let out a scream that felt more like a roar. She laid her forehead on the cool glass.

Calix. He had done this. He had caused this. The marks on her back pulsed with burning pain. Her mind focused on one thing: She didn’t just want Calix to hurt. She wanted to ruin him.

“Rhax? You okay?”

She jumped and turned. “Oh, Thad, it’s you,” she said, the animal inside her retreating into its hole in her heart. Thad was the oldest of her four brothers. Three brothers now, she corrected herself.

Like the rest of the family, Thad had thick orange hair and piercing yellow eyes. Despite turning twenty-eight earlier that year, he still lived in the Pyralis mansion along the Courtyard. So did Simeon and Andi, their other brothers. Most children left the house by twenty five, but not in this family. Their love was too deep, and their anxieties of what could happen were deeper. The death of Leeto confirmed their fear that being out of each other’s sight for too long could only lead to tragedy.

Thad was a drunk with no aspirations, but she still loved him so. It was nothing like her closeness with Leeto, but she was glad that it had been Thad to come join her tonight. He was simple and sweet and kind.

Thad put his arm around Rhaxma and looked down at his cold brother. “I still can’t believe this is real,” he said.

Rhaxma rested her cheek against his shoulder. She didn’t say anything, but her mind raced with thoughts of Calix. Her breathing became ragged again as her hatred mingled with her deep, aching grief.

She kept returning to the word ruin. She must ruin him. She would get no satisfaction from killing him. She must find something worse.