CHAPTER 59
Night owns the clearing.
Above, the moon hung swollen and pale, spilling silver light over the clearing where the pyre stood. The air was heavy with the mingled scents of pine, pain, and grief.
Lenora stepped forward slowly, every movement feeling both too fast and too slow. The world had gone strangely muffled for her—she could hear the distant chatter of birds in the forest, the crunch of earth under her boots, the faint rustle of wind through the pine branches—but it all seemed far away, like she was underwater.
Her father lay before her, wrapped in white linen, the shape of his body still unmistakable beneath the shroud. She could see the slope of his shoulders, the length of his legs, the way his hands rested over his chest as though still in thought but he wasn't in thought, he was gone.
