The bodies of the lost were lain on beds of silk and carried through the city one by one on golden metal carriages pulled by pegasi.
Their burial shrouds were a stark white, the same shade of white as the snow that fell on the jewel and cobblestoned roads of the Fey Land Capital. The symbol of the United Courts —a sword of black and gold entwined with a vine rising from the Fey Land Waters which represented the Wild Fey, the Gentry Fey, the Aqua Fey, and the Summer and Winter courts— were embroidered bright gold on the burial shrouds and seemed to be the only brightness in the procession making it's way out of the Capital to the Valley of the Dead.
Melchior, being the commander of the Fey Army, led the procession, trying his best to keep his head held high despite all the grief that threatened to weigh down on his shoulders.
Melchior was haunted by the grief.
Even now he could still remember the sounds from that snowy night, the screams of the attack in the throne room, the devastating clang of metal against claw, against tooth, against tail, and then the worst sound of all:
The sound of flesh tearing under teeth, the sound of shedim screeching as they disappeared to their Hell's in piles of ash.
He could still smell the blood of shedim and Fey alike, could still sense the fear and dread that had filled the throne room on that night, could still feel his thigh throbbing from the pain of the shedim's teeth sinking into his flesh right before Trystan came to his rescue and sliced the shedim's head off with a swing of his axe.
The same Trystan that lay dead in one of the burial shrouds behind him because Melchior could not do the same for him.
He had first been shocked when he saw Trystan standing in front of Bloom with a shedim's stinger in his chest. Melchior had just cut down a hellhound shedim into ash and was helping a fallen soldier up when he heard the sound of something piercing through flesh and bone.
He would have dismissed it for another fallen soldier, another comrade lost in the heat of battle, but he'd felt Bloom's fear and he'd turned in her direction, fierce protection burning instanteanously in his heart, only for him to see that someone had done the protecting for him.
He'd just stood there for a while, watching, waiting for his heart to shatter into a million pieces like it was supposed to.
But it didn't.
It only hurt, slightly, and then he ran to them, green lightning arcing off his body in all directions and blasting shedim to Hell as he neared Trystan's side.
Melchior had only run a few metres when the shedim tossed Trystan in Melchior's direction, Trystan's body landing with a sickening crunch at Melchior's feet.
Melchior had fallen to his knees and cradled Trystan's head in his lap, Trystan's blood rapidly spreading and soaking Melchior's armour trousers and shirt.
Memories of Casmir with the trident wounds in his chest began to flood his mind.
"No, no, no" he'd whispered as he heard a roar of fire and the raging sounds of battle around them. "No, not you too, I cannot lose you too"
Trystan had smiled, blood bubbling from his lips, and like a glitch in a system Casmir came to Melchior's mind again. The same stupid smile, the same gruesome beauty.
"Gods please, not again" Melchior pleaded, but nothing had happened, no great miracle nor divine intervention.
Instead Trystan had slowly gone limp in Melchior's arms, his brown eyes gazing up lovingly at him, his hand clutching Melchior's as if clinging on to his lifeline, until the light and the love and the life had gone out like a candle at it's last bit of melting wax.
That was the second boy.
The second boy that had died in his arms, the second boy he had lost and loved.
Though not as much, never as much, as the first.
"Hey, you okay?" Bloom said from his side.
Melchior startled at the sound of Bloom's voice, then he sighed and shook his head.
'Well done Melchior' he mockingly appraised himself. 'Dishonouring your lover's funeral by thinking about the first boy you fell in love with and of whom, is now also, dead. Good job.'
Melchior knew he sounded bitter even to himself but he didn't care. He had once again lost someone that he cared about to a battle, a battle he'd been unable to protect them from.
"Mel" she softly called again.
Melchior didn't turn to face her, he couldn't let her see the raw pain in his eyes even though he knew she could surely feel a fraction of it through their soul binding.
"I'll be alright" Melchior answered.
Bloom sighed and pulled her hair down over her front so that it rested over her shoulders and flowed down her chest like a waterfall. She'd worn the ceremonial black and gold dress for Fey burials and had a golden crown atop her head, a suitable replacement for the shattered one.
"I feel stupid you know" Bloom said. "I should've been able to fight, I should have carried my whip like you told me too, instead of screaming around in a ridiculous dress and..."
"Stop that" Melchior said immediately, though he didn't take his eyes off the road. "Looking for ways to blame yourself is not going to bring them back, and it's certainly not going to bring him back"
He smirked playfully.
"Besides, that dress was beautiful"
Bloom didn't smile, instead she kept silent and began chewing on her lips, a new habit she'd taken up since sitting on the throne.
"You cannot tell me that you're not even a little bit angry with me"
"Why would I be angry with you, Bloom?"
"Because it is my fault he is dead" she said.
"Really, so you were the one that summoned those shedim to assassinate you, is that some new kind of suicide I have not heard about?" Melchior said. "My oh my, Bloomera Nephity, you have serious isues"
"This is no time for jokes Melchior" Bloom said, her voice gone harsh with annoyance.
Melchior dared to turn to her slightly and saw that she still had her mask on, the stoic expression, the cool eyes giving away only superiority despite the tears that shone in them.
"He died trying to save me" she said. "If I had not been so incompetent..."
"Trystan died doing what he loved doing the most, serving you, protecting you"
"I can tell you with confidence that no other soldier would have stepped in to save me"
"He did what he knew he had to do"
"He did what he knew you would want him to do" Bloom said. Melchior could sense a smile spreading on her face, sadness and a mild wonder pulsed through their soul binding. "Everything he did he did for you, he did because he loved you"
Trystan's smile and eyes looking up at him from his laps flashed before Melchior's eyes.
"He did love me, so much, even till his last deed"
Casmir's smile replaced Trystan's.
"And yet..."
"And yet at his dying breath you shed a tear for the memory of someone who never loved you" Bloom said.
Melchior didn't fail to hear the slight venom in Bloom's voice, and at that he smiled. The kind of smile you smiled when no one else understood why you were the person you were, but he couldn't blame her.
Melchior himself didn't understand why he was the person he was.
He didn't understand why the one that had been in his arms all over again was Casmir when Trystan had breathed his last, or why he had cried for that long lost love, instead of the lover he'd just lost.
"I see now that I am the one with serious issues" he said.
Bloom smiled softly, and when she spoke again the sharpness in her voice was dulled.
"I do not judge you Melchior, you have simply fallen irrevocably in love, and though that is no sin, it is a burden that you will carry until the day you choose to end your days"
Melchior chuckled and shook his head.
"My days have ended twice now, Bloom, this love is no longer a burden, it has become a curse"
At that moment the Valley of the Dead revealed itself below them. It was a vast canyon filled with beautiful petals of different shapes, colours and sizes hidden under a thin covering of snow.
Quite an ironic name for a valley of petals, thought Melchior, but the valley carried the shadow of death nonetheless. The petals were the transfigured bodies of the lost, changed into symbols of beauty after their souls passed to the afterlife.
Melchior halted, and so did the entire procession. He turned to Bloom at his side who simply smiled and gave him a kiss on his cheek.
"Love can never be a curse Melchior, I assure you" she said before she left his side and stood under the canopy that had been prepared for her.
Melchior smiled at the advice and turned to the Valley again. He had to go to work, but this was the hard part.
He instructed the bodies to be carried down to the Valley one by one, and one after the other they were lifted from the carriage and tossed over the edge, the bodies landing inaudibly among the other petals.
As Trystan's shroud passed him Melchior took out an envelope made of leaves and placed it on the shroud before the soldier tossed it over the edge.
It was a letter filled with memories. Every moment Melchior had documented onto his heart transferred onto the rolled up leaf resting on the shroud for Trystan to carry with him to the afterlife.
"Do not forget Trystan" Melchior said, he could almost feel Trystan's arms around him, his breath warming the scales on his neck. "I know I never will"
There was no wailing, no weeping, no scream of emotional agony, not even from the other families. They all just stared silently as the lifeless bodies of their loved ones were rested gently in the Valley.
.....
The next day, just hours before dawn, when the sky was still dark and the rest of Fey Land was asleep, Melchior and the beloved of the lost went back to the Valley, and he joined them to sit at the crest where the earth sloped down to meet the petal's below.
His eyes searched the shrouds for the one that covered Trystan and he fixed his gaze on it as soon as he found it.
Stark white, with the United Court's crest on it, and the letter Melchior had written for him resting on top of it.
They all waited, and when the sky finally began to turn purple Melchior watched as Trystan's shroud and letter turned to wisps of smoke, and joined the clouds above, the body underneath it's covering turning into a flurry of fiery red petals before settling down among the rest.
It was then that they all wept.
***
'Go back to your brother'
'Inform Salome'
'The Mother of Magic will Find him and he must heed her call'
'Not all the Elders are like the light bearer'
'You are his anchor'
Gray skies, gray grass, gray eyes, a whirlwind of memories, and something else; bright, like light in his bones, hot, like fire in his veins.
....
Lester woke up with a jerk and a loud gasp, his arms and chest glistening with sweat, his vision filled with blinding light, his body feverish with a scalding heat he couldn't quite comprehend.
Had it all been real? or was it all just a fever dream.
"Les" came a voice so familiar it made Lester's heart lurch from the inside.
There was the scraping of wood agianst tile and then Sal was in front of Lester, sitting on the edge of his bed and peering at him with worried eyes.
Suddenly everything began to align itself and Lester started to remember.
The pain from grooves burning into his skin, the dullness of a sky covered with mist and fog, the beauty of a man unlike any other, the message, the Mark, the assignment, and the feeling of moving and smiling and opening his eyes again, the joy of seeing...
"Sal" Lester whispered.
And then he pulled him into his arms, squeezing him tight, making sure that this wasn't just a lucid dream.
"Please tell me this isn't a dream" Lester whispered. "Tell me this is real, tell me you are real"
Sal's arms went around him, his familiar scent, like static electricity, filling Lester's nose and making him to melt with relief.
"It's all real, Lester" came Sal's voice, deep, smooth, warm. "This isn't a dream"
Lester sighed with contentement as he released Sal from their embrace. He looked around him and saw that he was in his room and it was clean, which was surprising because his room was rarely ever clean.
"We're home" Lester said as his eyes roved the books stacked neatly on the desk and the floor that was absent of clothes and candy wrappers. "I thought i'd wake up in a hospital bed or something"
"No, I, uh, I had you brought home, figured it would be better to Heal you here"
Lester whipped his head in Sal's direction and peered wonderingly at him.
"Heal me?" Lester asked.
Sal's eyes went wide, like he'd just made a big mistake, but then he took a deep breath and nodded.
"Yes" he said. "Heal you"
Lester didn't know why but he recalled Sal's words from those first few minutes after he woke up.
'I was just trying to fix you, I didn't mean to break you all over again'
"The burning on my skin, that was you, wasn't it?" Lester asked.
Sal didn't answer, but his silence told Lester enough.
"You thought burning me would make me better"
"I wasn't trying to burn you, I was..." He paused reflexively —the way he always did when he was trying to keep something from Lester— pushing his hand through his hair in frustration and, with a heavy sigh, looking up at Lester with a resigned look on his face. "I was trying to use magic to Heal you"
Lester couldn't believe his ears.
"What?" He said.
Sal sighed and brought out his cellphone from his pocket, he held it out in front of him like Lester was supposed to immediately understand what was going on.
"Is there something you're trying to show me?" Lester asked.
Sal chuckled lightly, like he couldn't believe he was doing this, but he held the phone firmly still.
"Relax your eyes and focus, truly focus" he said.
"Sal I don't understa-"
"Just trust me, look at what's in my hand but just relax, don't try too hard to see through it, just...let it reveal itself"
Lester was very confused, but he trusted Sal, and he was hungry for answers, so he did as Sal asked.
He looked at Sal's phone, doing his best to focus and relax at the same time which felt like an impossible task.
And then it happened.
Lester's eyes went wide as Sal's phone began to fade away like black smoke curling away from a dying fire, and instead what was in his hand was a long pencil–like crystal glittering with reflected light filtering in from the sunlight outside.
"What the hell?" Lester gasped. He moved further away from Sal, his eyes trained on the crystal like it was an object from hell. "What the hell is that?"
"It's a wand, it's a magical instrument that allows me to draw magical symbols" Sal said, then he laughed. "Damn, now that I've said it out loud it sounds super fucking weird, Kat's gonna get a laugh out of this"
"Sal, what are you talking about?, and who's Kat, is that your girlfriend?"
The smile disappeared from his face and Sal's eyes went wide.
Lester knew if Sal's skin was a few shades lighter he would've seen his cheeks turning a deep red.
"What?" Sal said with a shake of his head. "No, no she's not"
He dropped the wand on the bed and moved closer to Lester. When Lester moved further up the bed, the expression on his face changed, as if he was in pain, but he stayed where he was and spoke, the tone of his voice deepening.
"Look, I haven't been completely honest with you" Sal said, his hand went to a blue pendant hanging from a chain on his neck and he clasped it tight. "I never told you the real reason why I came home late all those nights, why I wasn't going to work, and why I dropped out of school"
His blue eyes looked up at Lester, blue and luminous like the sky on a beatiful summer afternoon, holding a plea that Lester had never seen in them before.
"It wasn't band practice, Les, it was something else, something crazy"
Lester relaxed a bit. He'd never seen Sal so nervous before. He moved closer to him and he saw Sal relax as well, as if that was what he was waiting for.
"Sal, there's nothing you're going to tell me that will make me hate you or think of you in a way that is less than you are" Lester said. "Just talk to me, is it drugs, a new boss?"
Then a dark thought struck his mind.
"Did you...did you murder someone?"
"Lester I kill people all the time, you know that"
"No, that was work, Boulder made you do all that, I mean did you like murder someone...on purpose"
Sal was silent for the second time, his head turned away, his eyes clenched shut.
Lester felt his heart clench.
"Sal, talk to me"
Sal looked at Lester, and he could see now that Sal's eyes were glittering with tears.
And then they began to drop.
"You're not gonna like what I have to say" Sal said, his lip quivering so hard that he had to bite down on it before he spoke again. "And I've got a lot to say"
***
Hours later, when the sun was barely under the horizon and the world was preparing for another few hours of night, Sal, Katarina, Antony and Lester sat in Sal's living room downstairs.
They were all seated in pairs, Sal on the sofa with Katarina beside him, her feet curled into herself, her hair a jumble of curls over her shoulders, Antony opposite them, his hands folded across his chest, his ankle resting on the knee of his other leg.
They were all looking at Lester who sat beside Antony and who was staring out into space with a blank expression on his face and a pillow raptured in his arms.
With great difficulty Sal had finally told him everything about his other life and the things he'd been doing since he discovered it.
He'd told him about his first encounter with the Court, his quest to Find his Shaded friends, the hunt for Percival, the truth about his parents and about himself, the things he'd done, the places he'd been, up until the end, when he'd killed Percival, and realized that his daughter was alive.
Lester had stayed silent throughout the story, his face carrying that same blank expression it carried now as he squeezed his pillow and stared.
It would have seemed strange to anybody who didn't know Lester and the way he processed information— with a blank face and unmoving eyes and a pillow in his grasp.
Sal had known this was going to happen, and it was one of the reasons he hadn't told Lester in the first place.
This information was too much to process.
Finally Lester moved, just an adjustment of his pillow, but everyone else's attention immediately turned to him.
Then he spoke.
"So you mean to tell me that gods, angels, demons, all the monsters and creatures of myth and legend are real?" Lester said.
"Yeah" Sal answered with a breath.
Lester scoffed with a slight smile of disbelief.
"I don't believe this"
Sal couldn't even imagine what was going through Lester's head right now. Sal himself knew what it was like to be in Lester's shoes, to suddenly be aware of a world you'd never known before, and to become a part of it in the same minute, but still, his situation and Lester's weren't the same.
Sal had always known he was different, different in a way that surpassed mortal understanding, but Lester was an ordinary mortal, and had always been that way, that was until now.
Still it had been hard for Sal to tell Lester all this, it was even harder knowing what he was dragging Lester into, but it had been hardest when he'd had to keep it from him.
The only thing he'd been afraid of was Lester becoming something he'd regret becoming.
Now he was afraid that Lester wasn't taking it the way he expected him to.
"So what part of the last few months wasn't a complete lie?" Lester asked, his voice hard.
Sal fell silent, he could literally feel the guilt making his heart sink in his chest.
Lester scoffed again, this time with more disdain, and turned accusingly to Antony.
"So your name isn't Anthony, it's Antony" Lester said. "How's that any different?"
Antony fidgeted a little before answering.
"Well, it's that slight change in pronunciation that prevents mortals from seeing through the Shade", said Antony, then he cracked a smile. "C'mon you have to admit I'm a lot more handsome than before"
"No, you're exactly the same, except I can see your eyes are made of glass which is cool and creepy at the same time"
"Thank you" said Antony with a satisfied smile. Sal loved Antony, but sometimes he acted like it was a jellyfish in his skull and not a brain.
"So you're actually Sal's half brother, but you're dad's a god?"
Antony nodded solemnly and Lester's eyebrows went up in surprise.
Then he turned to Katarina.
Her gaze on his was cool and calculative, studious even.
Lester didn't seem fazed which shocked Sal a bit. There was a confidence in his eyes that wasn't there before.
"And you're name isn't Katrina, it's Katarina, wow, the creativity is just pregnant with possibilities"
Katarina smirked and cocked her head to the side, the stature of her gaze shifting from studios to intrigued in a second.
"I like you" she said simply.
Lester raised a flirtatious eyebrow and smirked as well.
"You've got no choice" he said, and Katarina chuckled lightly.
Sal knew Katarina was only having fun, and that Lester was naturally a flirt, so if he was indulging a girl he was probably just having fun too, but seeing them like this after five seconds of talking, he couldn't help his fist clenching with a sharp stab of jealousy.
"And what's your real name?" Lester asked.
Sal didn't need to face Lester to know he was the one being referred to.
He faced him anyway, and the look that met his was surprising.
Lester didn't look at Sal with anger or accusation, but with a combination of expectancy and dread. He was afraid of what Sal was going to say.
"My first name is Salome" Sal said, he swore he could see Lester's shoulders relax. "But my last name isn't Markson, it's Nightshade"
Lester squeezed the pillow harder than before.
"I swear by the Nightshade" he muttered under his breath. "You've got to be fucking kidding me"
"Look Lester I can swear again if you want me to, I didn't know" Sal said, his voice more desperate than he'd ever heard it before. "I found out when I met Peter and he told me everything"
"And I'm supposed to be the gullible best friend who just believes you"
"I'm not expecting you to" Sal said, his voice already softening like a sound on the verge of fading away into the distance. "I'm just...I'm asking you to trust me okay?"
"Trust you?" Lester scoffed for the third time that night. He'd been clutching the pillow up until now, but gently released it from his grasp and placed it beside him. "Sal, you just told me your name is Nightshade, that you've been lying to me for months, that you killed someone's dad because "the Court" told you to, that you're the reason I fucking blew up!, how in God's name am I supposed to trust you?"
"I..."
But a sigh followed after that one letter, for Sal had nothing to say. Instead he turned away from Lester's gaze, which was filled with hurt and confusion, and faced his clenched fists.
"Les, look" Antony said. "In the Other World there are rules and laws embedded in the Lex that all Shaded beings must obey, and it is against the Lex for a mortal to be exposed to the Other World, if Sal had told you the truth he would've broken the Lex, and bad things would've happened"
"He was doing what he had to do to protect you" Katarina said.
"Oh right" Lester said with bitterness in his voice. "Well he did a damn good job, didn't he?, you know since ending up paralyzed in a hospital bed is your own idea of protection"
Sal bit his lip hard, and the silence that followed meant that the rest were all stunned from Lester's statement.
"Lester" Antony whispered.
"I... I didn't..." whispered Lester, the disbelief in his own voice as profound as the wind.
Sal could tell he wanted to say something, but the deed had been done, and the truth, the real, deep, ugly truth, had been exposed by anger.
Then came the sound of fabric swooshing against each other, then footsteps, then the creak of the front door as the knob turned and the lock clicked open.
"C'mon Les where are you going now?" Antony asked.
"I'm going for a walk" He said, he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. "And don't follow me"
Then the door slammed shut.
"Fuck" Antony swore. "He didn't mean it Sal, I'm sure of it"
"He's just angry" Katarina said. "He'll come around, he's your best friend, your brother"
He wasn't listeneing to either of them though, his mind was on Lester and those words, the anger, the hurt.
"I've lost him, I've fucking lost him" he whispered, for now he believed that friend or brother it didn't matter anymore.
He'd lost them both.