At the cemetery, we had barely stepped out of the vehicle when his communicator buzzed. He glanced at the caller, gestured for us to go ahead, and stayed behind.
I carried the flowers to the grave and set them down gently.
The portrait etched into the headstone looked exactly like Alaric.
There had been a time when seeing that face would have made me cry until I couldn't breathe, as though my whole body were being torn apart. But now I only stared, and my mind was blank. No grief. No ripple at all. Even my wolf lay still inside me, curled in on herself, offering nothing.
That was when Ivy pulled a letter from her bag and waved it in front of my face, her smugness completely undisguised.
"Dear sister, you really are hard to kill. You fell into the storm-tide, the whole family left you to drown, and somehow you still crawled out alive."
She laughed softly, but every word dripped with malice.
"I've been in a foul mood lately, but then I discovered something truly entertaining. Care to guess what it was?"
She paused deliberately, waiting for a response.
I said nothing.
She didn't care. She kept going.