In years, perhaps, he would go back to the mountains. In years, perhaps, he would not see her face every time he shut his eyes. He would travel far from Lakha and back to the place he had put her in the ground, and he would see what kind of tree she had become, twisted and gnarled with the magic that her bones were made of.
His bones, too, were magic. They would rot away in time. He would die, as his mother died—as his master was dying before his very eyes.
But no one knew about that yet. Only the princess, only her brother, only her mother knew about the black rot that spread up through the emperor’s chest. It had grown far in the months since they returned home, enough that he relied on his wheelchair to move most days, and he could not walk farther than a few stumbling steps on his own. Hadrian was always there to catch the emperor before he fell.
Hadrian was always there to watch death slowly overtake his loyalty.
