125 | The long walk home

Rhiannon’s POV

Returning home was… confusing.

I was torn between awe and heartache, love and loss, a giddy, child-like glee and the raw sort of grief I’d only known once before, after my father’s death.

The sun glittered overhead, the sudden spring my death had brought on as unnatural as the everlasting winter had been before it. It was beautiful, too, the kind of beautiful that made my throat catch and my eyes glisten with unshed tears. Caleb’s hand in mine was steady and grounding, and whenever I stumbled his arm looped solidly around my waist. As always, he caught me.

That bliss only compounded the unfairness of it all. I had lived, but Amelia had died. Kieran’s cries still echoed in my ears.

He hadn’t come back with us. Nobody had been able to move him away from Maeve’s fallen body. I hoped he was okay but I knew, I knew, that he wasn’t. I inhaled sharply.

“You all right?” murmured Caleb, squeezing me.

I let my weight rest a little more on him. “Just thinking about Kieran.”

He sh