“I looked around at Lute, and I loved it instantly. Of course I did; it’s beautiful here, almost always—that’s why we get tourists—but I don’t think I really knew it as my home until today. I valued you all, as individuals, as a community, but I didn’t know you. How could I have known how brave you all are? I’d felt the warmth of home here but not the weight of it, and the weight of this home is extraordinary. You get up every day and choose to live here, despite what Lute has taken from you and will continue to take. The courage it takes to bear the loss, to weather the grief, to face it down instead of running.”

At this, I sense a stiffening, a silent intake of breath from the table.

I say it again, louder, a nail driving into Hugh’s head. “Instead of running, you open yourself to it. You let it in, let your blood run, and let its blood run into you.”

“Yes!” Lannie Joiner shouts back.

“We’re all one here.” My voice is clear and loud. I hear it echo in the hall. “We are Lute, and Lute is us. We pay, but we gain, and we lose nothing because the island holds it all forever. On Lute, we live well for a time. We love one another until we’re gone. We receive the blessings of our daily existence, the prosperity, the peace, but only if we’re willing to watch it end.”

I think of John Ashford, the astonishment on his vacant face, and a sob rises again in my throat.

“Today has been a difficult day,” I get out. “Even so, I am grateful for the gifts of Lute, and, like you, I am willing to accept the costs. I am you. I am the island. Let it take what it wants.”

I look around at tearful eyes, hands clasped to hearts, fevered smiles, and feel so glad to have spoken, to have stood at the head of this table with the people of my island around me.

And then my eyes land on the two small people beside me, and I have to swallow down bile. Charlie is still and pale as a block of ice, listening hard, but Emma squirms, confused.

Let it take my children. What a vile agreement.

I had to say it, though. It’s the core of this toast. It’s what Hugh and I are meant to provide. Come and kill the garlanded king. Take from us the most.

I let my eyes blur, wrap my fingers carefully around my crystal wineglass, and lift it high.

“To all of you and to Lute. To all it gives and all it has taken.”

I drink, long and deep, as the shouts of “To Lute!” repeat scattered around the table like the cries of jackdaws.