Ana sank to the ground beside her, hovering a hand over her bloody side. “You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay,” she repeated.

Her captain smiled and, with her bloodied hand, cupped Ana’s cheek. “I am so, so proud of you.”

Sorrow welled up in her so quickly, she couldn’t keep back the tears. “Don’t say stuff like that. Why didn’t you go get medical help when you could’ve?”

“You came first.”

She gritted her teeth. “Di’ll be back soon. You’ll be fine—”

The captain rubbed Ana’s tears away with her thumb. “We’re all stories in the end, my darling,” she sighed, and with every word she grew quieter, each strand of her firelight hair darkening like stars in a dawning sky. “You and Talle are the best parts of mine.”

“Shush—save your breath,” Talle scolded, her voice soft and trembling, but the captain only smiled sadly and took another painful breath.

No, Ana thought, glancing out of the open door to Di, rushing across the square to the skysailers, a sinking feeling settling in her stomach. No, no, no, no—

Her captain curled her bloody fingers into hers, and Ana looked back down to her, memorizing her face, the way her wild hair glowed and simmered like stoked coals, bathing her face in sunlight. She memorized her green eyes, her smirk, how her coat was ragged and patched yet had been cleaned and pressed with prestige. A hundred memories, a thousand moments she wished she had paid more attention to, a million seconds she had taken for granted.

She bent down, tears streaming down her face, and kissed her mother’s forehead as the light faded softly from her hair.

Robb

Black banners decorated the Iron Palace. If anyone didn’t know they were coming to a funeral, he hoped they figured it out by the time they came into the ballroom. Most Ironblood funerals weren’t held at the palace, families opting for quiet wakes at their private estates where the reading of the will came directly after the victuals. There was little pomp and circumstance, since most of the time it devolved into long-lost family members coming out of the woodwork to try to snag what few valuables they could get from the will.

But Robb was not only a Valerio—he was an Aragon too, since he took the captain’s last name, so he had the power to buck a little tradition. Where the Valerios were notorious as sharp and merciless businesspeople, having investments in almost every type of company in the kingdom, the Aragons were magnanimous to the point where his mother had to spit out their name. He thought it rather fitting.

So tonight, for the first time in the history of the Iron Kingdom, there was a funeral at the palace. The lanterns in the hall bobbed with a new orange glow—as if they’d taken the light directly from Siege’s hair. He wondered if that was Di’s doing. He’d seen him messing with one of the lanterns in the hallway earlier today.