“Because you’re more comfortable taking care of them than letting them take care of you,” Lina said, making Bri frown. “I’m not judging, I’m commiserating.”

“I know,” she muttered, still grumpy that Lina had so easily cut to the heart of her. They both were uncomfortable receiving the care they so readily gave to others. She leaned back, letting the warming stone below her bake into her shoulder blades. “Aurella was one of those people who always had a story to tell. She could converse with anyone, so easily liked by everyone around her. She was good with a sword, though she was so young. I reckon with a few more years of practice she would have been mighty.”

Lina chuckled. “With you as a sparring partner, I’m sure she would have.”

“Part of me thinks she was drawn to the Golden Eagle, to the legend that existed somewhere outside of me.” Bri ruminated over the thoughts she’d never said aloud. She stared up at the clouds blowing past the swaying canopy of trees. “I knew part of her loved me for my family’s name, but part of it was just for me too. . . . She treated me like I painted the sun in the sky, and that adoration was bewitching. I don’t know what it was she saw in me—”

“I do,” Lina whispered, making Bri turn her face against the warm stone to stare into her endless eyes.

“I loved her,” Bri murmured. “If that’s the right word. It was its own kind of love—thrilling and sudden—a quick burst of passion. I hadn’t thought there was any other kind.” She didn’t say the words desperate to break free, instead saying, “When I think about her, I brace for that sharp sting of pain, but it’s not there anymore. It saddens me that she’s gone, but it doesn’t hurt the same.”

“And you feel guilty for it?”

“It feels like I’m forgetting her somehow, for it not to hurt anymore.” Bri brushed her hair off her forehead. “I know that’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not,” Lina said with a soft shake of her head. “Nothing that you feel is ridiculous. It’s hard knowing how to act once people are gone. We remember them as something other than what they were in this life, as if putting them up on a pedestal will take away that pain. It’s okay to let it be. It’s okay to keep going.”

“Your mother . . .”

“As soon as she died, the praise came flooding in—how she was an amazing ruler, kind and strong.” Lina turned her head, their noses nearly touching. “It wasn’t true. They would have never said those things about her if she had survived.”