Wen hated herself for letting sorrow make her resent even her own husband, especially since she could barely recognize Hilo. The warmth in his eyes, his lopsided boyish grin, his magnetic energy, like that of a star burning in the sky—all of it had been snuffed out like a candle. He seemed as inhuman as a marble statue. He acknowledged the clan loyalists who approached with nods, occasionally a hoarse word, nothing more.
Wen let her gaze drift in slow detachment over the rest of the family, dressed in white clothes and grief, until her eyes fell upon the figure of her eighty-one-year-old mother-in-law, hunched under thick blankets on a plastic folding chair. Kaul Wan Ria seemed completely lost in her own world, mumbling quietly to herself. It was unclear whether she knew what was going on. At the pitiable sight of her, Wen ached with numb, bone-deep kinship. Why not escape reality, when it was so unbearably cruel to wives and sisters and mothers?
At last, all the guests departed and only the Kaul family remained in the Heaven Awaiting Cemetery. The afternoon temperature was dropping. A wintry breeze tugged at hats and scarves as it moaned through the trees of Widow’s Park. Wen thought about stepping into the open pit of her son’s grave to join him at the bottom.
Shae bent down and chose a few of the flowers that had been left behind. She handed them to Tia, who threw them onto the closed casket. Shae bent her head and whispered, “Lan will be glad to meet his nephew. He’ll take care of him.”
Hilo’s hands closed into trembling fists at his sides. When he spoke, his voice was coarse and disused. “The minute that boy was born, I should’ve given him away to some other family.” Only Wen and Shae, standing beside him, heard his savage whisper. “Some good but jadeless family with an unknown name. What was I thinking, raising a stone-eye into this life?”
She knew Hilo was only trying to wish away his pain, but the words lanced Wen’s heart. “You don’t mean that,” she breathed. She realized she could still feel fear. Fear that she would lose Hilo as well, that he would become unrecognizable to her.
Ru’s death had been an avoidable and meaningless accident. That was the terrible truth staring the family down. Green Bone warriors counted on deaths that meant something. They gave their lives for honor, for jade, for the brotherhood of the clan. Ru had been steeped in Green Bone culture from birth. Its values had shaped his entire existence, had made him as green in the soul as anyone. But he was not a Green Bone. Now he was dead because he’d acted like one. Wen of all people understood that folly.
“I did it all wrong,” Hilo went on in quiet anguish. “I encouraged him, I gave him as much freedom as I could, I made him believe he could do great things, accomplish anything he wanted to.” Hilo closed his eyes. “Lies. Whether you wear it or not, there’s no freedom when you’re surrounded by green. I wish . . .” The Pillar’s voice cracked like a brittle twig. “I wish he hadn’t dueled. If only he’d been a coward, just once.”
Wen reached for her husband across what felt like a vast and lightless gulf. She put her hand into his. At first it remained limp, then slowly Hilo’s fingers closed over hers. Tears stole Wen’s vision and painted tracks in her white face powder. Ru had idolized his father. He could never be a coward. He’d fought without Steel or Perception or any abilities that might’ve saved his life that night. And he’d won. Perhaps that was the great tragedy of jade warriors and their families. Even when we win, we suffer.
At last, Woon said gently, “It’s getting late. We should go.”
As they turned away from the family memorial, a lone figure came up the path toward them. Wen heard Anden suck in a breath. The sun was behind the approaching man’s back, and for a few seconds, Wen couldn’t see his shadowed face, even though she recognized his silhouette, the way he walked, the set of his shoulders.
Niko was dressed in a black suit and white scarf. His hair was longer than it had been, and his face had changed as well. It was leaner and stubbled, and there was something in his eyes that had not been there before—a slow, haunted softness. He’d been twenty years old when he left Kekon, but he looked as if he’d aged a decade in the nearly three years he’d been away.
Niko walked past all of them and stood at the lip of his brother’s grave. Tears welled in his eyes and he let them run down his cheeks without wiping them away. Wen recalled that as a child, Niko rarely cried and would often hide in his room when he did.
“I’m sorry, Ru,” he whispered. “I should’ve been here for you. We should’ve gone to college together. I was wrong about so many things. I’m just . . . so damned sorry.”