Legacy of the Necromancer [Legacy, BK1 - Completed]

Chapter 11.2

I slept for a day and a half after we returned. Mom didn't take the news about Liam well. Who would? I still have trouble believing it myself.

Avery, John, and I drove to the Reinhardt house once I was feeling better, but they wouldn't let me take a turn driving. I didn't argue.

We arrived late in the afternoon, the sun highlighted the white columns on the front of the Plantation house.

"This is it?" Avery asked as we pulled up the long drive. "It's huge!"

"Nearly a hundred and fifty acres," I said.

Avery parked the car and cut the engine. It didn't seem like anyone had been here since Dad and I had left, but I couldn't be sure.

"Ezra?"

I looked down at the fresh pine box I held in my lap, pain as fresh as the wood gripped my chest. "Follow me," I said and climbed out of the car.

I led the others around the house and followed the directions Dad had given me. There was a thin path of worn away grass that wound from the back garden and into the woods. We walked about twenty minutes. The dim light of the afternoon sun filtered down through the trees and shaded the path. I'd begun to think that I'd gotten the wrong path when I caught a glimpse of the gravestones through the trees.

Stopping on the edge of the family graveyard, I stared at all the markers, as if a forest of stone had replaced the trees.

Here, before me were almost all of my blood relatives. Dad told me that every Reinhardt body they were able to recover have been laid to rest here as Reinhardt tradition dictated. Their bodies cremated, a handful of ashes spread, and the rest buried.

Avery came up beside me, wrapping her arm around my side.

"Ready?" she asked.

"No," I said truthfully, but stepped forward anyway, searching for a particular stone. It was on the other side from where we stood, surrounded by his wife and children.

Standing in front of Alan's grave, a sea of uncertainty crashed through me. How could I ever take his place?

John moved beside me and knelt to place a hand on the ground in front of the gravestone. The dirt pulled away from his hand, sinking, creating a hole. He stepped back, letting me move forward to set the pine box into the ground.

I stayed on my knees in front of the grave, trying to think of something proper to say, but words failed me. I could only stare at the box.

"I'm sorry," I said, finally.

Avery laid a single white lily on the top, and John knelt, his hand hovering over the ground, waiting.

I nodded, and John used his affinity with the earth to fill in the grave.

Avery and John left me there. I vaguely remember her mentioning something about unpacking the car.

Looking out over the gravestones, I found myself wanting, for the first time in a long time, the Standwood Talent. Or even maybe Thea's gift. To look back at the past and see what they were all like.

Reaching out, I traced the letters on Allen's headstone, thinking about the others as I cleaned out the dirt that had settled in the crevices. Had they'd had a chance to know their real families? Or had that been stolen from them, too?

In any case, it was time to call them home.

I sat back on my heels and sighed, lifting my pendant free from my shirt. Its new chain was bright against the ground as I set it down on top of Poe's grave.