The Amulet Of Nicmir (The Scripts Of Neptune, Book 1)

Chapter 70

The few minutes after Crynia, Nyle, and Sam had blinked into the room had seemed to numb everyone else. Lillian remembered every second. Every color. Crimson, when she'd dropped to her knees by Sam's side and seen the wound, knowing before she checked that his heart was dead in his chest. Brown, when Crynia looked up, her eyes wide with shock and glossy with tears. Blond, when Nyle had grabbed her by the shoulders and shaken her, his desperate, tear-tainted questions falling on ears Lillian knew were still deaf. And finally, coffee, when Ibidan had stormed down the stairs to see what the ruckus was and frozen in his tracks at the sight of the boy on the ground and the faces around him.

And most of all, most of all she remembered the helplessness. The knowledge that maybe, if she'd gone, she could've saved him. That he might've made it had she been there. Reason told her he would've died anyway, with a wound like that. Her heart screamed denial.

Ibidan was unusually gentle when he called her upstairs a half hour after they'd come back. Lillian took a deep breath, dragged the heels of her palms across her cheeks to smear her tears, got up, and followed him.

"I know that this is likely the very last thing you want to hear at the moment," he said, his voice low as they stopped at the top of the stairs, "but we cannot keep his body here for long. All of us must leave tonight to avoid capture. The plan has failed. Agnir will be looking for us. Either we bury Sam or burn him."

Lillian hugged her middle and nodded, lowering her head as her throat closed up and her eyes filled with fresh tears. "I'm sorry," she whispered, laughing a bitter little laugh as she pulled her sleeves over her fingers and pressed her hands to her face. "I'll tell the others."

"Miss Lillian," Ibidan said as she turned to go, making her pause and look over her shoulder. "Elara minye orpo."

Lynn had taught her enough Bere'sei, the language of the desert Nemaru, that she understood him. It made her want to cry again. Your loss breaks my heart.

"Thank you," she said, so quiet from her crying she thought for a moment he didn't hear her. When he inclined his head, however, she knew he had.

The basement was quiet as she walked back down, Crynia still in her dad's embrace on one of the cots, her eyes closed, her cheeks wet. Chad was lying on his back, desperately trying to contact Craventi. Kariana was cross-legged on a cot, stealing concerned glances at Nyle as he sat in a corner, fighting his tears, running his hands through his hair so many times it stuck up. Noah kept his hands and his eyes busy with a hunk of wood and a paring knife.

No one had moved Sam's body yet, or even touched it, but Crynia's cloak had been spread over his frame, hiding his face. Lillian walked around it, trying not to look at the blood that'd leaked from him and onto the floor, and went to slide down beside Nyle, back against the wall and knees bent.

"Ibidan said we have to leave tonight," she said, quiet enough that no one else would hear her. "We've got to do something with him by then. We can't just leave him here."

Nyle shut his eyes and nodded, his chest trembling. When he ran his hands through his hair again, his face scrunching up as he fought his own emotions, Lillian put her arm around his shoulders, pulling him against her, slipping her fingers into his hair as he pressed his face into her shoulder and shook with sobs. She held him like that for a long time, her eyes closed and her heart aching.

The Nemaru soldiers came a little while later with a stretcher. They were quiet as they lifted Sam's body onto it, respectful, easing him down with a reverence that didn't belong to people who'd never known him. They all followed him slowly up the stairs, leaving behind the stain on the floor and the lamp sputtering on its last bit of oil.