The Village Fell, So the Serpent God Woke and Kept Me novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: What Aldwyn Left

Aldwyn's oak stood alone in a glade in the east wood, with a flat grey stone at its roots.

A crescent had been cut into the stone, worn almost smooth.

Saren stopped at the edge of the glade.

"I have not been here," he said. "Not once."

"I woke bound, and I could not go to his grave."

Ellory took his hand.

They crossed the grass together.

Blossom lay thick on the ground under the oak.

The bark of the great trunk was hung with it, and the air was very quiet.

Saren knelt by the stone and put his palm on it.

He stayed there a long while.

Ellory sat down in the grass a little way off, and did not speak, and held the carved bird in both hands.

"He was nineteen," Saren said at last. "I forget that. In my head he is as old as me."

"He was braver than me."

"He was more reckless. It is not the same thing." Saren's thumb moved on the crescent. "You are braver."

"I'm really not."

"You walked into a camp of four hundred riders with your hands empty. He would have made a speech first."

Ellory laughed, a bit wetly.

He turned the bird over in his fingers.

← Chapter 22 · All chapters · Chapter 24 →

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