Chapter 148

Sarah POV

The day before the memorial, we settled into a suite of rooms in Alpha Erinose’s summer palace. Zane, I, Melissa, and Dr. Hayes had our own bedrooms, and the girls were sharing. Selene had been left at home with Mavis.

I was again struck by the opulence of the Pack Alpha’s lifestyle and was pleased at Zane’s relative modesty and restraint. It made me laugh a little. To think I would ever consider the villa “modest.”

I settled in the central room of the suite on a luscious sofa and put my feet up before plopping my laptop on a pillow and looking over the schedule for the next day. I also read a few more articles about the protest that had gone so very wrong.

It had started simply enough. A group of students had launched a two-day, forty-mile march across a rural area and then into the Erinose City. They were joined on the journey by various union groups, more students, and various others. The police, who had been warning everyone of the danger the growing crowd was bringing into the city, erected a roadblock right in front of the summer palace, supposedly to protect the historical downtown area from vandalism.

Words were exchanged, and as the crowd swelled up in front of the roadblock, a police officer who was currently in jail awaiting trial shot into the crowd. There was a stampede, tear gas, fire, and general pandemonium. When the dust settled, the dead numbered almost a hundred and the injured in five times that.

Everyone agreed the whole thing had been a perfect storm of police and civilian error, and the finger-pointing was only increasing as videos from hundreds of phones was processed and debated in the mass and social media.

Zane and Dr. Hayes, who had been discussing the girls’ progress in school, came out of the suite’s office and suggested dinner in the room to give our security detail a break before tomorrow. The girls heard about it and wanted to order everything on the menu. Zane negotiated down to a simple feast, and we had a sort of indoor picnic.

Zane and I tucked the girls in not longer after that, and I read from what was now officially the girls’ second-favorite book.

With a smile, I opened the book, admiring the illustrations Grace and Chloe had already seen and cooed over.

“Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could sound it, and many church steeples, piled one upon another, would not reach from the ground beneath to the surface of the water above. There dwell the Sea King and his subjects.

“We must not imagine that there is nothing at the bottom of the sea but bare yellow sand. No, indeed, for on this sand grow the strangest flowers and plants, the leaves and stems of which are so pliant that the slightest agitation of the water causes them to stir as if they had life. Fishes, both large and small, glide between the branches as birds fly among the trees here upon land.

“In the deepest spot of all stands the castle of the Sea King. Its walls are built of coral, and the long Gothic windows are of the clearest amber. The roof is formed of shells that open and close as the water flows over them. Their appearance is very beautiful, for in each lies a glittering pearl which would be fit for the diadem of a queen.

“The Sea King had been a widower for many years, and his aged mother kept house for him. She was a very sensible woman, but exceedingly proud of her high birth, and on that account wore twelve oysters on her tail, while others of high rank were only allowed to wear six.”

I looked up to see the girls were both out, and Zane and I smiled at each other before we crept out of their room. Zane nodded before heading to his bedroom, but I stopped at the large window overlooking the grounds. About a quarter-mile away was the square already decorated for the memorial, its paving stones washed clean of the blood.

The view was so very pretty. What had happened here was all the uglier for it.

Early the next morning, Zane and Melissa walked side-by-side in the procession from the city gates to the palace. As that was over two miles, the girls and I waited to join them in the square. As they walked in, flanked by the palace guards to the sad music of the palace band, it seemed like a preview of their wedding, and for a minute tears threatened my eyes.

But it was OK for me to look sad, considering, though I didn’t actually cry. Grace and Chloe stood solemnly at my side, both of them wearing simple dresses and holding small bouquets of yellow tulips, a sign of mourning in the territory. My hands were free so I could attend to the girls as needed, but I wore a black hat with a short veil and a plain black dress.

Delegates from many of the territories came in with Zane and Melissa, but it was all very orderly and somber. Zane and Melissa walked over to us and stood with us while everyone turned toward the podium at the center of the large square. I found myself looking at the flagstones and thinking again of the atrocity that they had witnessed.

The music ended, and an Oracle in all white came to the podium. She spoke quietly, but the microphones picked her voice up well and broadcast it to all corners of the square as well as over the major networks.

“Blessed be the goddess,” she said.

“Blessed be the goddess,” the crowd murmured in response.

“Blessed goddess, we call on you to console us as we grieve. We call on you to bring comfort to the families who face this day with pain. We call on you to guide us to a better tomorrow without pain, without grief.”

“Blessed be the goddess,” the crowd murmured again.

The Oracle continued, asking for help and succor and peace. Grace and Chloe were very good and did not fidget or speak. I saw people with phones and large TV cameras walking around, trying to get good shots of the crowd without disrupting the ceremony.

The Oracle finished her prayer and stepped back from the podium.

“Blessed be the goddess,” said the crowd.

Mournful music began to play as Pack Alpha Erinose laid a wreath decorated with yellow tulips before the podium, stood for a moment in silence, and then made way for her mate, who laid a similar wreath down next to the first. Their five children followed with yellow bouquets like those the girls held.

Pack Alphas from the various territories and their families made their way to the growing pile of flowers. When it was our turn, Zane went up with the girls and me in tow, making it clear with the distance I kept that I was there for the children and not some sort of partner for Zane.

Melissa would go after us, I knew, as a representative of Thibodaux Territory.

Zane laid down a wreath, then he stood there as the girls put down their flowers. I stood where I had been instructed, a figure slightly out of frame on TV and a quiet support to the family.

I stood there and thought of the burden this day was on the girls. I thought of how much Zane could use a mate at his side. I thought of the hundreds whose lives had been forever changed over bad communication and poor planning.

And then I cried.