(This scene contains content that some may find upsetting. For a list of content warnings organized by scene, please check the chapter titled Episode Two: A Good Monster)

This wasn’t right.

The destroyed party he’d never wanted in the first place. The dead beast, wrapped in cloaks and tablecloths. Jac gripping the beast’s front legs in both her hands and hauling the limp body over her shoulder. Nyxabella’s black-blood-stained dress, legs and hair. The Earthbreaking she used to cut the ground around the pool of blood, to lift the slab of dirt a foot thick, to flip it and replace it upside down back in its slot, so the blood wouldn’t attract scavengers. And him, watching all of this from the branches above and doing nothing. None of it was right.

Yet nothing was what he did.

Daivad followed them as Nyxabella led Jac to the area outside of camp, on the other side of the stream, where she had built the beast her simple shelter within the roots of a tree. Once again, she cut the earth, deep enough that she had to lift it free in two chunks, and even then her pale limbs shook with the effort. And once the grave was dug, she asked Jac to set the beast beside it, and she wandered into the dark trees.

He followed her still, watched her wander until she found a blackberry bush and plucked a few berries before turning to return to the grave. She knelt beside the dead beast and peeled Jac’s cloak away from its face before gently prying open its jaws and placing the berries in its mouth.

Daivad realized what she was doing. An old, old funeral rite of planting a seed in the dead’s mouth, the idea being that their soul could find new life in the plant that grew from it.

When she’d closed the beast’s mouth around the berries, Nyxabella leaned down to give her one final kiss on her cracked nose, and replaced the cloak over her face. Finally, Jac lowered the beast into the grave as gently as she could.

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Nyxabella’s movements were slow and jerky as she worked. She cut a section away so that when she replaced the earth over the beast, it lay flush with the rest of the ground. With the grass hiding the broken edges of the earth, it almost looked as if the area hadn’t been disturbed at all. The only giveaway was the pile of discarded dirt that Nyxabella set aside.

She swept her hands in slow, flowing movements over the grave and spoke in Xo. It was a prayer, he knew on instinct.

Xo isn’t learned. It’s unlearned.

The two women stood there in silence for a moment. Then, Nyxabella’s shoulders hunched and she wrapped her stained hands around herself. Jac pulled her in with one arm and rested her cheek on the top of Nyxabella’s head.

“This…” came Nyxabella’s small voice. “I can’t … I have to fight, Jac. Have to.”

“Hell fucken yeah we’re gonna fight, moonshine.”

She looked up at Jac. Gave her a quivering smile.

“You were wrong about just one thing tonight, Belle,” Jac said. “He’s not the one who’s going to change Lushale. We are.”

Nyxabella crumpled against Jac.

Some time later, Nyxabella said she was going to find a headstone. Once again, Daivad followed her around the dark forest, paying little mind to the chittering and rustling of beasts in the shadows. Eventually, she found a smooth stretch of stone and cut a slab from it. She pulled it into her arms and hauled it back to the grave. There, she set it gently beneath the tree, and began to carve.

Daivad recognized the engraving technique right away. It wasn’t rough and violent like Richard’s. He only ever wanted to blow shit up. But this technique was smooth and controlled. It was Daivad’s. The one he used to carve runes into stone. He’d developed it himself and had never taught it to anyone. She couldn’t possibly have learned it just by studying the runes he’d hidden around the castle … could she?

This wasn’t right either. None of it.

When she was finished, she stood and observed her work. Quietly, she read, “Clarix. A good monster.”