Eidolon (Wraith Kings, #2)

by Grace Draven

“I’ll sleep long and hard when I’m dead. You defy death by celebrating life.”

He caught the spark in his hand. It dissolved into his palm with a weak lantern-flare before going dark. He closed his eye. One memory, and it was of him on their wedding day. He entered the room where Ildiko stood with the Gauri queen and a troop of servants. He viewed himself through her eyes, nothing more than a tall shape backlit by the blaze of afternoon sunlight. An outlander Kai with gray-skinned hands tipped with claws. Then he had addressed Queen Fantine, requesting a moment of his bride’s time. “It’s you,” Ildiko had said in a voice so full of joy, it made him gasp. The memory, brief in time, prosaic in context, carried all her hope and all her wonder. Hope that she’d marry someone kind. Wonder that she would marry him. “Ildiko,” he whispered, and her name was both prayer and lament. Thanks to her and that memory, he carried within him a bulwark against the frightful memories of the past and those he would surely make in the future.