He’d been stronger than me in every way, but we had taken care of each other. And honoring him had been where I’d found my own strength after he was gone. I dropped the idol into the flames, tears catching in my chest. I let him go. I erased him. Every memory. Every small hope. Because the Iri I loved was gone. The boy who had once known every shadowed corner of my life was dead the moment he spilled the blood of our people. That boy was gone just as our mother was, but his soul was lost. I watched the charred black catch the edge of the wood, eating its way across until the idol was just a
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