The cemetery was along the peripheries of the palace and the trees there were rosewood and they were all bent and the wind never lacked the smell of rain. The path through which it could be reached was made of stone, and it was broken and missed grew in it in some places, and borne over with time.
Sophia did.
She had memorized the distance. She had counted the steps.
There were no guards, no polished marble benches, where mourners sit, no proud arches to the noble memory. The mere murmur of the wind, and earth smell of last night's storm.
And two graves.
The other mellowed out by the years had settled to be like a wound, which learned to heal itself but still hurt a little.
Sophia was between them, her mantle a dark as was the veil she would not bear. The hood was over the face, and
