The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,470

could have done differently that wouldn’t have saved lives? Anyone?”

They shook their heads, one at a time, and some looked away.

“There’s no shame in it,” Kip said. “Cruxer shouldn’t have gone after Ironfist. He should’ve been guarding me. Maybe he would’ve saved me from Zymun and Aram. He failed us, but without him I wouldn’t be standing here. Most of you wouldn’t, either. He was our heart. Sometimes you do your best, and it’s not good enough. That’s why we have each other.”

“I know I butted heads with him a lot,” Ben-hadad said, “but I really loved that asshole.”

“I love all you assholes,” Winsen said. “Well . . . like, most of you. Mmm . . . maybe more like ‘tolerate.’ ”

“Gah!” Big Leo said, and he reached his enormous arms around as many of them as he could and swept them into a huge hug.

“Careful, careful!” Ironfist said from his bed as they tipped over.

Kip leaned into the entire mass, and they all tripped and went slipping over Ironfist’s bed.

In a moment, they transformed back into the children they had recently been: laughing, tickling, shoving, flicking one another in the stones, and trying to crawl out from under the pile.

“I should’ve never have resigned!” Ironfist shouted. “I’d give you all a hundred laps for this!”

“You didn’t resign!” Ben-hadad said. “You got fired!”

“Stop reminding me! Ow! Not the chest, off the chest!”

They soon headed out—the blast of light from the window had Teia sicker than she’d wanted to admit.

As they went, Kip realized that in the coming days there was going to be a lot of swinging between laughing and crying, teasing and mourning, telling stories and sitting silent, hugging and fighting. It was all right.

No, it was better than all right; it was good.

It’s what families do.

Chapter 151

With the normal difficulty of a woman getting married the next morning, Karris tried to set her to-do lists aside and enjoy the massage.

“Seems really fast to try to organize a wedding, much less one on this scale,” Rhoda said, working Karris’s wrist high over her head with her magical hands. “How are all the details going?”

Karris sighed, and Rhoda pulled hard on her wrist, extending all the muscles in her arm and shoulder and into her rib cage. “Aha!” Rhoda said.

“You tricked me into that,” Karris complained. She grunted. “Not. Ow. That I’m complaining.”

“Extensions today. You really beat the hell out of yourself, didn’t you?”

“It was a battle, so mostly it was other people beating the hell out of me.”

Rhoda tsked. Her hands quickly cataloged the weird places Karris was sore, then tapped her tight sartorius. “So, this got this tight from riding? A horse, I mean?”

“Rhoda!”

The loud masseuse laughed. “No, no, good for you two. It is so good to see you happy, High Lady. I’ll be securing your wrists so you can relax your upper body while we do these extensions.” She got to it, covering Karris with warm towels as she rolled onto her back. “There’s a bit of a trick to doing this so it won’t leave any hard-to-explain bruises the next day. If you want me to show you or your husband how it’s done . . .”

Karris closed her eyes and shook her head, smiling.

“I’m sorry, High Lady, I didn’t mean to overstep.” Of course, Rhoda didn’t sound at all sorry. “Try to relax into these.”

She told herself that she was the reason they were doing a big wedding in the first place. She’d demanded one, way back when. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Having a few months to plan it probably would have been a good idea, too. It did make sense, from a political perspective. Andross was showing the big happy family, and using all the love and adoration the people had built up for Gavin and Karris, and Kip and Tisis, to add a halo effect of love and adoration to his own rule and legitimate himself. Hard to rebel this week when last week everyone saw you smiling with your father.

“Oh, that’s a little tight,” Karris said.

“We just have to hold that until I finish this leg,” Rhoda said. But she didn’t work ten or fifteen times down Karris’s left leg as she had on the right. Instead she wrapped it up with the scarf and secured it to the table, as she had done with both wrists and her other leg.

Eyes still closed, Karris said, “I guess I can see why people who really like the