Work Text:
Ze’mer howls like an animal while the Mantis Lords bury their niece alone, deep within the deep crevices of the Queen’s Gardens, so that the Traitor Lord might not dig up her corpse in his insanity. Senseless in her grief, relentless and outrageously inconsiderate, the youngest Lord fidgets through the entire ceremony of carving the tombstone until the eldest Lord itches for her spear. Ze’mer, one of the greatest knights in all of Hallownest, and all she can do with her love and her grief is cry.
To the sound of her lover’s despair, the Lords lower their niece into her grave with kindness, but they do not bow with respect when they’re done. Lily had never fought any battles, in truth. Lily had spent more time kissing girls than killing them. By the time she’d been twenty, the Mantis Lords had had to acknowledge that their dreams of handing their thrones over to Lily’s warrior grace would never come to pass. But she’d lived her life with a unique sort of kindness and a dedication to what brought her joy—she died, the eldest Lord tells her sisters, having followed her heart. As a mantis who’d spent every day of her life skewering her enemies, the eldest Mantis Lord admires only those who pursue the activities they’re passionate about.
The middle Lord bows her head. Her eyes dart to the opening of their cave. Outside, Ze’mer’s grief is a siren. In the further distance, a beastly shriek comes from the Lord who used to be their brother.
Let her, the youngest Lord tells the middle Lord. Ze’mer may never be one of us, but grief is free to all those still living.
The eldest Lord blinks slowly. The middle Lord scrapes her claws along her spear and turns away. She abuses it, replies the middle Lord.
It is free and it is hers so long as she lives, says the youngest Lord.
So long as she lives, says the middle Lord testily.
The eldest Lord laughs. The grave beside her does not seem to concur. She may not have had the right to union with Lily, says the youngest Lord, but her love is her right, as is her grief.
The sound of a beast roaring shakes the dirt. The Lords pause in their vigilance.
He will only destroy the grave should he find this place, says the middle Lord. He could not have been trusted to bury her. His insanity renders his unworthy of Lily’s presence.
The eldest Lord bows her head.
I know he is her father, says the middle Lord. But he is unwell.
He is insane, says the youngest Lord without judgment.
The eldest stands. He is unworthy, she says.
Her sisters nod.
The eldest sister gives quick, curt instructions; her sisters are not beholden to follow them, but they do because they respect her judgment. They wreathe Lily’s tomb in thorned vines, lifting the vicious plants with the tips of their spears and lacing the cave entrance with them. One day the vines will grow thicker, so that none can enter or exit, and cave the entrance in so it’s barely visible from the outside. If the Traitor Lord ever wants to see his daughter’s grave, he’ll need the blessing of the Mantis Lords first.
They drive Ze’mer off with their spears. Not ever once in Ze’mer and Lily’s courtship had the Mantis Lords given them their blessing, and they were not about to start now.
*
The eldest Lord hears, now and then from mantis scouts returning from the Queen’s Gardens, that the Traitor Lord has never seen his own daughter’s grave to this day. That he screams in despair he himself does not understand to this day, scratching his beastly claws against the walls as if he could dig her back out, not knowing where his daughter has gone. They say that sometimes, they think the Traitor Lord knows where her grave may be, but swollen with infection and fury as he is and with hardly any mind of his own left, he claws uselessly at the walls, and even his tears are the color of the sun.
They say that it would be safer to put the Traitor Lord out of his misery, before he destroyed his own daughter’s corpse.
She nods, and sends the scouts on their way. Not all are worthy to visit Lily’s grave, least of all those who’d hand over their souls to insanity. But grief is free, she supposes. One need not be worthy to grieve.