Z ripped his rage from mine like tearing off a bandage, and I flinched at the loss of his balm over my torn heart. He stepped out from the podium and moved slowly, achingly, over to the table holding the coins Bat made for Fallen funerals, big silver dollars stamped with the Fallen symbol on one side and a reaper on the other. They were payment to the ferrymen or God or Satan, whichever deity might need paying in the afterlife to ensure their brother got safely to his resting place.
Z picked one up, held it aloft for everyone to see, and called, “King Kyle fuckin’ Garro, may the best of us rest in peace.”
“King Kyle fuckin’ Garro,” everyone echoed, a rough roar of mostly male voices so loud they seemed to tremble the earth.
He tossed the coin atop the coffin and then moved to me, standing so tall I had to crank my neck back to maintain eye contact. I kept it, though, because these days, my eyes said more than I was capable of communicating with words. It seemed King had owned all the good ones, and now he was gone, so was my love of language.
“You ready to get up there, teach?” he asked softly, not touching me because he respected how fragile I was.
I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to speak, to purge even an ounce of the feeling inside me because sharing it seemed somehow like setting it free, and I wanted to hoard every single ounce of King I could bear to hold inside me.
But it was King who’d taught me how to be strong and part of that was tending to the souls who cared for your own. The people swathed in black who congregated in the cemetery like a murder of ravens deserved to hear me speak about King, the person who’d loved him best and pledged to love him forever.
So, I nodded curtly, accepted the touches on my back from the friends who supported me and let Sander and Wrath escort me to the podium and flank my sides as if I was the president of the United States with her security detail.
Honestly, it felt good to have such pillars of strength beside me.
“King brought me to life.” I laughed weakly, having prepared a speech but unable to remember a lick of it even though I’d been a teacher for years, and I was used to public speaking. I shrugged weakly and went with it. “It sounds so trite, but it’s true. I saw him across the parking lot of Mac’s Grocer, and my entire universe shifted, my perspective radically rearranged and suddenly I was someone else. No, not even some else…it was like finally, I was me. All the bullshit of my life, the social mores and puritanical values forced on me by my family were purged by the sight of a man-boy leaning on a motorcycle like it was his throne and the blacktop his kingdom. I knew at that moment that I would give anything to rule by his side, but I never could have known that dream would come true. I never could have known just how many times I would be called to pay the price for it.”
I opened by palms to the group, the red web of scar tissue in the center of each hand like painted bull’s-eyes.
“I never could have known that loving would make me strong enough to withstand anything that came for us and so much did. I gave up everything I’d ever known for him, and in exchange, he gave me an entirely new world. One we would rule over together. In the end, only death could tear us apart, and even then…” I choked on my sob and tried to block out the tears that broke through the crowd like rain from storm clouds at the provocation of my words. “Even now, King will never be dead to me because he lives inside me so vividly. King Kyle Garro was so alive that he could bring even my dead soul to life just as I know he brought life and joy and so much happiness to the broken souls of so many people gathered here for him today.”
My hands shook as I took the folded piece of paper from my pocket, and it was only when I leaned over the podium to smooth it open and wet landed on the page that I realized I was crying despite my best efforts.
“King was such a dichotomy. He was goodness and sin, sharp and sweet, a dream and a nightmare all wrapped up in this gorgeous package. Sometimes, I think, the depth of his own mind and heart confounded even him, and he would have to spend long hours sussing it out in his journal. He was a beautiful poet even though he didn’t share his words with most people. I want him to live on for you all just as vibrantly as he will live on for me, so I had his poems printed into books.” I paused as Harleigh Rose and Ares moved through the crowd handing out copies of the black-covered book embossed with a crown. “I called it King of Iron Hearts because King might not have been Prez of the Fallen, but he was the emotional sovereign of this group. And I’m no poet, not like him, but I added some of my own words to it because I needed a way to express just how irrevocably and unequivocally I loved my husband.”