~Armand POV~
I dug the grave myself. Nobody offered twice. The first person who approached with a shovel read my face and put it down and walked back inside without a word, which was the correct decision.
The ground was harder than I expected at that hour. The sky was the particular gray that comes just before actual light, and the birds had not started yet, and the only sound for a long time was the work itself.
When it was done, I stood at the edge and looked down.
"I kept my word," I said. "Every promise I made you, I kept. The ones you knew about and the ones you did not." I crouched down and put my hand flat against the turned earth. "You were the only person in my entire life who never asked me to be different from what I am. I want you to know I understood what that cost you. I understood it every day."
The sky lightened another degree.
