He couldn’t move.
Couldn’t breathe.
Her blood dripped from his blade.
Onto the stone.
Onto his boots.
Onto his soul.
He lifted the steel once more.
He was prepared to drive the blade into his own chest for the unforgivable sin.
He had taken her life. Her shining light.
He had made a blood oath not to harm her or leave her behind.
He drove the blade into his own chest, swift and true.
And then he felt her.
Not in body.
In soul.
She came to him like a dream. A flicker of warmth through the cold clutching his limbs. A soft breath against his jaw. A hand, brushing against his chest.
She wrapped around him like light curling around a shadow.
A soul-ember. A final kiss.
Not to beg for his tears.
But to ask him to go on. To live.
He choked on the blood pooling in his lungs, dropping the sword and fell to his knees.
“No,” he whispered.
The wind didn’t answer.
The battlefield raged around him, but he was alone.
Utterly.
Horribly.
Alone.
And all he wanted, all he wanted, was to die.
To fall beside her.
To vanish into whatever afterworld would take a cursed king who murdered the woman he loved.
Even as her soul pulled away, light dimming, presence fading, she left behind a sliver of herself.
