“You have to go,” she whispered urgently. “Go find her. Go find Hanna. She’ll keep you safe.”
He tilted his head, but if anything settled deeper into her embrace.
Still, he would not move.
When she stood, he followed, tail low, steps soft beside hers. She walked him down the silent corridor, through the servants’ hall, all the way to the side gate that opened onto the outer court. The wind slipped in through the iron grate, cold and biting.
She knelt again and took his face in her hands. “Please,” she whispered. “Go. Find her. Stay alive.”
He whined softly, the sound small and human in its sorrow.
Ilys forced herself to step back, tears in her eyes. “Dammit, Morrigan. Go.”
He stayed.
She smiled through her tears, reached down, and kissed his muzzle—a trembling, lingering press of lips to fur. “Goodbye, love.”
Before she could change her mind, she stepped back and pulled the gate closed between them. The latch fell with a hollow click.
He barked once, startled, and pawed at the bars, whining low in his throat.
Ilys pressed her forehead to the cold iron. “Go,” she whispered. “Please.”
He didn’t. He stood there watching her, tail still, ears low, until the shadows swallowed him whole. She stayed until she couldn’t bear it, until the ache in her chest turned to steel. Then she turned back toward the Sanctum.
In the laundress’s room, the hidden heart of the castle’s labor, she chose an ornamental dress, just as she had planned the night before. Every detail she had walked through a million times over in her mind. And yet, for foolish, sentimental reasons, she halted at her chamber door and peered inside one last time. Twenty-two years of her life were pressed into this single space, walls lacquered with memory. When she surveyed the whole of it, she found she was not alone.
Death’s eyes, dark and infinite, met hers.
"Ilys,” he breathed, a plea buried beneath the gentleness of her name. He sat on the edge of her bed, pale and brittle, as though the night itself might shatter him. The difference a single day had made left her throat tight.
“What has happened?” she whispered, sinking to her knees before him, one hand rising instinctively to his cheek finding his skin ice cold.
“Does dying not suit me?” His mouth curved in a thin smile, but it faltered when she did not return it. “Life drains from me every second,” he admitted quietly. “Faster now since we completed the March. My successor will come soon.”
His hand closed around hers, thumb tracing over her knuckles before he pulled their joined hands to his lap. His voice dropped, urgent now.
“Ilys,” he said, almost a prayer. “You should not do this.”
"Don't,” she urged. Her fingers grazed his jaw softly, tracing lines she knew as intimately as her own. "I have to do this."
Death’s jaw tightened, anguish flickering briefly across his carefully composed features. "I cannot protect you from this."
Ilys reached gently toward his face, her fingers grazing his cheek in tender acknowledgment. "I never asked you to."
His eyes opened again, vulnerable and searching hers desperately. "Please. You cannot balance the scales with an eye for an eye,” Death pleaded.
Ilys cupped his face, thumbs gently sweeping over his cheekbones. “I would have to kill him a hundred times over,” she noted, her voice heavy with pain. "But once will have to do.”
“Ilys—”
She hushed him with the flat of her hand. “Listen. I need you to do two things for me, love.”
He watched her, wary and aching. “Name them.”
“First,” she said, eyes urgent, “take Morrigan to Rowenna’s. He’s right outside the gate and someone needs to spoil him. Promise me you’ll see him there.”
A sad smile broke across his face. He reached up and brushed her thumb with his knuckle. “Done,” he said simply. “I’ll get him to Rowenna.”
