Isabelle

Lady Selaena returns the raised platform to the rest of us. And with it, my two best friends come.

Kieran is holding Astrid, kissing the top of her head endlessly before he tilts her head up. I almost blanche at the sight of her beaten face and the mixture of red and green on her torn dress.

The crowd starts to recede. Just like that. It’s like they came here for a show. Now that they’ve seen Damian’s broken body on the ground, they’re just going to leave. As if we don’t all share the same loss tonight.

Lady Selaena helps Bayorn to his feet. Removing the bloodied chainmail from his left arm, she blows against his sleeve. The blood stops dripping.

Kieran and Astrid are barely able to steady themselves. I rush over to help Astrid lean against me. Beside me, her breathing is ragged.

“You’re crazy, you know that?” I sob into her shoulder. Sorrow and gratitude are such difficult emotions to juggle.

Kieran grunts quietly when he walks behind us. Eli clings onto Bayorn’s leg like a lifeline. As soon as we hobble to the three of them, Kieran stumbles into Bayorn’s embrace.

Over the Prince’s shoulder, the guardsman’s face contorts in grief.

They hold each other for a long time. Bayorn is the first to pull away.

“Are you alright?” Bayorn asks him. It’s a double-edged question. The sun is already coming up.

“I should be asking you that,” Kieran shakes his head. He reaches up to press a hand against the side of his deep red tunic and winces. “I’m… I’m so…”

Bayorn shakes his head. He swipes at his face. With red-rimmed eyes, he regards the last living remainder of Imogen.

The boy clinging to him.

The guardsman picks the child up with one arm and balances him on his hip, wincing as he does. He turns to Lady Selaena, who watches them with a hardened expression.

“Thank you,” he tells her, on behalf of Eli’s mother.

The enchantress nods stiffly.

This doesn’t feel like a victory. We stand around looking at each other. All of us are broken, in some form or other. I can see it in their eyes. I think something inside of me has died, too.

But we are breathing nonetheless. Miracle of miracles, we are alive.

“Let’s get some breakfast,” I say.

We begin our slow procession to the castle. Already it has begun to mend itself, the broken doors weaving its splinters together and the fallen bricks reclaiming their original places. It doesn’t look as though the enchantment has been lifted yet.

And really, I don’t think any of us care right now.

“Kieran?” Astrid’s alarmed cry cuts through the solemn silence. She removes her arm from over my shoulder. We all spin on our heels.

“Kieran!”

The Master of the House lies with his face on the ground. His limbs are limp. He makes no move to right himself.

Astrid and I sink to our knees. We turn him over. His chest rises and falls faintly. Below his torso, the rising morning light illuminates a darker patch of soil – dampness.

“Lift his shirt,” Bayorn orders, setting Eli down.

I do it.

And angry red gash travels from the side of his ribcage towards his chest. Blood pours out of it ceaselessly. Astrid’s trembling hands try to staunch the blood flow, but it doesn’t really work. When his eyelids close, she starts to visibly panic.

“What’s happening?” she demands, looking to Lady Selaena. “We have to treat him. There must be something stopping his wound from closing up.”

I stagger backward. A cold fist twists my gut.

“What are you all standing around for?” Astrid cries out. Hysteria bubbles beneath the surface of her tone. “Help him!”

We all stand frozen. Even Eli peeks from behind Bayorn’s bloody leg, his mouth agape.

“Kieran? Kieran!”

She starts to sob. I can tell her mind is finally putting the pieces together.

Immortality for immortality.

She takes her bloody hands off his torso and instead cradles his head in her trembling arms. I can’t see the movement in his chest any more.

Out of the corner of my eye, Bayorn’s face crumples into his hand.

“No, no, no, no.” Astrid starts to rock back and forth. The brief moan that escapes her lips is a betrayal of the added grief she is not prepared to feel.

“No, no, please. Please. Stay with me, love. Stay with me.”

She presses her lips against his. When he doesn’t respond, she does it again.

“I love you.” Her voice breaks as she kisses the rest of his lifeless face. “I love you. Please, please come back to me. I love you. Do you hear me? I love -”

My hand rests on her shoulder. She releases a mangled cry into the morning air, refusing defeat. She clings harder onto him.

My heart is breaking and breaking and breaking.

“Come on.” Keeping my voice steady is the hardest thing I’ve had to do. The strain of it starts to spread up my temples. Lady Selaena crouches down opposite Astrid, giving the girl a single look.

Astrid starts to sob frantically. “No, no. Please.”

“I have to take him,” she says, purely gentle. “It’s time, child.”

I use whatever strength there is left in me to pull Astrid up from under her arms. To my surprise, she lets me. She turns around and crumples into my shoulder, and we both hold each other for support. My own breaths come out ragged.

The bane of human existence is that we are mortal. That, when it comes, death will hurt us – no matter how far away we saw it coming.

Lady Selaena pushes the hair out of Kieran’s face and closes her eyes. Just as I lead Astrid away towards the rest of her grieving family, I hear the enchantress mutter under her breath: “Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.”

I steal one last glance at Kieran before I realize he isn’t here anymore.