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Chapter Forty-One

M y spirit slips free of this world like a snake shedding its skin.

I am weightless, eternal. I feel as if I could inhabit the stars.

Below, my body is a smear of gore on the ground. Wholly broken, the way I always thought I was, when in fact I was far from it. I know that now. Then my gaze fixes on the husk beside me, blood collecting beneath a mass of leather and velvet.

I wonder if he is like me, hovering above the scene like a wraith.

I wonder if I will see him again.

Everything that happens next is in slow motion, even as figures spill onto the courtyard, forming a radius around us both.

Even as Anton kneels before me, gathering my corpse into his arms.

I want to tell him that it’s all right. This was my choice.

A voice slides into my thoughts like water.

I know it instantly. I have heard her in my dreams, after all.

All my fears, my concerns, drop away when I turn.

Emilia is there, lovely and pure, a halo of golden curls framing her iridescent face. Oh, how I have missed her. How I long for her, even as she drifts before me.

She stretches out her hand to welcome me home.

Willingly, eagerly, I take it.