The Unchaste

Epilogue

....One day, our swords will clash inevitably and inevitably, one of us will meet our end....

Slow moon was running west that midnight, on the verge of moon-dusk, chasing through the storm-clouds to steal last of the glances down the earth.

And in the moors, down the earth, eight black horses fleeted the dark, wooden coffin from Stormcastle to the outlying Ivybrough Kirkyard, where old deads slept in peace, buried bottomless and the tombstones still had cracks from the lightening that struck earth over the years of tempests .

This paegency was unsought. No one supervised it. This eight-steeded hearse and dark wood coffin had never been arranged for. Who would? Who could? Who had the intellect to?

Delilah had lost her mind completely. Steven had greater grieves to nurse. The Stormcastle was stunned into an unending recess.

The duke was dead.

....Not you, I promise....

Assassinated, that afternoon. Shot. The body had bled out by the time help reached Hillhearst and in his death, he was as pale as a melancholic vampire. A few, curious peasants had caught the glimpse of his corpse. They said the sight of it would haunt them for years. They said he looked too beautiful to be dead. Nearly ungodly. Nearly undead.

Steven Navrozov, in the part of sanity he had been_ unfortunately, spared, arranged a quick funeral while slowed with stunned exhaustion himself. He decided wearily, yet firmly, that the funeral would be performed overnight.

They disapproved. The soul, they said, couldn't find a way out of afterlife, if buried in darkness.

But the decision made was halfway in performance. The body had been laid out in the parlor, dabbed in finest cologne. Finest flowers. Crocuses, golden from his own wedding the previous day.

Satin lined coffin. Red.

The duchess_ Delilah Winter had been abstained from attending the small, late night ceremony. She had been locked into one room.

They said she was out of her mind.

Said, she was withheld into that room by six maids. Sheer, brute force. Animalistic tendencies.

For a woman so reserved as Delilah Eves, Steven hadn't foreseen this frenzy at this death. But then, he hadn't foreseen this death either.

He didn't know. Delilah knew.

She had foreseen it.

***

A band of people dressed in black stood in the windy midnight at the far corner of the Ivybrough.

Bells were tolling. Yorkshire was down in mourning. The last funeral rites were being read and it was...a bit too cold for late June night. The mists on the black, ink-smudged horizon were rolling closer.

Like distasteful, hollering apparitions, rushing in, running late for memorial service.

Almond tree was blooming with pretty flowers. Some blossoms had already littered the gaping depth of the open grave.

Richard seemed at peace with his lashes resting on his cheeks, moon on his flesh_ for the last time perhaps. Impeccably dressed. Solemn and breathless in ways only death could illustrate. But this solemnity was pretentious. It was presumed.

Richard was most certainly not at peace. Delilah was not here.

Steven did not allow her.

He strictly forbade anyone from letting her free from her room.