Fading So Brightly- Book 2

AFTER

The air filling the courtyard was perfectly still. Perfect. Except for the ash.

Grey, so much grey everywhere. Coating everything. Zephyr brought a hand to her face, felt the ash smudge across her cheek as she wiped at a stray tear. Her hair hung limp around her face, its silver dulled to match the surroundings. A numbness fell over her whole self as she pushed the strands out of her eyes. Bile rose in her throat as her knees threatened to give way.

She could let it all end now. Just sink down into the ashy remains of her life, wait in this tunnel for a blessed ending. Before the numbness left her, before it all became real. The pain, the anger, the hurt. The stories that ended too soon.

Her eyes fell on the charred remains at the center of the courtyard. No. No. She didn't want to see the body, didn't want to remember. Not like this. Not without laughter and smiles and joy. Not without life.

Her gaze drifted up to the figure hunched over the corpse, a wordless scream on their lips. Zephyr couldn't move. She could never move, never leave, never continue on. Not after.

Small hands. Beautiful, precious hands tugged at her cloak, urged her to move on. Small hands that shook with agony, with grief that made her own seem inconsequential.

She became aware of a voice. A deep melody of a voice. A voice she had longed to hear, that she had forgotten. A voice that sounded like home, urging her onward, down the tunnel. Away from the end.

Small hands pulled her a step away, then another. The voice pulled her two more. Her eyes landed once more on the hunched form. The broken remains of her friend. And as she summoned the last dregs of her energy, the last piece of her that could get past what was happening, she screamed a name.

She screamed with every ounce of love and need she had left. And when the figure she screamed for finally looked up, Zephyr's heart shattered like a dying star.