Alone. The way she had lived the remainder of her life. The way she had died. The way her soul would pass on without Lycaena to take her upon brilliant wings. His broken heart could handle no other truth.

Alone.

Alone.

Alliya’s mouth trembled.

Rayan stepped back. Horror seized him. He dared not move as Alliya’s lips vibrated as if touched by the faintest of winds. His mind failed to understand. The dead woman’s lips were parting. Not to release sound, but because something crawled from within. It was small, so small, its body soft and bathed with fuzz. A butterfly, he first thought, but no, not a butterfly. A moth, pale and slipping free of her mouth so it might stretch its wings.

“Lycaena?” Rayan whispered.

Another moth curled around the underside of her left ear. It climbed to her hair and stopped to stretch its wings in a similar manner as the first. Rayan took a step back. Drums hammered within his rib cage. A third moth fluttered in through a crack in the nearby window to land atop her blanket. A fourth, a fifth, fluttering from underneath the pillow, the half-open curtain to the closet. They gathered upon the body and waited with their wings opening and closing. Waiting, but for what?

And then he saw the truth. In his greatest despair, he had believed a lie. Alliya had not died alone. Her fingers parted, her hands opening to release a hundred moths from her sheltered grasp. They swirled like a funnel, surrounding him, enveloping him with a ceaseless flutter and a whirlwind of gray. Rayan stood with his eyes turned heavenward as the moths kissed his skin with the soft touch of their wings. The whisper of the air was a promise. The number of moths grew, hundreds, thousands, a count beyond measure. The physical bounds of Alliya’s room meant nothing. The swirl of moths held him in a vital embrace, comforting him, and within their fluttering song he heard the voice of his goddess.

No. Not alone. His legs went weak, and he openly wept within the embrace. Never alone, not even when the moths scattered, the song ceased, and only an empty physical shell remained upon the bed before him. Never alone, for even now, his goddess would grant him strength to inspire amid the gray.

CHAPTER 11

CYRUS

To mark the end of six long, grueling months, Thorda summoned Cyrus to the forge.