She thought, fleetingly, that she didn’t want to follow him, but the whispers from the back of her mind overwhelmed those doubts. What else was there for her?

Magda looked out at the world spread out far below, knowing that this was what he would have seen as he stood in this very place. She tried to imagine the thoughts he must have wrestled with in his last moments of life.

She wondered if he thought of her in those last moments, or if some terrible, weighty matter had taken even that from him.

She was sure that he must have been sad, heartbroken even, that he was about to leave her, that his life was about to be finished. It must have been agony.

Baraccus had loved life. She could not imagine him taking his life without a powerful reason.

Still, he had. That was all that mattered now. Everything had changed and there was no calling it back.

Her world had changed.

Her world had ended.

At the same time she felt shame for focusing so narrowly on her own world, her own life, her own loss. With the war raging, the world had ended for a great many people. The wives of the men Baraccus had sent to the Temple of the Winds still waited in silent misery, hoping their loved ones might return. Magda knew that they never would. Baraccus had told her so. Yet they still clung to the hope that those men could yet come home. Other women, the wives of men gone off to war, wailed in anguish when they received the terrible news that their men would not be returning. The corridors of the Keep often echoed with the forlorn cries of the women and children left behind.

Like Baraccus, Magda hated the war and the terrible toll it took on everyone. So many had already lost their lives. So many yet would. And still there was no end in sight. Why couldn’t they be left in peace? Why must there always be those seeking conquest or domination?

There were so many other women who had lost their husbands, fathers, brothers, sons. She was not alone in such suffering. She felt the heavy weight of shame for feeling so sorry for herself when others, too, were going through the same agony.

Yet she could not help being smothered beneath the whispers of her own grief.

She also felt a deep sense of guilt over those she was abandoning. She had given voice before the council to those who had no voice. Over the last couple of years she had gradually become the conscience of the council, reminding them of their duty to protect those who could not protect themselves. The night wisps, for example, that she had seen only days before, depended on others to speak for them and their need to be left in peace lest their fragile lives be silenced for good.