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"If it's more than two days, I'll return for you. You have weeks, perhaps months yet, 'Beta. I promise."

"I love you," she told me.Advertisement

"You are the princess of this keep," I told her. "There is no queen. Anything you desire, you have but to ask. The servants love you already."

I heard horses below as soldiers made ready. "I have to go."

"I love you," she told me, again, and kissed me desperately. "With all I am, I love you!"

"And I you." With deep regret, I withdrew from her arms to don my battle gear, my weapons. She walked with me down the stairs and out into the courtyard, and bless her for it, her eyes were dry as we joined the others there, her chin held high. Queen-like, she was. Glorious.

I kissed her once more as I mounted Soare, and I felt her eyes on my back as we all rode away to face battle.

It was fierce, the combat. We fought for three days straight, and all that prevented me from returning to her after the first two as I had promised, was the certainty that it would end on the third. We had but to press on to achieve our victory. For me to pull out then might have ensured defeat. And so I broke my promise to my bride.

When I returned, it was to see the chapel doors thrown wide, servants, villagers, everyone who hadn't been with us in battle, filing in and out, wailing and weeping aloud. Flower petals lined the path outside.

Frowning, I dismounted and hurried forward, asking first one person and then another what was happening. Was this a service for all the fallen soldiers? It couldn't have been for we had only just returned with their bodies.

But each person I approached only looked at me in something like shock, and then backed away, crossing themselves and muttering prayers.

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Baffled, I shouldered my way through the crowd, and into the chapel. And then I died inside, for I saw her.

My beloved Elisabeta lay on the same bier where she had wept for me only four nights prior. Her golden hair spread around her, and the finest gown she had ever owned covered her slender frame.

A cry like that of a wounded animal was wrenched from the depths of my soul as I ran to her, gathered her into my arms, and felt no life in her. She was cold. Stiff.

"No! No!" I cried. "By the Gods, it cannot be."

"Come, my son -"

The priest was there, his hand on my shoulder, but I whirled on him, on all of them, screaming at them to get out. To leave me to my grief. And they did, all except one mourner who waited silently, in the shadows a good distance from me. For hours she waited there, while I wept and held Elisabeta's body in my arms, and railed against the Gods, against Fate for having given me such bliss only to rip it from my hands.

Eventually, the rage ebbed and I knew what I must do. If my beloved would leave this life, then I would go with her. I'd no desire to live without her. And perhaps, somehow, we would be together again on the other side.

My decision made, I moved to return to the cliffs where my life would end, after all. pqdm.com