After a lifetime of darkness, I want to leave something behind that is made of light.
Both of her hands cup my face. Violetta stares at me with a look of determination, and then she brings me to her and hugs me close. “You are a light,” she replies gently. “And when you shine, you shine bright.”
Her words are starting to turn soft, and she is beginning to fade. Or perhaps I am the one fading. The whispers in my mind are gone now, leaving the inside of me quiet, but I don’t miss them. In their place, there is the warmth of Violetta’s arms, the beating of her heart that I can hear against her chest, the knowledge that she will leave this place and return to the living.
Please, I whisper, and my voice comes out as quiet as a ghost’s. Tell Magiano I love him. Tell him I’m sorry. That I’m grateful.
“Adelina,” Violetta says, alarmed as she continues to fade away. The feel of her is growing faint. “Wait. I can’t—”
Go, I say gently, giving her a sad smile. Violetta and I stare at each other until I can hardly see her. Then she disappears into the darkness, and the world around me blurs.
I feel the cold ground beneath my cheek. I feel the pulse of my heart die down. Over me, the looming figure of Moritas bends to enfold me in her embrace, covering me in a merciful blanket of night. I take a slow breath.
Someday, when I am nothing but dust and wind, what tale will they tell about me?
Another slow breath.
Another.
A final exhale.
Violetta Amouteru
There is an old legend about Compasia and Eratosthenes. As Violetta crouches, crying, over her sister’s dying soul, she thinks of it.
Adelina had first told this story when they were very small, on a bright afternoon in the gardens of their old home. Violetta remembers listening contentedly while she braided her sister’s silver hair, wishing her own hair could look so beautiful, grateful and guilty that she did not have to bear the consequences of it. Long ago, Adelina had said, when the world was young, the god Amare created a kingdom of people, who ungratefully turned their backs on him. Hurt and furious, Amare called on the lightning and thunder, and pushed up the seas to drown the kingdom beneath the waves.
But he did not know that his daughter, Compasia, the angel of Empathy, had fallen in love with Eratosthenes, a boy in the kingdom. Only Compasia dared to defy Holy Amare. Even as her father drowned mankind in his floods, Compasia reached down to her mortal lover and transformed him into a swan. He flew high above the floodwaters, above the moons, and then higher still, until his feathers turned to stardust.
Every night, when the world was quiet and only the stars were awake, Compasia would descend from the heavens to the earth, and the constellation of Compasia’s Swan would transform back into Eratosthenes; and together, the two would walk the world until the dawn separated them again.
Violetta does not know why she thinks of this story now. But as Adelina made a bargain with Moritas for her life, so does Violetta find herself kneeling at the feet of Compasia, her own goddess, begging for the sister who had once cast her out, who had struck at her, who had nevertheless fought and hurt for her. She finds herself dreaming of the night they stood together, sailing through a sea and sky of stars.
Violetta aligns with Compasia, the angel of Empathy. And she makes a bargain of her own.
I am death. And through death, I understand life.
—Letter from General Eliseo Barsanti to his wife
Adelina Amouteru
There is a small, singular light somewhere in the distance. It is brilliant and blue-white, something reminiscent of the color I’d seen when we entered the immortal realm through the origin. It is a light of immortality, a light of the gods, a star in the sky among billions. I find myself yearning toward it, struggling through the night in order to grasp that spark of warmth. I can see, for a moment, the world beyond ours, the heavens, the stars that burn alongside me.
Somewhere in the darkness, I hear voices. They are unlike any voices I’ve ever heard—clear as glass, mighty and deep, so unbearable in their beauty that I am afraid it might drive me mad. I think they speak my name.
As I draw closer to the beam, it splits into various colors. Red and gold, amber and black, deep blue and pale summer green. They gather around me in shafts of color, until it seems as if I were on the ground and the colors surround me in a circle.
The gods.
Adelina, one of them says. I know it is Compasia, the angel of Empathy. There has been another bargain.
I don’t understand, I reply. They are so tall, and I am so small.
There is a feeling of light under my body, of wind and stars. There is the disintegration of my form. Then, there is sky.
You will.
Raffaele Laurent Bessette
There is a brilliant flash of light, and a ringing that reverberates outward from the origin. Raffaele falls to his knees. The world spins around him—the snow and monsters and forest all blending into one—and for a moment, he cannot move. Tears run down his face.
Through his blurred gaze, he sees the monsters slow in their attacks, their bodies hunched, their gaping jaws closed, and their eyeless sockets turned away. They seem confused, as if something had taken their energy and left them as hollow shells. One of them stumbles forward, letting out a low moan. Then it falls. As it does, its body disintegrates into tiny shards of black, scattering across the snow like broken glass.
The same happens to another creature, and another. All around them, the monsters that had seemed unstoppable now crumble into pieces. Raffaele looks down toward the origin. The beam of light—the merging of the mortal and immortal worlds—has disappeared.