Chapter 30
Elsebeth
I watch the necromancer drive a knife into Ursula’s throat, destroying all that beautiful white flesh, and something snaps inside of me.
It’s not my heart, though that feels as if it is being mauled, but something inside of my head.
I can actually hear it, this crunching sound, not at all the swift hard snap of bone, but the slow crack of a branch that won’t break cleanly.
No, not a branch, a dam that can no longer stand tall and strong against the beating of the water.
After the snap, I am filled to the brim with feelings, anger, hurt, disbelief, guilt, hatred, grief, sadness, and many other things besides, ones I have only seldom felt and others I know not the names of, and they all tangle together like rope, and the rope rises inside of me and binds me fast so that I cannot move; I cannot speak; I can only stand and watch as the necromancer moves the knife to the side, slowly and with clear intent, ripping that beloved flesh threaded through with pale veins.
Blood spouts from the wound.
And all the while, Ursula stands with a little frown on her face, as if she doesn’t understand what is happening. She raises no hand to her throat, and the blood pours down in an unbroken stream so that, for a moment, it looks like a sheet of dark silk shifting in the breeze.
But there is only so much blood in the body, and Ursula’s seems in a hurry to gush from her throat.
By the time the necromancer pulls out the knife, she is swaying on her feet.
It’s only a few fevered heartbeats more until she staggers to her knees.
The necromancer plucks the skull from her hands as she falls.
Ursula is dead before her dear face hits the ground.
She is dead.
She is dead.
She is dead deaddead SHE IS DEAD sheisdead
she is she is sheisheisheis she is DEADDEADdeaD SHE IS DEAD
SHE IS DEAD SHEISDEADSHEISDEADSHEIS SHESHEsheShEsHe my BELOVED she is dEAD she is dead I watched her die I stood and watched ithappen isawher DIE and did naught to save her AND NOW SHE IS dead she is she is she is
she
is
dead