Chapter Eighteen
Rafe stood in the center of the henge surrounded by white candles, cold down to his soul. Osanne hovered within the archway of light between worlds, straining as if invisible ropes held her back.
She smiled, with love and longing. Gently, she said, “I cannot cross over the threshold unless you let me go.”
Let her go!
He had spent the last two months preparing for this moment. Could he do it? He had supposed that all the preparation and the ceremony itself would allow her to leave—either for Heaven or for a return to mortality. It should have been enough. That was the sacrifice. Or so he had supposed.
Could he truly let her go in his heart and accept it if she never returned?
He had lost so many around him. Benjamin.
His fellow soldiers, friends, even a commanding officer who had been a mentor and friend.
The blow of their loss, his grief, related directly to how much they meant to him.
He had fallen into a habit of keeping people at a distance to protect himself from deeper heartache if he lost them, too.
The less he cared about their lives, the less their deaths wounded him.
He had vowed never to be responsible for another person’s fate. As he grew to care about his friendships with the villagers, with Peter and his family, and especially about Osanne, he had rested safe in the belief that he bore no burden of responsibility for their lives.
Until now. He had made the sacrifice of choosing to perform the ceremony. But now, he must do more. He must truly let her go.
His heart cracked. Then cracked again. She would come back. She must. But if not, he loved her enough to free her.
He swallowed. Drew a breath. Nodded. “Go to the light, Osanne. I’m letting you go.”
She gave him a dazzling smile filled with unbridled joy.
That moment as she floated in the light, a halo surrounded her body and she looked more solid than ever.
Her hair took on a glorious golden sheen, and her skin glowed.
Even her eyes became brighter, more vivid. She moved higher into the light.
Osanne disappeared.
The archway remained. Rafe held his breath. Would she return? Could she? The chance was small. Everyone had told him so.
He clung to hope that fate would bring her back to him. They would have a real life together. Have children. Grow old. It would happen. He must have faith. Faith that had given him the courage to summon the Angel of Death. Faith to perform the ceremony. Faith to let her go.
As if someone had closed a door, the arch, the light vanished.
Rafe stood in the darkness. The candles had extinguished. No moon. No stars. No Osanne.
Darkness.
She wasn’t coming back.
He was alone.
Rafe fell on his face and sobbed great wrenching wails that shook his body and drained his life. Finally exhausted, he lay on the cold ground. Cold, silent tears slid out of his eyes. The wind knifed through his coat and chilled him all the way to his soul.
Dawn lightened the dark sky to gray but all the world lay in drab, lifeless silence. Without the strength or will to move, Rafe remained on the dead hillside, surrounded by the henge that had held hope, but now only mocked his foolishness.
How could fate have brought them together only to tear them apart?
Footsteps crunched dead leaves, coming closer. Rafe lay unmoving. He had let her go. Now, she was gone. He had lost the great love of his life.
“Rafe?” Peter’s voice broke the stillness. “You’ve been here all night, haven’t you?”
Rafe opened his eyes. Carrying a blanket over his arm, Peter steadily approached. The bright red blanket reminded him of blood against the barren landscape.
“I suspected as much.” Peter unfolded the blanket and laid it over Rafe. He sat next to Rafe. “She’s gone, then?”
Dully, Rafe said, “I really believed she would come back. I thought I was being so brave to take this risk, but really, I believed it would work out the way I wanted. I was na?ve.”
“You were not na?ve. You had faith. But sometimes even the greatest faith of the holiest of men cannot change the will of God. We must trust Him and His purpose.”
Rafe pushed himself up to a seated position, wrapping the welcoming warmth of the blanket more tightly about him.
Peter hugged his knees. “I’d like you to consider something. This may be difficult to hear.”
Flatly, Rafe said, “You still think I was living under some grand delusion.”
“It’s a possibility, but that’s not what I was going to say. Perhaps you were not meant to be with Osanne.”
Rafe squeezed his eyes closed.
“Perhaps you merely needed to meet her. She is the reason you came to our village, the reason you returned to your ‘true self,’ I believe you called it, the reason you have let go of misplaced guilt over the fates of your friends and your men. You needed her in order to heal, to become whole, to find peace.”
A breeze picked up and carried the smells of dying woods combined with smoke from morning fires.
Everything would continue.
Could he?
Peter’s hushed voice added, “Now you need to let her go to make room in your heart for another.”
Rafe gave a sharp, sour laugh as Peter spoke the very thoughts that had taunted him earlier. “Another.”
Peter lifted a shoulder. “Now that you are not so wrapped up in your grief and misplaced guilt, you can, in time, love another.”
Rafe didn’t want to hear it. He wanted to burrow deep inside his grief and loss and misery.
But Peter was right. About everything.
If he had known of a surety that Osanne would not return, would he have let her go? No, probably not.
The searing pain in his heart, the physical ache in every part of his body, would not soon heal. Perhaps never.
He tried to picture himself with another woman. With Osanne gone, could he ever recover from his grief enough to give his heart to another? Would there be enough of his heart left to give? Did he want to?
No. Never.
Osanne. His beloved. Lost to him forever.