uried with the mountains of furs and quilted blankets, Enesfel’s queen of twenty-two years appeared little more than a skeleton dressed in lace, her sunken features those of a woman succumbed to despair and darkness, with only Bhyrhán’s hand in hers offering any modicum of comfort. One daughter’s death, following so hard on the heels of the other’s betrayal, had sapped her of the desire to live. Kavan watched her chest rise and fall beneath the coverings, inflating like the folds of a bellows and then deflating again with a wheezing rattle of breath.
It was a sound Kavan had heard before in others. The rattle of impending death as the lungs lost their strength and the heart behind them struggled to carry on beating.
He sat on the edge of the bed, his eyes locked steady on Diona’s vacant, unseeing ones, hoping that the notes from the harp in his hands would be enough to attract the záphyr, enough to prompt k’Ádhá, Dhágdhuán, or Kóráhm to offer a miracle that had not yet come.
Even if they chose to, however, of what use was such a miracle when the recipient had lost the will to carry on?