But even though he accepts my bargain, his eyes shutter closed, and his breath stops in his chest. Grey settles into his cheeks immediately as if it was just waiting for the moment to come flooding in. I hold my breath. I’m waiting for him to take a breath and surprise me and not be dead after all. But a long minute passes and nothing happens. I bite my lip to keep back my scream of despair and something breaks loose from my arm.
It’s the ouroboros. Free from his magic, free in his death, it falls from my wrist and wakes again from its sleep. It’s still too small to molt and change to something new. Instead, it bites his chest, right in the wound.
I try to snatch it back, but it is too quick for me and it slides from my hands and into the sea and I am alone and bereft on these black, cursed shores.
All is lost.
All is lost.
And I look back to the tentacles writhing on the black rock and think of how they will put another girl into them, months from now after I have perished here beside my husband from lack of food and drink. I look to my lover, dead on the black rocks, and my heart dies, too.
Better that he had lived and loved another, and I were still in that cage.
Better any outcome but this one.
My eyes are thick with tears and my head rings hollow and aching.
But his cheeks – were they that pink before?
My brow furrows. This is strange.
And his wound – is it closing over?
My heart stutters back to life, beating so hard I fear it may leap out my throat.
I look from the wound to the sea where the snake disappeared and then back again and I gasp as his eyes flutter open and with a self-satisfied grin he says, “A resurrection snake. I knew it was smart to give that viper to you.”
* * *
