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“Oh yes. But death always does.” My mother smiles. “You know, some philosophers have said it’s like falling asleep, a gentle lull toward the beyond. Isn’t that so silly? It is death. It is the great pain.” She blinks at me, grin wide. “You will face the void alone and in anguish, like every person who has faced it before you. It is inevitable.”

I try not to think of what I’m leaving behind—a future, friends, Lonan. I don’t want to accept this, but I feel the weight of death tugging at my heels. I am out of choices to make.

“I want to know,” I tell Morta.

Her grin goes wide. “It will be the verse. By your own hand.”

Of course. I, who was trained to curse, trained to kill, child of Dark and Light, will be my own destruction.

I turn to Nona. “A verse. And then I die.”

She nods sagely. “If you please.”

A verse about death. The very thing I’m about to swallow like bitter medicine. I close my eyes so that I don’t have to look at the Sisters’ terrible faces when it happens. And then I begin to recite, gripping the silver stake as the words flow into my heart.

I knew a sparrow

Bold and sprightly

Who clung to the wind

And stretched ’cross the sea

To reach distant shores

Because he longed to be free

But the waters being wide

And the sparrow being wee,

His wings did fail

And his breath did flee.

The last words he sung

As he fell to the sea

Were “I am no prey,

Not death’s casualty.

I could not be contained

By what I could see.

I lived fully alive,

So death I will greet

Wings spread wide

And singing merrily.

Remember me, friends,

And the song that I sing.