The man watched her fall. He blinked, certain that what he saw wasn’t real. But it was no illusion. She plummeted toward the ground, and there was nothing he could do. She didn’t scream as she dropped. There was nothing but the blue sky and her body folding as she raced toward her doom.

Even if she had screamed, he wouldn’t have heard it. Blood rushed through his veins, and a throbbing began in his ears. His pulse, his breaths, his sobs—nothing could overpower all that noise, all that fury, all that fear. 

He wouldn’t make it there, but he tried. As her body neared the ground, arms stretching toward the sun, toward an assailant, toward the gods—he tried.

Desperation turned him dense; his divinity could not undo what would happen. He could not use his healing gifts to fix what would be so irreparably broken, but he was convinced if he got there fast enough, he might be able to do something. 

Anything.

If only his divinity could alter time. He could slow her descent, he could unwind the tangled rope of decisions which had created her noose. He would have done anything to keep her from this fate.

As the dull thump of her body echoed in his bones and the scent of charred hair wafted into his nostrils, he couldn’t believe it had come to this. He would have given anything to prevent what he saw before him now. The twist of her neck—broken—was the only thing which gave any indication she was, in fact, not sleeping. Her hair fanned out around her, like a princess in a fairy tale, waiting for her prince. 

But she was no princess, and he was the furthest thing from a hero.

He was the cause for this ruin, this unspeakable nightmare. 

He pleaded to the gods, to Rhia in particular. Please, he begged, let her wake. Let her hate me for what I’ve done. Let her wage war against me. Just let her breathe. 

But the goddess did not answer.

Instead, she gave him a fleeting gift. Something he was incomprehensibly shocked to hear. 

A heartbeat. 

It was so impossibly faint; the noise couldn’t belong to the woman he loved.

With trembling hands, he pulled out a dagger as tears rolled down his face. Kneeling, he tore at her dress, using the blade to rip and saw, to get to the skin below.

With a deep inhale to prepare him for such butchery, he began to cut into her womb.