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No... no...

Zavian’s hands grabbed her, and he shook her. She didn’t budge, not one movement, not a flutter of her eyelids. He carried her, and she was stiff.

Zavian lifted her out of the lake. He laid her on the grass, and he began to pump her chest, one hand over the other, waiting, hoping for her to sputter out water and sit up.

There was only so much loss granted during a lifetime, and his will not be twice, his will not be both the women that mattered the most in his life.

But Neera wasn’t getting up. She still wasn’t breathing.

His eyes clouded over, white and golden filling in with blood red. The rain continued with a vengeance. A low growl emitted from Zavian.

She can’t be gone.

She cannot.

.....

Neera cannot be taken away from him like Lilah.

His fangs protruded, and something ripped in his chest, an old wound being torn open, expanding and possessing every fibre of him, twisting him in agony, drowning him deeper, and deeper.

He tilted his head back, and tore out a scream that pierced through the skies, and the lightning zapped through, and the entire sky went a bright white.

….

Grief creeps up in a tricky way.

It comes up to you when you least expect it. It could be the most normal of days or the happiest of days, and suddenly, a life is gone. Forever. It wakes you up into a numb reality, soaks you in disbelief and denial, and an urgency for things to go back to the way they were, patch up the life as you know it to be.

As Zavian rushed Neera’s cold body to the insides of the castle, the urgency flared in him. He would not lose the woman he loved twice, he would not. He would save her by any means, search the ends of the earth, go to any realm, trade his soul, as long as she could just breathe again. Zavian took her up the stairs, her body falling limply in his hands, and inside her chambers. The room had grown cold, as if noting her parting from it. He laid Neera on the bed and stared at her unmoving face.

Flashes of their time played in his head. The first time he saw Neera. The first time she ran a comb through his hair. When he wanted to use her to bring Lilah back. The time at the inn. The way her face brightened up upon seeing him. She inebriated and confessing she loved him.

He should have told her he loved her, he should have told her he loved her more than life itself. She wouldn’t go, not yet, not when he had thousands of things he wanted to tell her.

Zavian drew back, his body crumpling in on itself, and his thoughts spinning. He was going to bring her back. One way or the other, and he would do anything for it.

Zavian set to work. When he stepped out of the chambers, Jasmine was already there.

“What happened? Did you find her?” She asked, eyes frantic as she tried to make her way past him to see Neera.

“Don’t go in there,” Zavian warned.

“Why? Zavian, your eyes…,” the words dried off in her mouth. “Please tell me what’s wrong. Did something happen to her? I need to see Neera for myself.”

“I said”, his voice was low, and the timbre to it shook through the walls. “Don not go in there.”

Jasmine stepped away, nonplussed. Zavian marched on. Outside, the rain was beginning to clear, and Zavian moved to the stables. He took his horse, and even the stallion could sense its master was in no mood to waste any time.

He rode fast, and as the gust of wind slashed through his eyes, so did the painful beat to his heart intensify, like a whip to his chest, but he kept his focus on the task in front of him.

It was dark when he reached the witches’ cluster of huts. The protective magic, a fence around their perimeter, sizzled through him as he entered, and he ignored the stabs of pain that bruised his skin as he pushed past it. The witches, alerted, began to step out one after the other, and Zavian scanned them all, and until Anna, Eloise’s daughter herself, stepped out of her hut. The fire from the sconces on the poles lit the area in an ember glow.

Anna blinked but didn’t show any surprise to see him that late.

“Your Majesty,” she bowed. “What brings you here?”

“I want you to gather everything you have to bring someone back from the dead.”

Whispers rippled through the other witches. Anna looked up at him, features just like her mothers, her nose twitching, the only sign of an expression on her face.

“You make a rather strange and heavy request, your Majesty,” she said. “And it is going to require the witches from other covens as well.”

“Get them all down here, and anyone who refuses to heed the call will be severely dealt with.”

Anna’s mouth twitched, but she said nothing. She looked up to the sky, to the full moon, and back at the King.

“The full moon will last three days. I can get them tomorrow morning,” she said.

“No, you will go right now,” Zavian ordered.

Maybe it was his eyes, blood red and full of storm, but Anna didn’t argue. She went into her hut and came back with her hat, and the other witches followed suit.

“I will send them the message, your Majesty,” she said. “And we will be there by evening tomorrow. But I have to warn you, your Majesty, it is not certain that they would come back to life.”