There was so little time left for Victoria, a fact that was embedded in the very air surrounding her sickbed. Family had, per custom, come and gone. She would die with only her husband. If she was responsive or awake, she wouldn't have changed a thing.
"Victoria was old and sick," Victor whispered to himself. He could not count the number of times that phrase had escaped his lips since being unable to wake his wife that morning. Now the sun was sinking, smeary-edged and bloody, to the horizon.
It will be at sunset. How he knew, Victor had no idea. It was, of course, too poetic to be true, but he did not doubt it once the thought entered his mind.
In the last dying rays of day, a single moth cast a single shadow on the window looking into Victoria's chambers. It sat as still as the grave.
"Come in," said Victor. His voice was barely audible, but it did not shake or catch. The moth obeyed, it seemed, and came to rest on the dying woman's wrist. Just in time to feel the last time it ever pulsed.
It was in the dark that Victor wept. And weep he did, despite the internal speech he had so well rehearsed (it was empty and false now). He lay his sallow cheek on what was once Victoria's arm. After it was dripping with tears, Victor summoned the strength to turn his head.
The moth watched him.
"Please," he told it, raw with grief. "Please, Emily, take care of her."