It was dark, the pain stark and cold rested on her heart like a razor-edged blade. The air was filled with the promise of winter's chill, the sounds of the celebration below dimmed and hazy, the laughter distant and the warmth farther still. Her hands were clenched around the balcony, knuckles white as starched snow against the iron. The cold seeped into her palms and numbed until the ice gave way to the fuzziness of nothing, her bones growing stiff and fragile and she knew that even the touch of moonlight would shatter her because the crushing pressure on her shoulders and the weights in her mind had broken the bones of her spine and the caps of her teeth and all that was left was flesh and pain and the words he had said to her before his footsteps had faded and she was left with a blank face and a pain scalded soul.
The sky was but a handsbreadth away, her eyes clear and sad and absorbing all the pinpricks of light, the world she had saved, the place she could call home before she had to blink and they were gone and the sorrow was there again, banished by nothing, forgotten for a moment in the breathtaking remembrance that she had made it before it had retaken it's deep seated place in her thoughts. He had left so suddenly, the goodbye she had expected replaced with an apology and the departure silent and unseen until he had gone and taken the other part of herself with him. She wondered if he had left anything behind with her.
He had taken her vallaslin. Accepting his offer seemed so wrong to her now, she felt naked, a part of her stripped away and replaced with betrayal, resentment, sore eyes and salty cheeks. The wind wrapped around her like an icy curtain, the thin shift she wore fluttering in it like a guttering flame, pale and small.
She hurt. The ache was deep, rotting through her bones, sucking at her feet and pulsing in her chest, the heart-sore sorrow encasing her more completely than the chill or the wind ever could.
There were footsteps behind her, the light ones that came with compassion and purpose, a gentle flutter of foot on cloth before the hand on her shoulder arrived.
"He's hurting too. Twisting inside, claws in his gut. He wishes he didn't have to run, but he had to. The truth was too painful, too bright, too stark for you to know. Hands trembling, heart aching, the apology is a salve of salt in the wound I cut, I've hurt her, forgive me, forgive me. He didn't want to leave."
She crumpled, shoulders slumping, the hand on her shoulder anchoring her. She sobbed, the soul-sickness raw and too sharp for anything but pain to emerge, for the grief to rear its head and brandish the acid barbs that sunk into her thoughts like a wolf's teeth.
Below, in the garden stained with the silver dipped brush of moonlight, the wolf hung its head in sorrow.