It was too much to bear, the thought that she would have to go on yet another day alone. The time was passing by so slowly now. Seconds ticked into minutes, into hours, into days and continued to stretch out into the weeks that felt much more like centuries to her.
If her eyes were not restlessly watching the movement of the clockhands, then surely they were cast intently upon the window. Every now and then she would rise from her chair and move to sit closer to the dormer, her fingers splayed against the glass as her gaze shifted back and forth from the scenes taking place in the courtyard below.
And then, reluctantly, she would pull back. With her eyes downcast and a vacant expression on her face, she would return to her seat. It continued on like this for the first few months and then everything seemed to go downhill from there.
She had lost her appetite and declined to eat even the tiniest morsel of bread. Her body had grown weak and frail from the loss of nutrients, and yet it was clear that her mind was as sharp as ever, though soon she even refrained from taking part in a conversation.
Before long, she had refused to entertain visitors of any sort in her room and remained locked up alone, as though she was giving in to the inevitable that she was meant to die in solitude.
There was nothing left of the woman she had once been. Only the broken shell of her body. Even her eyes had glazed over, all the vitality seemingly sucked out into the void she had thrown herself into.
It was painful to watch such a powerful lady's downfall. To see every day another piece of her heart crumble into dust, another piece of her soul shattered and lost. She was beaten, broken, and very much alone.
That was probably the last thought that slipped through her mind as her body was spread out across the bed that was to be her final resting place, pools of sweat soaking the sheets on which she lay. Her hair was clumped and knotted around her pale face and her skin seemed to sag off her very bones as she lifted her arm and beckoned me with the crook of one finger.
Immediately, I stepped forward and her fingers closed around my wrist. She pulled me down onto her bed so that she could whisper in my ear. I shall never forget the lady's last words, in fact, not a day has gone by since her passing that they do not haunt me still.
With her mouth inches from my ear, her hot breath hovered over my skin. All the hairs on the back of my neck rose to attention, as though they were already dreading what she was about to say to me.
"This is your fault."
Those were her very last words. The last breath she was took.
Her fingers loosened from around my wrist and softly her arm dropped back onto the mattress. In that instant, I knew. She was gone. There was nothing I could do for her now. The time to take action had passed long ago.
I had watched her suffer and done nothing to ease the ache of her heart. But more than that, I now knew that I was the cause of that suffering. I was to blame for this lady's downfall. She had loved me and I had never returned those feelings.
I was her fatal error. I was the origin of her heartbreak. I was the undoing of Rowena Ravenclaw.