Disclaimer: I do not own the Inheritance Cycle.

She stared at the floor, completely shocked. Questions flew through her mind-how could someone do this, what was their mental state? Why would they do this? How could this happen to her? Others made themselves known too quickly to focus on.

All she knew was that her baby couldn't be dead. She just couldn't. How else would she find humor and childlike glee in small things? She wouldn't be able to live without her daughter. Not without Alexandria. It just wasn't possible. She had been the light of Arya's life, giving her hope when Eragon could not. What would her life be without her daughter? Alexandria had been the pride and joy of the entire race of the elves. She had been the hope they had all been looking for, the daughter of the Queen and a Dragon Rider. She had been so sweet...she just couldn't fathom it.

Without saying a word she got up and walked to the window of the living room that had been played in more times than she cared to count. And with that, she walked away from her husband's silent offer for comfort for the first time since their marriage.

She regretted that, truly she did. But she couldn't bring herself to face the truth. She couldn't bear to turn and to see the truth in his eyes, the truth that her daughter would be gone forever. The truth and the lifelessness. It was unfathomable. Unimaginable.

Impossible.

And yet, he had never lied to her before. He had even spoken in the Ancient Language. He had to know it to be true if he were to speak it with such conviction in the language that prevented lies. His eyes had lost their life, their sparkle. His eyes that had been filled with such determination and strength before were now lifeless, depthless, empty. The eyes that had caught her attention in the first place, the eyes that had made it so hard for her to let him go, push him away and let him go again. The eyes that captured her interest and the eyes that she had stared into as she had pledged herself to him as his brother did to his wife so long ago. The eyes

that always reflected what he was feeling.

She couldn't look at them to see the glassy orbs that simply reflected her face.

She gasped and fell to her knees, feeling as though a hole had been punched through her chest. She couldn't believe it. Children were a blessing among her kind, and now that she finally had one...she was gone. Just like that. All because one of the younger elves couldn't handle an issue.

She cried out, lamenting her pain to the sky. It wasn't uncommon to hear cries to the sky and the trees from the elves nearby and she had resisted adding hers to the chorus of sadness and desperation as long as she could. Eragon wisely stayed back for a few minutes before going to comfort her. It was the best course of action he could see, and she eventually quieted.

Years passed before she finally stopped crying when she saw a little girl run around, regardless of the race. It was years more before she could speak the name of her late daughter.

Arya died shortly after she could finally utter Alexandria's name. She just wasn't willing to live without her daughter; she died of a broken heart that stopped beating.

Eragon lived on for many years, training young Riders for a few years before deeming his first few students ready to take on the task of teaching with the dragons' hearts of hearts. He went back to the elves' forests then and awaited death to find him.

It wasn't long before it did and he happily joined his late wife and daughter once again.