"No," he whispered, looking at her with the pride and confidence she remembered of him.
"Say it."
"I am going to stay. I release you."
At his words, she raised her chin and drew herself up, her face and bearing regal. "Then I have my answer. Thank you. I now know what to do." She stood and looked down at him, her pale, beautiful face in relief to the stars. "This is good-bye, Kanafinwë," she stated, her voice emotionless. She turned and walked away, tears starting to stream down her cheeks as soon as she turned away from him.
He looked back over the ocean as she left him, biting his lips together and clasping his hands over his knees. He stayed motionless on the sand until the sun rose, and far into the morning when tourists and locals populated on the beach again.
Children were playing and laughing around him when he felt it happen. He gasped, pounding his chest as he felt a portion of himself simply disappear. There was a hole left in its place. That piece of himself, her, he had kept tucked away. He was ashamed to be keeping part of her fëa captive but yet unable to let her go. It was freeing, really. He knew it was over between them.
And it was then he knew he'd not made a mistake, and that it was too late to go back. A bond once unmade, was unmade for forever.
He could move on at last.
