“And though I would have given my last drop of blood, my very soul to fight it off, still I felt it take me. The awful arms of darkness, reaching up from that splintered stone and dragging me down into sleep unwanted. And the last sound I heard before it took me was not my broken, ragged breath, nor my love screaming my name, nor the sound of all we’d built, all we’d done, all we’d wished for, crashing down around my ears. “It was laughter.
