When I woke, the room was bright. I blinked, but didn’t squint. My headache was gone.
Gray daylight shone through the windows. Rain drummed against the glass. The grandfather clock ticked in the corner.
Rarity lay in bed beside me, eyes closed. It looked like she was sleeping: calm, beautiful, and for the first time since I came back, she didn’t look sad.
I touched her cheek, and she was cold. This was her one wish, to fall asleep and never wake again. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t understand. But I had granted her wish out of love, and it left a crushing emptiness in my heart.
I pressed my head to hers and stayed there a long while. I breathed in deep to smell her perfume—something to remember, something to cling to when I returned to the cold world outside.
“Goodbye,” I whispered, leaving a lingering kiss on her forehead. And with a numbing sadness, I pulled away from her and got out of bed.
A corpse in a raincoat lay on the floor. I knew he would be dead, but I had to be sure. All color had fled his burned face. Blood and foam coated his mouth. He was gone—choked on his own poisons, just like me.
I untied the golden lace and pulled mom’s dress off over my head. I held it for a moment. It smelled like smoke, and there were black spots of ash on it. I folded it the way Rarity had taught me years ago, and left it on the bedside.
The sound of rain rushed inside when I opened the front door. The garden glistened with water, the sky above a dull gray. A column of smoke still rose from the town’s heart.
With my contract void, I was free to disappear somewhere so far from my debts and memories I’d never hear my name again. But the hunger would return in a day, and I would find a way back to the lake to see Rarity’s smiling blue eyes in a world that wasn’t broken.
Rain washed dry blood and tears from my face as I walked away from my sister’s house for the last time. There were no pieces to put back together again, no wounds left to heal. Nothing was left.
Just like the lilies, when one withers, the other follows.