Promise

[selenias]

Damuron didn't cherish his luck.

If there was a difference between dying, and then real, permanent death, he wouldn't have known, because it had happened all too quickly—and when he was finally able to stare past the irritating blur swarming his eyes, past the radiance that had to be her–

Canary was already gone.

When he woke, he assumed himself to be dead, too.

I won't abandon you, he had told her—but now, bathed in a lantern's glow, and feeling an uncomfortably heavy weight embedded in his chest—it was the one promise between them he hadn't been able to keep.