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“You’ll be alright.”
His voice was calm. His voice was so calm while being accompanied by the crackle of flames that it chilled her to the core.
“You’ll be alright,” he repeated, gently lowering her half-conscious body to the ground. “I’ll be back. I’ll be back in a moment.”
She only managed to weakly murmur his name. She tried to grab his shirt, to hold him back, but in the end could only watch — watch as his figure vanished into the burning house.
The Dessendre family manor was devoured by flames. Its merciless tongue-like strokes broke through the windows of the eastern wing, casting light over the dark December night in Paris. The air was hot, unnaturally hot, and the uneasy silence was broken only by the distant sound of fire brigade bells.
Her heart was pounding, threatening to break free of her chest. He had been gone only a few minutes, yet it felt as though hours had passed. She inhaled, but instead of fresh cold air, and her nostrils filled with a warm, strange scent — the one she had never known before that night, and the one she would never forget again.
Hey eyes fixed on the wide-open front doors, through which no one appeared. She took a step forward, ready to go after him, then pulled back again, her hand instinctively pressing against her belly.
No one emerged. No one came out, while the flames went on turning the house into ashes.
She could have sworn she heard screams — and she prayed they were no more than the creation of her scared imagination. Yet the longer she stared at the fire, the more certain she became that her ears were not deceiving her.
And then everything was as if in a haze.
The firefighters arrived quickly and yet, at the same time, too late. They fought the fire, but it resisted, stubbornly refusing to fade under the torrents of water. It seemed like the whole eternity had passed before it finally relented and the night once more sank into darkness.
Only then they carried a body out of the house. Lifeless, mangled by the flames so terribly that even she, at first, did not recognize the form she had once known perfectly like the back of her hand, did not recognize the warm skin she had touched each night, the chest upon which she had slept, the arms that had wrapped around her shoulders, the fingers that had combed through her hair.
She could not remember how she came to kneel before him, nor what she said, nor what she screamed, nor how the tears streamed down her face.
She reached out her hand to touch his face, but it only trembled and froze in the air.
Something within her had broken, leaving a hole that only he could ever have filled.
They were to be married. Everything was ready. In one of those rooms hung her snow-white dress beside his elegant suit. Only yesterday they had chosen the flowers for her wreath and his boutonnière. On the table laid the invitations she had not yet delivered. Their first family portrait was already finished, and Verso would constantly say how he could not wait to see it hanging in their shared bedroom.
And now he lay before her, life already left his body.
That night her world lost its colors, leaving only a black-and-white canvas of pain, with his face painted into the very center of her heart. All that she had dreamed of was carried away forever by the fire that consumed the Dessendre family manor on the night of 33rd December.