“It will be alright,” he says. It is what he always says as the end nears. Steel rasps behind him, and he barely turns from her in time to catch it with his own blade. It is a quick battle, and soon he is lying on the ground watching death nibble away at the edges of his vision. “Take care of her,” he chokes out as the blood fills his lungs and he wheezes out the last of the air in him. He feels the earth and the leaves slithering over him like a blanket, and darkness swallows up everything but Farin’s face before it takes even that. It wraps him in a shroud of warmth and he goes to his half-year rest, content in knowing that the King of Holly will take care of their wife until he of the Oak bursts from the earth in the summer to take up the mantle of husband and God again.
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