"You've found her?" he asked.
Boy looked over at Brook then back at Hartford, and nodded.
"She … she is in the garden." the boy said, swallowing each word.
"She is dead, Hartford!"
Hartford lost all colour in his face and his pupils dilated to pin-prick size, then he ran outside to the garden.
"Oh God, NO!" Hartford had finally found his lovely betrothed, dead. He embraced her limp body gently into his arms and took the dagger out of her body, hearing it scrape against her exposed ribs. He set the dagger to the side and kissed her cheek and he wept. Then, as if her own body cried for Hartford's pains, a tear crept forth from her eye, mixing with his own tears and flowing towards the arm-length gash in her chest.
Hartford moaned and rocked back and forth; for with her death came the death of his world.
Brook was disturbed and directed Boy to prepare a chamber upstairs for
Hartford and Mercedes.
Boy went forth and paid no attention to Lloyd standing up on the balcony, looking at the crowd. In his eyes were tears and he too was pale from his witness. In his mind swirled whirlwind thoughts of the demonic masturbation that came out of Halls and touched every living thing with its Evil impurity.
He could not keep all that he saw, from his mind.
All laughed and were enjoying themselves, while outside was an innocense was forced into the obscurity of loss. What had happened to his own love, in Besten, those few short years ago, had been replayed before him, this night. It was a terrible loss brought on by someone's whims of power and glory.