William's heart ached with a pain that threatened to tear him apart as he watched Jessamyn leave. Every fiber of his being longed to reach out, to stop her, but he knew he couldn't.
The path she was walking was not his to walk with her. The weight of the promise he made her was the only thing keeping him grounded, the only thing that allowed him to break free from the spell circle that held him captive.
"Why does it have to be this way, Jessamyn?" he whispered into the darkness, his voice barely audible. The echo of his question seemed to hang in the air, unanswered.
As he stood there, trapped within the remnants of the spell, fragments of the future he saw flickered before his eyes.
He saw her death. It came to him in jagged glimpses, a cruel echo of the way Jessamyn had described it. But was it real? Or was it a twisted illusion conjured by the spell? He couldn't be sure.
