Arya sat on a window seat in a long-forgotten room in the corner of Uru'baen, playing with a strand of her hair, staring blankly out of the window. They had won. She knew that it would take her years to come to terms with that simple truth. Of course, that wasn't what was gnawing at her heart, what was dominating her mind and emotions, leaving her numb inside. A few raindrops fell on the window and she watched them, her mind elsewhere.

The promise she had made still rang in her mind; "I will not die." How ironic that had been, how strange that she, the one going into danger, following Eragon on a fool's errand, had lived and her mother, surrounded by elves and spellcasters and strong in sword and magic, with many more years of experience, had been the one to die. Arya had known somehow, that she would not perish, that she would endure, but the thought that her mother, the Queen, would die, was so unthinkable, so intangible that it had never crossed her mind.

Yes, she had worried, for her mother and the multitudes of other elves putting themselves in danger, but she hadn't really believed that her mother could ever die. Especially not now, not when they were just beginning to understand each other, to understand that the other cared. To have her brutally torn away, with not even a chance at goodbye, as her father had been so many years ago, didn't seem real somehow. She almost believed that her mother would enter at any time, scold her for sitting around when there was so much to do and then smile cautiously, as she had done so many times over the past few weeks, to take the sting out of her words. Arya buried her head in her arms. How huge, how hopeless to conceive, that her mother was gone, gone forever, that they would never again argue, never again talk of the world, that her mother would never again return to Du Weldenvarden and walk beneath the leafy green branches.

And still her promise rang in her mind, that ironic promise, taunting her with it's fulfilment. "No," Arya whispered, "it was not me who had to die mother, but you, even though you worried so and I did not, even though you were always cautious and I was not. You did not wish me to leave and perhaps, had I been with you, you would not have. I did not think, I..." she trailed off, still staring at the window. "Why did you do it? Why did you attack him? How did he win against you, mother? And how was it that Roran, who is human, prevailed where you could not? How could a human succeed where all the might of the elves had failed, twice? How did Eragon win where father failed and how did Roran win against such a monster?" She leant back against the wall, that one question refusing to leave her mind; how could Roran, a human, not even a spellcaster, win where her mother had failed, where countless elves had failed?

She returned her gaze to the window. Was that the price they had to pay, for ridding Alagaesia of Galbatorix? Her mother's life for theirs? More proof that no gods could exist in this world, that they would demand such a price, when her mother had sacrificed so much for their people? Sighing, she leaned her head against the wall, watching the rain trickle down the window, looking like tears.