Eurydice was dying, and Orpheus was powerless to save her. 

  Orpheus had dashed to his bride and fallen at her feet, his lyre slipping from his hands. But he was too late; the viper’s venom already coursed through her veins. The wedding party silently encircled the newlyweds, bearing witness to both their first and final moment together. 

  Orpheus called to her beneath her frozen gaze, but she didn’t stir. He bent and kissed her. Her fluted lips, always warm, always inextricable from song, went scaly and white beneath his. He pulled away. Her face and cheeks sank with each passing second; her skin greyed as if all the passion, the lust, the memories, and the dreams that had made her were leaking from her like a drying creek. 

  He gently stroked her hair, wishing for more time. The strands fell from her scalp and tangled around his fingers, like dry grass caught in a rake. He began to weep, caressing her cold, unresponsive limbs. Her body was chilled as if she were pulled from a wintered lake; cruelly, the small patch of her neck where the viper’s bite had sunk into her flesh was still warm. He pressed his body against hers, hoping to transfer his warmth, let the pounding of his heart speed hers, now too faint to be heard. She exhaled one last time, a child’s breath. 

  In the silence, her spirit rose and fired through the hidden passage to Hades, a star zooming through the cosmos. Her wedding ring rolled off her withered finger, spun and fell. Its edge traced in the dust the shape of a coil, like lovers’ initials.