The Earth Soul'ess

Yet another excerpt, but from an entirely different story, one woven from a love that will last forever and never be realized, twisted together with the stories of a woman whose ruthlessness is matched by her goodness and a man who is ruled by his emotions but ultimately not defined by them.
I suppose this might be a bit of a spoiler, but yes, this is the very last scene of the story.

I gazed down at my hand, dark with blood, and for a moment, I couldn’t bear myself. Slowly, I let my fingers curl in on themselves. My eyes lifted, finding the other left, kneeling, staring where the Earth Soul’ess had vanished. In bewilderment, he turned to look at me, questions, perhaps assumptions, swirling in his eyes. I let my hand fall.

“Do not misunderstand. I did it for him, no one else.” He waited, mayhap too dazed for anything else. “One of them had to die,” I said, my voice torn between soft and emotionless. “They are not meant to be. And he is too strong, too selfish; it would have been her. He would have had to watch her die again, would have lost her again, and known the blame lay with him.” He would have spent another thousand years in despair and rage, until her avatar was born once more, and the tragedy would repeat itself, until the earth died away entirely. “While he lived, no matter how strong she was, no matter how he tried otherwise, she would never have been strong enough to do anything but drown in him.”

“Did he ask it of you?”

“No,” I told him, but it did not matter. He nodded distractedly, his gaze slipping to the chasm, still in shock. I glanced at the stain at my feet, and then looked towards him. “Come,” I commanded, and his head jerked to face me. “The world is in chaos; even if the Earth Soul’ess has returned to the heart, the earth is wounded near to death. We must order it. We cannot afford grief, or enmity.”

His eyes hunted through mine. And then he stood.