She may yet change Erin, like Melchior, into clockwork, but she will never change him. It will not be long by the time measured in Crystalglass, Irrylath's life, his heroism. He knows to hope but that is all he can do right now, that there is an unbinding of this magic that has trapped her.

It is his great sorrow. Bards will sing of that long after they have forgotten the words of the rime that was his undoing.

But now he presses his lips on hers, on her cheeks where there should be tears but there are none, on the space at the base of her ear. "I love you, Aeriel, until I die, until Crystalglass shatters and the world dissolves into the abyss of cold space."