Mina was crying. She'd been crying for some time, and while Desmond couldn't blame her- in fact, he wanted desperately to cry with her- he found that his own tears wouldn't come. He sat with his arms around his wife, trying to give her whatever comfort he could as she sobbed into his shoulder, but there was no comfort to be had. He just stared at the wall of their bedchamber, wondering why the gods were so cruel.

Their daughter, little Helicent Flowers, was dead after barely a year of living.

Maester Kevan had done all he could to save her, but the fever that had taken her had struck so swiftly that there was nothing the men could have done. Desmond knew that babies died all the time, everyone knew that. But now, when it was his child, and his wife who was crying in his arms about the death of their little girl, he was stunned by the monumental unfairness of it all. Helicent had never done anything wrong in her life, she couldn't have, she was just a baby. But still, the gods had seen fit to take her away from her parents, and now, Desmond and Mina were going to have to go on somehow.