The Lamb Alternate Ending

Prologue – The Lamb
The dark procession gathered in the square an hour before dawn. A cloudless sky promised fair weather, but cast down eyes took no notice. Gloomy visitants wore mourning robes blacker than the dark side of the Maiden. We could not depart for the path of the favored until all shared in the pity of our loss. I wasn’t spared any such pity from these milling specters; their eyes boring through me even in the darkness. My father spoke in a melancholy whisper of honor and duty, but the hollow words couldn’t find root in my mind. Proenius, my brother, stood beside me, holding my hand as contrast to the emotionless words of my father. Praises such as ‘he was a good man’ or ‘a fine soldier’ floated to my ears from conversations around me. This was a day about me as much as it was about him, but I was

He might still be alive,” I responded.
“You fool girl, you will do no such thing. You will fail and you will die, damning both of you!”
The Requist interrupted the exchange, ignoring his wound in the face of duty, “Do you understand what is at stake? Do you understand the price of failure? You are risking your soul as well as the soul of a great man on this gambit.”
“I understand.”
His tilted his face up to the sky and I followed his gaze; yes, the Sanguine Twins were upon us. “Then take the oath,” he continued. “By blood bind your soul to your promise.”
I didn’t understand the argument, for if I failed I would be dead anyway, but I nodded assent.
My father’s face was a collage of fear and disappointment. He turned away. I spoke the oath. “I will, under penalty of death and damnation, make all haste to recover the body of my husband, and bring it back to the land of his ancestors, taking any risk necessary to ensure its return. I bind my soul to my promise with blood.” I made a small cut on my forearm and let the blood drip on the white linen of the coffin.
The Requist nodded, “The oath has been made. The Twins have