Isaure Wang swaddled Galath tightly. She didn't have any way of securing the note to him other than by tightening the blankets; she hoped it would be good enough.
Galath was a very quiet child. He watched her with wide eyes. Something new was happening, and new things didn't happen often to Galath. Isaure wondered what he would be like-- if he would be as curious as he seemed now, or as even-tempered, or as silent.
She kissed him on the forehead. He smiled.
The Death Eaters didn't gossip much in front of Isaure. But, in the prison cell that Odhran Lan called her quarters, she didn't have anything else to do except to watch and to listen. She knew that there was something planned for Galath, some Dark magic, and she knew he wasn't expected to survive.
She had tried to escape when Odhran had first taken her as his prisoner, or as his wife. She had spent nearly three days on the run with Rordan after he was born. They'd gotten more paranoid since then. The wards were stronger and blocked off her ability to use magic entirely. She was denied anything that could be a weapon. Her guards were armed, and they only sent ones who were exclusively attracted to men.
But she'd packed up a little bag with the essentials, and she'd broken off the leg of a chair, because no matter how hard you tried you couldn't deny someone everything that was a weapon.
She was going to die, or Galath was going to live. She was at peace.
Isaure kissed Galath's forehead again. In books, she thought, they always knew when it was their last chance to say goodbye. (Galath cooed, entirely unknowing.)
--
It only took three minutes to take Isaure down. It didn't even delay the ritual schedule. Odhran Lan would mourn the loss of his wife, but he had agreed to sacrifice that which was most precious to him in the world, his own infant son, so that his Dark Lord would live forever. The loss of his wife would give the ritual more strength.
But there is a power in a mother's love, a power that the Dark Lord knows not. And, though no one had thought of it, for no one thought much of Isaure Wang at all, when Isaure Wang stood at her door with a broken chair leg in her trembling hand, it was the third time that she had defied him.
Perhaps the Dark Lord would have noticed if he'd touched the child. But the Dark Lord had never been a man who was affectionate to children.
Galath had been quiet during the ritual. There were frightening sounds, strange people; but still he had thought, perhaps, that his mother would be back soon.
And there was an Avada Kedavra and a flash of green light and a surge of magic that even the Muggles had felt for kilometers around, and the cry of a small child who had just realized that his mother would never come back again.