Ankyra Sound and it's as if my eyes have been replaced with gasoline.

There came a moment where Ephraim nearly let go. The feeling of his mother thrashing to get away from him filled his heart with ice and wrung his guilty soul out through his eye sockets. When she bucked he almost released her, almost stumbled back into the water, almost stammered out a hundred apologies and pleas and promises—

—but Caiaphas was gone. She was gone even if it wasn't for the crushing force of his jaws. She was gone where no apology or plea could reach her, and when she went still, the finality of it speared Ephraim to the core.

Only then did his teeth relinquish their grasp on her throat. A paroxysm of grief drew a strangled cry to his lips as Ephraim held his dead mother in his thin arms and lost himself. He pressed his face helplessly to her worn shoulder, soaking the grey fur there with every sob that shook him. Every minute of time he'd lost with her when he fled in the storm and found Drageda, every mistake he would never have the chance to atone for, every day he would have to go on knowing he would never know her...

He believed she would never take him back but that never stopped him from hoping that maybe one day, maybe some way—!

A wretched wail took up residence in Ephraim's throat as he crumpled over Caiaphas' body and wept for every wishful dream he had lost and everything he would never, ever get back with her death.