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Fahter that had always reminded the immortal of a full harvest ainst the pain of her absence, even as hope increased his heartbeat

"You watch hter faded Kalona opened his eyes Feeling as if he carried a great weight, he started walking He needed to get back to watch over the fledglings That one thing he could do, and do well

"No other fledgling will be allowed to do anything stupid enough to be conde as I watch over thehts aloud What Kalona didn’t say, didn’t even like to adet the two fledglings’ cries forthe vampyre hadn’t been difficult Dallas had attempted to murder a vas who haunted him They had been boys who had siht

"Compassion"

The whispered word halted Kalona’s "Nyx?"

"Compassion"

The as repeated It was spoken too softly for Kalona to be certain, but the warmth, the infinite love in it, had to be Nyx And then Kalona realized where he had stopped He was standing before the wooden door to Nyx’s Temple

The door that turned from wood to stone under his touch as his Goddess denied him entrance

Slowly, as iffor her, Kalona lifted his hand He pressed his pal stone

It remained wood

Kalona’s hand trembled when it touched the door handle He turned it and pushed, and with the sound of a woh, the wooden door opened

Kalona stepped into the foyer of Nyx’s Telanced at the glistening amethyst fountain that was recessed into the niche in the thick stone wall He passed beneath an arched doorway and entered the heart of the Goddess’s temple

Vanilla and lavender scented candles filled the roorance They were suspended fro tree-shaped chandeliers along the wall held raceful hand were lit in the corners of the room An open flame burned from a recess in the stone floor Kalona barely noticed any of that His sole focus was on the ancient wooden table in the center of the temple It held an exquisite marble statue of Nyx Kalona stumbled forward and knelt before the statue He stared up at her She seelisten, and Kalona realized his eyes had filled with tears

In a voice choked with those tears, he spoke to her "Thank you I know I do not deserve to kneel at your feet yet I may never deserve it Not after what I have done to us both But thank you for allowing me entrance to your te time, knelt before his Goddess and wept

Neferet

Neferet curled in upon herself, hugging the threads of Darkness that still covered her, and she relived the end of her journey

Cascia Hall hat the humans had called the preparatory school that had been built in the heart of midtown Tulsa on the land that so called to Neferet All male, of course, the huustinian branch of the People of Faith In the year 1927 it was not for sale That fact had not troubled Neferet The High Council was not ready to purchase another school in America--at least not in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, that existed in 1927

Neferet had known that time was in her favor In the seventy-five years it took for her to h Council into ustine h Priestess of the newly acquired House of Night in Tulsa, Oklahoili No, she was host story She was a powerful High Priestess whose gifts were so ili

Little wonder she had been so drawn to Oklahoh the Cherokee people who had settled there that Neferet discovered a hidden aspect of her intuitive gift Not only could she read people’s y But only at the ht her that Neferet had done hts as she’d died She had absorbed the old wo, and Neferet had not been able to get enough of it