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"An avatar," Kritanu said in his precise, smooth accent "You must have acted briefly as so that power and strength to Narcise That is the only explanation I have"

He was an old hty, with hair as black as Narcise&039;s He wore it in a long, sleek tail at the base of his neck His any skin was smooth, hardly wrinkled, and his eyes were sharp and black, like jet beads Giordan had land, for Kritanu was a friend of Dimitri&039;s Aunt Iliana

Giordan and Narcise were all sitting with Kritanu in Di at last returned from Paris only two days earlier They&039;d spent nearly a fortnighthis household

"What&039;s an avatar?" Narcise asked,closer into the warm, familiar curl of Giordan&039;s arm He smelled like comfort and war hi and sink her teethliterallyinto hiion and writings froe and I find it impossible to comprehend An avatar is an entity from a heavenly level who manifests himself on earth," Dimitri said The note of disbelief in his voice was nearly cood come to earth in human form You cannot be serious Giordan? An avatar?"

Kritanu s with shared hu that Giordan is a huod of any sort In fact, that would be impossible But, just that, for a miraculous moment, he acted as a conduit for Narcise, and the moksha he&039;d attained allowed that sa to go through it of her own volition"

"Naturally," Di his voice "So if Giordan had attained Enlighteno, why in the devil couldn&039;t he transfer it tofor it so hard?"

Maia, who&039;d just walked in at thata tray, said, "Because you didn&039;t have a soul-deep connection with Giordan like Narcise does Nor did you just want to be loose of Lucifer-you wanted to be ain, Gavril You needed to be So you could be with ave him an arch look

"A o that, e are truly ready for it, we receive whatever grace it is we need," Kritanu said, accepting a handleless cup of tea from Maia He cupped his hands around it and breathed in the scent-soht "Each has his or her own path to travel I don&039;t pretend to understand it all, either"

"And so Cezar still lives?" Maia said as she settled next to Di Narcise&039;s suspicion that there was to be a second wedding in the Woodelica "You&039;ll keep hi at the thought of Chas, still in Paris, attending to the final details of arrangeperhaps because he didn&039;t wish to witness her happiness with Giordan He s Narcise&039;s insides squeezed at the memory of the stark misery on his facethe emotionless eyes when she&039;d awakened from her ordeal to find both of the men who loved her in attendance

And only one of them had she really wanted

Chas would never have been truly happy with her He couldn&039;t accept who she wasor who she&039;d been; there would always be that layer of judgment for what he saw as her mistake And he was so enamored of her beauty that he wasn&039;t able to see the rest of her-her strength, her needswho she was behind the perfect face and foruarded prison Narcisedown at her "Since you saved his life" His eyes ith affection and adain of how he&039;d taken his time, his patience and risked his life, to woo her and unravel her layers of distrust all those years ago

Thank God he&039;d forgiven her for her blindness

"Chas is taking care of the details Moldavi will be kept in relative comfort, but his chamber and the hallways around it will be lined with ivory, so there will be no escape," Giordan continued

Narcise shrugged, looking at her hands "I realized I couldn&039;t let hi he did, I couldn&039;t make that choice Because deathit elie And hat&039;s happened with Voss and Dimitri, and even Giordan and me" She looked up "I suppose there&039;s always hope that so to think of how the concept of karma works when one is immortal," Kritanu mused "After all, as we believe, one normally has many lifetie But as an i, you will have an eternity to observe this extraordinary situation and see what happens to your brother Now that he has been given the chance to change"

Dimitri said to Narcise, "And who knowsperhaps Cezar will be helpful to you in some other way, sometime in the future"

Later, in the privacy of their chaolden body He s her hair, froth, to where it pooled next to the and fa if she ought to tell hie that had happened to her Her body see woht?" he asked "We could try to find soh She&039;d told him about how she felt when she&039;d chased off her attackers after leaving Rubey&039;s It had occurred to her that she could use so skills to do that sort of thing on a regular basis As a sort of protective agent on the streets at night, watching for opportunities to help the vulnerable and weak

It would give her soh she couldn&039;t be violent si another, she could use her strength to help the weaker-by saving women, who, like she&039;d been, were controlled or assaulted by others "I think that would be very exciting Perhaps we could go to Seven Dials I understand there is a public house there that attracts varlets and the bad sort-and more of Luce&039;s half demons, too I don&039;t recall the name of it"