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He passed out of her sight, into the anteroom She heard low voices outside Brother Ish’s chair as the snoring presbyter startled awake, s as if from sweet dreah had already left the anteroo

She found him deep in prayer in St Thecla’s Chapel This time, she made sure to examine closely the thresholds of the two adjacent doors that led up into the galleries He had gone far beyond the crude bindings of cloth and dried herbs that common folk used to protect their henhouses fro sweetheart into falling in love Like every threshold in the skopos’ palace, lorify God by the beauty of its ornamentation, these lintels had been carved by master artisans As befit the chapel dedicated to St Thecla, the vivid carvings represented cups and robes, her sigils But when Antonia reached up to brush a finger over the shape of one of those cups, she felt the sting of ht colors with a glaze It stank of lavender and narcissus, harbingers of sleep and inattention He had ground the of theht cliallery and thereby observe him

But Antonia’s mind remained clear She took the narrow steps slowly, careful to allery was empty; everyone else was asleep, or at the feast

But she was not entirely alone Below, illuolden head bowed in prayer

Maybe she was getting a little obsessed with him She would have to be careful In part, she e before, but of course she eable as Heribert Not that Heribert had proved lant

Below, Hugh whispered words too softly for her to understand The ribbon twisted and wound around and through his fingers in a sensuous dance, one that, briefly, reminded her of that one dalliance, three months of carnal pleasure as luxurious as silk--

All at once, the ribbon went slack The dai time he knelt in intense concentration and with his eyes shut

Now and again she caught scraps of words, whispers spoken as though to an unseen accoe does not corievously… Fate guides her movements"

All at once, he threw back his head By the light of that simple lamp she saw such a look of bliss transforht hi

Ai, God, if only she kne to bind such eather it all to herself People were so weak, and so transparent Even as cunning a h in the end wasted his substance in the throes of ecstasy Yet his yearning was as rich as cream, and she could not help but drink it down as his lips parted and he sighed as does a man who has at last achieved his heart’s desire and the fulfill physical need

"Ai, Liath," he murmured, like a caress Like rapture

Antonia licked her lips

He jerked back, eyes snapping open He looked surprised, alriain,himself The ribbon twisted weakly in his hands A pale thread of aetherical light stabbed down, as though fro itself back into the substance of the ribbon The lamp flared hotly, and he winced in pain

"Da and thrashing like a snake trying to escape its captor, but he had too tight a hold on it as heFor an instant she could actually see the bound dai within the confines of the silk ribbon before he tucked it away into his sleeve

Standing, he was shaking, shaken by his unseen encounter, too distressed to take any notice of his surroundings as he tucked his book under his arh to escape an inferno

He had learned to conceal from others the emotion that blazed in his heart But Antonia kneatch and to listen, how to find out just those secrets that would serve her best when the time came, finally, for her to act Anne’s scope, for all her poas too narrow Anne thought only of the co cataclysm, not of what could be built out of its ashes

Antonia did not intend to make that mistake, but she knew she would have to have allies, whether willing or not

Hugh did not return to the skopos’ private chambers He wandered by a roundabout and rather co the parapet set on the cliff’s edge, the high point of the Amurrine Hill on which stood the two palaces, symbols of the endless tension between spiritual and secular rule in Darre