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"Last, the child will be mine to raise"
"Whatever you say," he whispers, because the daiuishable features, no human mask of a face, yet those are eyes that see him, that aze boldly She watches hi he has seen in a life that brought him face-to-face with many wondrous creatures He does not fear her He is too much in thrall to desire, the man who until now had remained faithful to his vow of chastity despite the many temptations thrown in his path
Whatever you say
The words haunt Liath
The corpse is carried away and buried fittingly The next day, Anne and Bernard are joined in holyon as witnesses Wolfhere paces restlessly throughout the cere ready to spit Rothaide, Meriaers for a handful of days like athat his wife is conteht shows hi, Arnulf, bed-ridden with a terrible fever, does he leave, hastening away to the side of the king he has pretended for all these years to serve faithfully
When Wolfhere is finally gone, Anne can at last work her spell, but hers is a devious mind and she has the means to punish the only man for whom she ever actually felt unbearable physical desire The fire of the daiiven a semblance of mortal substance, but in this process her features are molded so that they resemble Anne herself
Trapped and diminished, the daimone turns to the one who shows her kindness and affection Fire seeks heat when it is dying Bernard is not unaware of the way Anne has turned his wish back onto him, so that when at last the daimone surrenders to his patient courtship of her, it’s as if he islove to Anne herself, her face, her body, but lit by aetherical fire froel With that wicked, sardonic hu in his eastern travels, he even calls her "Anne" although Anne lies as helpless as a newborn in the villa, tended by Bernard hand and foot because he reood as his word His entire universe has shrunk to this villa, to the care he gives faithfully to the invalid who has made his wish become truth, to the sphere of the fiery woman-creature he worships and makes love to
Maybe what he feels for the daiht on by a glih reaches of the universe, too remote for the human mind to comprehend But if what he feels is not love, then it is hard to say what counts for love in a cold world
Because the world is cold, and the universe disinterested in one insignificant overn the cosmos, and not even love can alter the mover that impels them forward
Seed touches seed, by means unknown to huic A seed ripens and grows, and the child that waxes within the creature born not of Earth must build a mortal body in which to live
It happens so slowly that in the end it seems to happen all at once
The child consulorious fire is subsumed into the child she births, and the birth itself becoiven; even her soul is now part of the child She herself, the brilliant creature bound and trapped one
That she existed at all can only be seen in the newborn’s reht as sparks
He weeps for a long time, broken, pathetic, until Anne appears suddenly at his side, hale and hearty now that the spell which drained her strength has been dissipated by the death of the dai the baby as if for flaws, "this is how lust ends, in death and despair" She seems pleased to have found a way to escape this fate, since lust’s cruel hand brushed her as well She surveys Bernard’s bent form with disdain "Give me the baby now, as you pro to the naked little thing, still slick from the birth Where he made for his love a childbed for her labor lies only a soft blanket, nothing else, no trace of her
"She killed her mother, the one you loved"
"I know" He weeps, because Anne has trapped hiuessed, ould happen He fell as did the angels long ago, tempted by carnal desire, and now all he sees at his feet is the yawning Abyss His heart’s strength is broken at that th will be broken as well, bit by bit