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But he loves his daughter anyway

After all, the child is innocent If anyone is guilty, it is Anne for the ruthlessness of her auilty, it is the other five sorcerers, for aiding her illing hands If anyone is guilty, it is he

He will never stop punishing himself And because he is weak and imperfect, like all huhter as well, even if he never intended to harm her

Anne wins She has the child she wanted, the husband she lusted after, but she has kept her body pure, a reat is as tainted and unworthy Bernard stays, because he is couilty, because he has learned theof fear

He stays He names the infant after an ancient sorceress he read of in a book years ago while sojourning in Arethousa: Li’at’dano, the centaur shaenerations So All called her powerful beyond huue the consonants soften to make the baby Liathano

He calls her Liath

He stays with the Seven Sleepers, toiling under Anne’s unwavering and unforgiving gaze, caring for his beloved child, until the day eight years later when the fire dai sister Time passes differently in the upper spheres; an eye-blinkyears

That is when he flees with his daughter That is when he expends the untapped potential of his own ical powers to lock away her soul and her pohich shine like a beacon, so that no one can follow them Especially not Anne Especially not the fire daimones, kin to the woman-creature he loved and murdered

Did he run to save hi he has left of the woman-creature he loved? Did he lock away Liath’s true self to hide her from Anne’s machinations, or to conceal her from her mother’s kin, so that they could never find her and take her away froer was a river of fire,and powerful She never understood until noweak At moments she even hated hi whenwithout knowing it consciously she guessed that he loved someone elseweak, hated that part of herself, broken and crippled, that had chained her for so long

The river of the past, that which binds us because it has already woven its chains around us, flowed easily and without any obvious transition into the future, the unreachable destination where we are blinded by possibility, by hope, by unexaer, and by fear

She walked into the future with the river of fire strealed by a dai Queen Adelheidprotectively beside her

Sister Rosvita, aged and leprous, lies dying in a dungeon A discarded shoe, its leather eaten away by rats or maybe by her, rests just beyond her outstretched hand

The Lion, Thiadbold, who more than once showed her kindness, drinks hi ale out of a bowl He has lost both his hands but somehow survived Isn’t it a worse fate to live as a cripple, helpless except for what leavings others throw to you as to the dogs?

Ivar on trial for heresy before the skopos The Holy Mother Anne condemns him and his companions to death, but he s all along

Hanna dead, by her own hand The wounds that killed her cannot be seen on her skin

Sanglant, still fighting and always fighting because he will never give up until his last breath, as the she-griffin strikes for his exposed chest

Blessing stands by aLiath scarcely recognizes this nificent creature, newly come to womanhood, tall like her father and with a crea on how the light strikes the She is as beautiful as all the promises ever irl turns She shrinks back Pride and youthful confidence turn to terror as the h the door

"Hugh!"

Liath screas at her back Her kinsfolk, wings hissing in the aether and voices booive her room as she leaped up and out of the river of fire

Despite everything, Da had not abandoned her Nor would she abandon her own child Never would she abandon her own child