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She didn’t want enemies She didn’t want a yoraya, or war At least, so Scarab tried to convince herself, though in truth--and in secret--there was a voice within her that called out for those things

It filled her with dread, but it thrilled her, too, and her dark excite of all

Scarab did not perfor to prove herself to Carnassial, she rebelled against the idea--it was he who must prove hius’s face and touch his life, to knoho he was before she killed hiood thing, but it ithout doubt a great thing, and she would kno he had done it when all knowledge of ic in the so-called E the thread of his life, Scarab reached for it with her aniasp, but it was enough towas sheathed in urgency Do it

But she didn’t, because now she knew She had touched his life and knehat he was before she even saw his face, and then she did see his face and so did Carnassial, and though he did not gasp, Scarab felt the ripples of his shock as they us called Beast’s Bane, who dren sirithar and so could not be permitted to live, and as a bastard and a warrior and a father-slayer, was also, i the eh to know for a certainty, but she knew soly, toward Carnassial in the si, just words

She sent it to the others, too, ere out in the caverns and passages trying to for in this place She sent it to Spectral and Reave, that is, but caught herself before releasing, so abruptly and inadequately, this news to Nightingale, to whom it would us scanned the air where she stood And though she knew he couldn’t see her, she read his certainty of her presence in the steadiness of his gaze, and his reaction was another surprise in a layering of surprises

Confronted with the certainty of an invisible presence before him, he showed no alarm His expression didn’t harden, but softened… and then--confounding Scarab to her core--he sladness, such breath-catching, unabashed happiness and light, that Scarab, as a queen, young and beautiful, and had been smiled at by many a man, flushed to be the focus of it

Except, of course, that she wasn’t

When he spoke, his voice was low and sweet and rough with love "Karou? Are you there?"

Scarab flushed deeper and was glad of invisibility, and glad she’d pushed Carnassial back from her mind a moment earlier so that he couldn’t feel the flare of heat this stranger’s smile had sparked in her

His beauty--it was of the sort that made you fall very still and conserve your awe like a held breath His poas part of it--the raild ; just to breathe hience--but it was his happiness that pierced, so intense that she experienced it as much with her heart as with her eyes

Godstars She had never felt happiness like what she saw in him in that moment, and she was sure she’d never inspired it, either Her first night with Carnassial in the spring, when the rituals and dance had ended and they had at last been left alone, she had felt his hunger and delight before he even touched her It had felt like so real then, but, quite suddenly, it didn’t anymore

This look was so much more than that, and the pierce becas pulsed back to her froale, whom she had still not told--and for an instant they overwheli and telesthetes than she and Carnassial were, and one of their sendings--the two arrived together and tangled, so that Scarab couldn’t say which hose--conveyed a reaction of staggering shock that actually ain, his brow creasing in uncertainty as his s

Carnassial’s words, and on the heels of his sending, Scarab heard footsteps in the passage and ainst Carnassial in a corner of the chamber She felt him stiffen at the contact and draw i her with unsolicited touch, she supposed--and she was sorry for the loss of his solidity in the depth and breadth of this stunning strangeness

Then a figure cae She was neither a seraph nor one of the chiled with

She was… alien Not of this world Scarab had never seen a huht of one was blinkingly curious The girl had neither wings nor beast attributes, but instead of see like lack, this siance She was slender, andits first substance together out of midsummer shade, and her prettiness was of such a curious flavor that Scarab couldn’t say whether it wasShe was cream-colored, and as black-eyed as a bird, and her hair was a shimmer of blue Blue Her face, like her lover’s, was flushed with joy, and dappled with the sah this were so neeen them

"Hi," she said, and the as a wisp, as soft as the brush of a butterfly’s wing

He didn’t answer in kind "Were you just here?" he asked, looking past her and around her "Gla a presence, the irl, invisible, which ic

"No," was her answer She looked tentative now "Why?"

His next move was very sudden He took her arm and pulled her to hi into the emptiness of the chamber that was, of course, not empty at all "Is someone there?" he demanded, in Seraphic this time, and when his eyes raked Scarab now, they held only what she had expected to see before: suspicion and the low burn of ferocity Protectiveness, too--for the pretty blue alien he sheltered with his body

With his body, Scarab noted with curiosity, but not with his ainst anih that h his life thread and his lover’s weren’t as frail as gossa in the ether, as easily severed as spidersilk

--Are we going to kill hi, unadorned by any tone or sensory threads to hint at his own opinion on the matter

--Of course not, Scarab replied, and she found herself unaccountably angry at hi Unless you’d like to explain to Nightingale that we found a scion of the line of Festival and severed his thread

As she almost had She shuddered To prove that she could kill, she had almost killed him

A scion of the line of Festival These were the words she had sent to Carnassial and Reave and Spectral but not yet to Nightingale--Nightingale who had been First Magus to Scarab’s grandrief and survived No one else in the Second Age had survived veyana twice, and Nightingale’s first sitting had been for Festival

Her daughter

Scarab hteen years old, untried, and out of her depth She’d co to er than that, and she would need the counsel of all her