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Still, the king could offer a few suggestions… suggestions he knew his well-trained Vengeance would construe as direct orders After infor--that the year was 1428, refreshing his knowledge of the proper custoold coin, the Unseelie king "suggested," choosing his words carefully:

"Your body will have needs in the est you seek only bland foods"

"As you will it, e of Kyleakin is near the castle wherein you’ll reside It o there only to procure supplies and not dally therein"

"As you will it, e"

"Above all else, it would be unwise to seek the company of female hue" A weighty pause, then, "Must I leave you?"

"It is for but a short tieance took a final look at the land he found so beautiful "As you will it,her fingers over it, touching his face, wondering why she’d never thought to try to create a likeness of hi hours! She wondered where it had come from, why it had been delivered to her, if it meant he really existed out there soo, and this tapestry had been his portrait, handed down froly cared for over the centuries

Still, that didn’t explain hohy it had been sent to her She’d never told anyone about the strange recurring dreaical explanation for the tapestry’s arrival Baffled, she shook her head, scattering the troubling questions froly at his likeness

Funny, sheabout him for forever, but until now she had never known his last name He’d been only Aedan and she only Jane

Their dreahts had been void of small talk Theirs had been a wordless love--the quietly joyous joining of two halves of a whole No need for questions, only for the dancing and the loving and, one day not too far off, babies Their love transcended the need for language The language of the heart was unmistakable

Aedan MacKinnon She rolled the name over and over in her mind

She wondered and wished and ached for hiainst his face, curled up, and tenderly kissed his likeness As she drifted into drea deep sleep that always felt to Jane like falling--she thought she heard a silvery voice softly singing The words chi in her mind:

Free him from his ice-borne hell

And in his century you bothhast thou loved hi ht no more, swept away on a tide of dreams