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You’ll re to fight at his side You will rehout this final horror, I was useless, helpless, too terrified to be any good to anyone, includingyou this, I have earned your contee your s I did in that hell I can’t explain it, anyhow--no words can capture the terror that I felt in those liest choice that any creature on this earth must face: kill, or die Eat, or be eaten

I will say this, though: I think I made the choice that any woman would when confronted by the monster that murdered her beloved

I set the knife aside Didn’t need it Shiny’s chest heaved like a bellows Whatever Dateh had done had hurt hiic that still wavered around him Unnecessarily, I smoothed the cloth across his chest, then rested my hands there, one on either side of his heart

My tears fell onto my hands in a patter of threes: one two three, one two three, one two three Like the weeper-bird’s cry Oree, oree, oree

I chose to live

The paint was the door, ht me, and belief was the key that unlocked it Beneath

"I paint a picture," I whispered

I chose to fight

Dateh let out a rattling sigh of pleasure as the shi just above Shiny’s heart I knehat it was at last--the visible od ancestors and distilled through generations of huic was, really, in the end Possibility With it I could create anything, provided I believed A painted world A memory of home A bloody hole

I willed it into Shiny’s body It passed through his flesh har pulses of his heart

I looked up at Dateh Soed in me then; I don’t knohat All at once, Dateh hissed in alar at my eyes as if they had turned to stars

Perhaps they had

I chose to believe

"Iteness

The concussion of it stunned both Dateh and ainst Dateh’s barrier with enough force to knock the breath fro, because this was so faer afraid I believed, after all I kneas over, even if Dateh had yet to learn that lesson

A new sun blazed in the ht to look upon directly The heat of it was terrible even frohten lilow in every direction, this aura Lines and curves seared s, lines connecting, circles overlapping, godwords for out of thin air The sheer con would have stunned raceful gyroscopic patterns around a huh the brilliance and arments done in shades of pale, and a slender, white-htsword held in one perfect black hand I could not see his face--too bright--but it was impossible not to see his eyes They opened as I watched, piercing the unrelenting white with colors I had only heard of in poetry: fire opal Sunset’s cloak Velvet and desire

I could not help reo, when I’d found a man in a muckbin They had been the same eyes then, but so much more beautiful now, incandescent, assured, that there was no sense in coain, reverent

Those eyes turned to nition in them He saw me and knew me for one of His children, but no more than that An entity so far beyond huh for aze arm

Before Him huddled the Dateh-creature, thrown by the same blast of power that had flattened me As I watched, it clambered unsteadily to its many feet, the mask of its humanity shattered

"What the hells are you?" the Dateh-creature deht He raised his sword of white steel I saw hundreds of godwords in filigreed patterns along the blade’s length "I athen what exists and cull that which should not"