Finally I was strong enough to try to walk again. As soon as she saw I could make it on my own, she vanished. I never even had the chance to thank her.' He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again his voice was soft and low. 'As long as I live, I will never forget her eyes.' He shook his head in wonder. 'An angel's eyes…'
Karin, Riandra, and Varith exchanged knowing, — sorrowful looks, but they said nothing.
Music and light drifted anew on the darkling air, filling the night with celebration.
She stood on the edge of a sheer precipice, glowing in the gauzy moonlight like a statue hewn of white marble. The wind whipped soft tatters of silk about her body like tendrils of lavender mist, and her golden hair streamed back from a face as round arid pale as the rising moon, injury had twisted one of her shoulders into a hideous hump, yet this imperfection only seemed to accentuate the ethereal beauty of her face. The woman gripped something that hung about her throat. Metal glinted in the moonlight. It was a golden locket. The woman stared madly into the night, as if her glowing violet eyes glimpsed something there that no other could see-something vast, and ancient, and eternally ravenous.
At last she turned and vanished into the gloom, leaving the darkness to its own designs.
