Page 4 of Dark Destiny: A New Thread in the Tapestry

"I don't think he could absorb a word of it. He heard your voice and your kindness, and that's all that got through." Alena rose and rested her hands on Annani's shoulders. "And honestly, Mother, that was the only part that mattered anyway. You have all the time in the world to tell him who he is to you and who you are to him."

2

KHIANN

He had been climbing, and then he had arrived, but where?

Light assaulted him as if someone were shining the sun into his eyes. It went straight to the back of his skull and stayed there, burning. He could not turn away from it or shut it out, because he did not know how to do either.

Something enormous lay across his whole body, pressing him flat, and it took him a long, confused moment to understand that the weight was his.

He had a body?

Yes, he did, and it ached everywhere.

His chest hurt from the labor of hauling air in and pushing it back out. His throat was a dry strip of fire. His back hurt in a hundred places along its length, his hips hurt, his heels hurt, and somewhere below him a slow, deep ache pulsed in his bones in time with the thing that was thudding in his chest.

Where did he come from?

What was the dark that he had climbed out of?

He wanted to go back to the place where nothing hurt, the place of perfect calm, where nothing troubled him, where he felt as one with everything and nothing.

Then a face leaned into the light above him, blocking the glare, and he forgot the aches and the place of nothingness.

An impossible face, luminous and framed by flames, with eyes the blue of deep water, ringed with green at the edges.

Who was the beauty?

He knew her too, but not how.

He had known this face before he had arrived here. He had seen her.

The dream.

It came back to him all at once, vivid and real, more real than this strange hall. A city of sun-washed stone. Petals falling from rooftops. Two carriages coming up a wide avenue from opposite ends, the crowd roaring, the bride sitting beneath a tall headdress, her flaming hair under the gold.

She had been laughing.

She had been blowing kisses off her fingertips.

She had been the last light to go out when the world turned gray, and he had reached for her and had not been able to touch her.

And here she was, leaning over him.

He was dreaming again.

He had dreamt of her before, and now he was dreaming of her again, and dreams did not have to make sense.

Something warm was wrapped around his hand.

He noticed it slowly, not all at once. A gentle pressure, warmth, two delicate hands holding one of his, cradling it.

Hers.

She was holding his hand.

Why?