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For the first time in longer than I could recall, I felt the tug of destiny on my diadh-anam, our diadh-anam, grow a little more urgent, a little more insistent. Bao made a faint noise in his sleep. I glanced westward, wondering what awaited us.Advertisement

Oceans; further oceans.

I wondered how many.

There was Jehanne’s motherless daughter, whom I had promised to tell about her mother’s courage of heart and the love and kindness and generosity she had shown to me. One day, I would tell her about the genuine fears that underlay Jehanne’s foibles, and the steadily increasing joy and excitement with which she had welcomed her daughter’s birth.

And there was ambitious and charismatic Raphael de Mereliot, not content with the gift of a physician’s healing hands; Raphael, who had nearly been taken over entirely by the last demon he summoned.

We had saved him, Bao and I and Master Lo. We had driven away the demon Focalor, a Grand Duke of the Fallen. But I had always wondered about something I saw that day, after the demon had been forced to relinquish Raphael, after I had thrust him through the doorway and closed it. After it was all over, I thought I’d seen the briefest glimpse of Focalor’s lightning flicker in Raphael’s storm-grey eyes, and wondered if a trace of the demon’s essence lingered in him.

If the divine spark of my diadh-anam could be divided, mayhap a demon’s spirit could be, too.

That same feather of foreboding brushed along my spine, making me shiver.

“Moirin,” Bao mumbled sleepily, half-awakened by my shudder. “Stop thinking and go to sleep. And no dreams tonight, huh?”

“It’s just—”

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“Sleep,” he said a bit more firmly.

So I settled alongside him, my head on his shoulder, and Bao held me in his Kurugiri-marked arms, his entire body making a strong, safe haven for me, a pledge of enduring love. His breathing softened into sleep once more, a soothing and calming rhythm. Although I did not think I could sleep yet, my breathing slowed to match his as it had so many times before, and I thought that there was nowhere else I would rather be, and no one else with whom I’d rather face my everlasting destiny. Traces of Naamah’s blessing lingered over us both like a promise that one day, every day would be as joyous as this one.

Somewhere, the bright lady smiled in gentle approval.

Somewhere on the far side of the stone doorway, the Maghuin Dhonn Herself paced in majesty, lifted Her mighty head, and gazed at the errant child She had loosed on the world with love and pride in Her deep, deep eyes.

A word surfaced in my thoughts. Home—the gods were calling me home, and I was ready to go.

Whatever came next, Bao and I would face it together.

As candles guttered low and sank into pools of wax all across the bedchamber, and I drifted down toward darkness, a sigh of happiness escaped me.

I slept, and did not dream. pqdm.com