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Exhaustion, not all of it from her own blood loss, turned Simone’s limbs to lead Her hands shook as she ripped clean strips fro and her forearet a blanket from her chest so she could sleep on the floor, but Korvel’s arm encircled her waist to pull her down beside him He did not wake, but when she tried to htened and he shifted, tucking her head in the space between his shoulder and neck The coolness of his skin felt good against her hot face

Of course, he needed her warht his hold another e

Korvel no longer perhtlands, where the Darkyn went to rest and recover froe territory reminded him of Alexandra, whom he had lured therehis mortal life, as one of the prices of immortality was perpetual awareness Even when blood loss and injury shut down his physical for nowhere, he sensed only what there was: nothing

Korvel knew the brief battles in which he had engaged had not hared in his flesh had rendered hiht his way back to life and his place in it, but his current apathy ray void in which he lay suspended, only to return to a world that no longer held any interest for hi nun with the angelic face She had been tormented and nearly raped; she remained alone on the other side He suspected he hadn’t killed all of the men who had attacked the château, and if they came upon her while he was helpless…

Korvel reached for consciousness, and at once the void dragged at hih which he waded, one infuriatingly slow step at a tierously so; if he were to awake it would have to be by will alone

Once el who had tended to his wound Whatever faith had co God, she was still an innocent As such she needed--no, deserved--his assistance I will go to her and keep her safe

He could feel her, close to hinashing teeth of fresh pain, she calrew as his sense of her faded, and he reached out blindly, capturing her warainst hihts dwindled and he entered a darker corner of the void to rest and heal

So of the sun roused Korvel to consciousness He sensed this tith to draw on, and crossed the e away, and opened his eyes

Cracked hand-carvedspotted with small water stains and draped in one corner with the dusty reht illuoblets half filled with pretty pebbles and shells, which had been spaced like treasures across a stone shelf Afrom the knob of bolted door, over which a plain wooden cross had been nailed A basket with balled wool and knitting needles sat beside a shabby tapestry chair; a chipped blue stoneware jug sat inside abasin in an iron stand

He turned his head to see a small shrine built atop an old secretary: flowers and votive candles in punched-tin holders surrounding a diin Mary in her blue robes and white headdress A rosary of gray stone beads and blackened silver lay draped around the base of the statue

If this were the cloistered cell it appeared to be, then the nun had brought him to her convent If this were a jail cell, the French police had greatly i conditions within their prisons

A flutter of fabric drew his attention to the foot of the pallet, where the nun stood with her back toward hi, and while Korvel knew he should look away, he couldn’t stop watching her She pulled the bloodstained gray habit over her head to reveal the long line of her spine She tugged at the drawstring of her only undergar thes

Now naked, she went to the basin stand, where she poured water froan to wash the blood fro of hisher, but the knotting in his groin did His shaft hardened and swelled, inching back his foreskin frolans

Carnal desire racked hi since he had wanted any mortal female that his arousal seemed utterly alien, as if some unseen predator had burrowed under his skin and decided to a his cock

The nun’s body beckoned to him, an oasis of pleasures yet to be had, but he could resist her by thinking of her innocence She belonged to God, not him It hen she took down her braids and unraveled theers, that he crumpled the bed linens in his fists Once free, her hair fell in luold in the candlelight

Korvel had not seen a woman with such hair in centuries, not since mortal fe a single hair froht had also chased the shadows from her skin, and revealed a collection of odd, pale marks all over her The random positions of the hly unlikely they were tan lines The marks themselves formed a variety of shapes; on her left hip one narrow stripe curled like a lock of hair, but a few inches above it a broader, straight slash bisected her shoulder blade

Only when she dried herself and went to kneel before the shrine did she coes of the marks, which made Korvel realize at last what they were