A fresh gust of lavender smoke coiled around Issari, tickling her, stroking her like the hands of a lover. Issari sighed deeply. It was so healing, so warm, so sweet.

I was thinking something. I was realizing, remembering. I . . . where am I? She blinked. She did not recognize this place. Where was she? Who was she?

"Girls!" rose a voice. "Girls, feed me. Feed me my precious cakes."

When she squinted and blinked, Issari saw a massive figure at the back of the hall. The man looked like a mountain of melting butter; he must have weighed as much as ten Issaris. He lounged upon many pillows, and he was naked but for a blanket across his lap. Sweat glistened upon his rolls of fat, his bald head, and his jiggling face. A thin, long beard like a rat's tail hung off his chin, and his tufted eyebrows thrust out, dyed green. Each of his fingers sported several gaudy rings.

"Feed me!" he cried out. "Girls! You—Issari. Feed me my cakes, the precious sweetness."

She blinked. Issari? It was her—her name. She was Issari! She rose to her feet. The chamber swayed around her, and the purple smoke wafted. Her fellow concubines giggled, batting their painted eyelashes.

"Feed him, feed him! Feed the Abina Sin-Naharosh. Feed your husband."

Issari narrowed her eyes. Her husband? Yes. Yes, this great man—if a man he truly was, for he looked almost like a demon—was her husband. She remembered. She had wed him! The serpent had tasted her blood, then tasted his, mingling their souls together. Tanin had tried to stop it, he—

"Tanin," she whispered. Tears stung her eyes. How could she have forgotten her sweet Tanin, the man she loved? Her fellow son of Requiem?

"Requiem," she whispered, and now tears flowed down her cheeks. She had almost forgotten the land of dragons across the sea, her home.

"Eteer." Her lips trembled. Eteer—her first home, the kingdom along the coast, fallen to the nephilim. She had led the Eteerians here! Where were they? How could she have forgotten, abandoned her people, and—

"Feed him, feed him!" chanted the concubines. They danced around Issari, their gilded chains jangling. The smoke puffed out from their lips, stroking Issari. The lights of their jewels blinded her and she laughed. She hovered upon the clouds of hintan, and the lights shone, and the gold sparkled.

"I will feed you, my beloved husband." She laughed. "I will feed you your precious cakes, though you are sweeter by far."