And then Anonoei realized why. All the power to burn things was part of the body still, but Bexoi could not consume young Danny with that fire, because Anonoei did not wish to harm him, and it was Anonoei’s will that the fire responded to now.

Danny’s words had finally reached Bexoi’s deep understanding, and her inself echoed the wordless understanding beneath his spoken words. Everybody dies, and Bexoi realized for the first time that there would be no exemption for her.

“This is that day,” said Danny—gently. Even kindly. “No one has harmed you. No one else is causing your death. You gave up any claim on life when you killed your little boy. You handed your life to Anonoei when you burned her own body out from under her. You know that I have done nothing but teach Anonoei how to love your body better and more deeply than you ever did. And in return it serves her, as faithfully as it served you, and more joyfully. Now go home to Duat, Bexoi. There is One there who remembers what you meant to be, when you left there and came to Westil. He knows your whole story, while you know only a part of it. Go home and find out who you were, and who you are, and who you might yet become.”

Only then did Anonoei recognize another presence in that place. Not really in the room they occupied, not here in the palace of Prayard. But wherever he was, he had decided to let them sense his … attention. The watchful concern of Duat.

Danny seemed unsurprised. Anonoei could feel his relief. Whoever this was, whatever powers the stranger had, Danny welcomed him, because to him this one was no stranger at all.

Anonoei felt something like a shudder, not in the body, but in Bexoi’s inself; Bexoi was not prepared to endure the visitor’s attention. Yet it could not be escaped, so she shrank. Whatever part of Bexoi it had been that tried to reach into the body and control it now withered, and any part of the body that still clung to Bexoi’s inself was now stripped away. She was only herself now, the ancient part of herself that had once been given such power. Nothing but her naked self, small and terrified. Pain and loss. Alone.

Are we all this small in death? Anonoei didn’t mean to ask the question; she barely knew she had thought of it.

But the answer came immediately and clearly, not from Danny but from the one who had come for Bexoi:

You will be as small or as great as you made yourself.

Then the stranger was gone, and Bexoi with him.