A bolt of gold suddenly penetrates the darkness, dazzling sun-splinters shiver off into the waters like firesparks.

A splinter of light pierces her eyes.

Daylight.

A splinter pierces her heart. A blaze of sun lights her breast, a pain so vivid it burns white across her darkened vision.

Awake.

Alive.

Khassian opened his eyes.

Everyone was cowering away, their eyes covered, as if to shield them against a light too bright to endure.

The Rose in his hands was burned to ashes.

And sitting up, staring dazedly around her through her strands of wet hair – was Orial Magelonne.

‘Illustre?’ she said, gazing questioningly into his eyes.

‘Orial.’ He reached out to her… and the rosedust fell between his fingers and drifted to the floor.

Tremblingly she raised her hands towards his – and he felt her fingers enfold his.

‘Orial,’ he repeated. He could find no words to express his feeling of wonder, could only repeat her name, over and over again.

She raised one hand to touch his cheek.

‘Goddess save us,’ Cook cried in a faint voice. ‘She’s alive!’

The Priestess set out from the Temple in a black sedan chair, carried by acolytes.

Passers-by stopped to watch the bizarre procession winding its way towards Dr Magelonne’s Sanatorium; the curious followed in its wake and soon a small crowd had gathered in Pump Street.

The black chair meant only one thing: a death.

The Priestess descended from the chair and entered the Sanatorium. Her head was covered in black veils so that none should see her face.

News travels fast in Sulien. A journalist from the Sulien Chronicle sketched in a headline: ‘Eminent Doctor Bereaved a Second Time in Drowning Tragedy’ and, grabbing his notebook, hurried to the Sanatorium to get the details.

I must be dreaming.

Jerame pinched his arm, deliberately taking a fold of skin between finger and thumb, twisting until he winced. The pain was real enough. Unless he was dreaming he was pinching himself. What he was witnessing negated everything in his training as a student of science, a student of medicine. It could not be.

She had been dead. Her heart had ceased to beat. And now she was alive, colour tinged her pale cheeks, she moved, she spoke.

‘Orial –’ he faltered.

She turned to him. ‘Oh, Papa.’

She knew him.

Khassian stood dazedly watching as Orial was smothered in the kisses and embraces of her family.

Jolaine Tradescar turned to him, her eyes moist with tears.

‘My boy, my boy!’ she cried, flung her arms about Khassian and hugged him. ‘You did it! You saved her!’

‘No,’ said Khassian shakily. He had been seared by holy fire. Shivers of heat from the burning Rose still flickered through his body, fierce as fever chills, intense as the dying pangs of ecstasy. ‘It was the Rose.’

Orial gazed at the well-loved faces gathered about her bed: Papa, Cook, Jolaine, Sister Crespine.