Pride? For she was proud, she knew, had been raised to be so. But if that was it, then be it so still, here at the end, at the fall of Dark upon her. A sweet child she had been, strong, a kindness in her nature, if hidden behind caution, not opening easily to other souls, because she trusted only her own. A pride in that, which Kevin Laine, first of all men, had seen for what it was, and laid open for her to understand before he stepped back to let her grow in that understanding. A gift, and not without pain for himself. A long way off, he was, and what, oh, what did any of it matter in this place? What did it matter why? It didn’t, clearly, except that at the end we only have ourselves anyway, wherever it comes down. So Jennifer rose from the mattress on the floor, her hair tangled, filthy, the odor of Avaia on her torn clothes, her face stained, body bruised and cut, and she mastered the tremor in her voice and said to him, “You will have nothing of me that you do not take.”

And in that foul place, a beauty blazed like Light unleashed, white with courage and fierce clarity.

But this was the stronghold of the Dark, the deepest place of his power, and he said, “But I will take everything,” and changed his shape before her eyes to become her father.

And after that it was very bad.

You send your mind away, she remembered reading once; when you’re tortured, when you’re raped, you send your mind after a while into another place, far from where pain is. You send it as far as you can. To love, the memory of it, a spar for clinging to.

But she couldn’t, because everywhere she went he was there. There was no escape to love, not even in childhood, because it was her father naked on the bed with her—her mother’s bed—and there was nothing clean in any place. “You wanted to be Princess One,” James Lowell whispered tenderly. “Oh, you are now, you are. Let me do this to you, and this, you have no choice, you always wanted this.”

Everything. He was taking everything. And through it all he had one hand only, and the other, the rotting stump, dripped his black blood on her body and it burned wherever it fell.