Something roused me at midnight on the veranda. I rose to the call of a loon as Samael snored tenderly, murmuring as the furskin blanket fell away from him. "Shannon…" he whispered, then soothed and fell deeper asleep, his hair gently curling with a black opal sheen, coalescing on my wrist. He smiled as I petted his cheek. I leaned down and kissed his cool, sweaty brow, and he curled in on himself like a beggar at the door of my love.
Something glowed like the Gnostic angel of starlight and the churning luminaries of the outer boundaries, Eleleth, drawing me in a pillar of light to the veranda. On tiptoes in my nightgown from Samael's palace, a frilled pink, ruffled and ribboned Victorian finery, I slightly, ever so quietly, opened the door.
