Aelfden goes there below

The same key served for all locks here below, though they were several.

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Dantalion learns how long

“Eithne!”

The word seared Dantalion’s throat as it wheezed out of him in a whisper. His lungs were on fire. He was speaking torrid smoke.

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Gwynn makes a message

Condal squeaked, “A new nightgown? We won’t be needing nightgowns for the party, too?”

“Sounds like a fun party!” the dressmaker laughed.

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Estrid is made molten

The whistling stopped only long enough for the silversmith to call, “I come, I come!” The banging never stopped at all. He had such perfect time that when he picked up his tune, he simply skipped the notes he meanwhile ought to have trilled.

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Araphel gets a fair warning

Food. This body’s appetites were on the scale of this body: monumental. Araphel had been obliged to plan his journey around the availability of hot meals, jugs of ale, and warm beds long enough to let him stretch out his big body and snore. He considered himself fortunate that it was at least more willing than Brude’s to sleep alone.

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Lasrua's butterfly love gets away

“Come in, child,” Cian said wearily. “I know you can hear me.”

Lasrua could hear him. Even when he did not speak, she could hear his breath whistling through his lungs like the wind through naked boughs.

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Aelfden finds a Fergus for his need

Food. A cup of wine. Perhaps merely a nap. Aelfden did not know what Brother Columba was about to press on him, but he already knew he did not want it. He had no appetite for anything, not even for the sickeningly-​sweet indulgence of sleep.

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Drileu is touched by the hand of a ghost

“Mammig! Mammig!”

An instant later the door cracked against its hinges, flung open as wide as it could fly, and Drileu felt its jolt sparking down her spine. The damp wind gusted in after with a gravelly hiss of blown rain or sleet or sand, and Drileu felt it in her teeth. She was a fisherman’s wife, and this house on the shore was her body, as her husband’s boat was his on the sea.

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Lena confronts an almighty fear

Lena awoke an instant too late to comprehend what Paul had howled into the night — she only knew that she had heard. Benedict too awoke with a grunt, but he sucked himself right back to sleep, with five or six soft clicks of his tongue in his empty mouth. Lena breathed gently beside him and listened.

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