All His Wrath

Amy would not be stilled. “Why?” she demanded. “Why does Danielle need to go with you?”

Lohxnahr dropped down suddenly to Amy’s height, stopping right in front of her. It was Amy’s turn to have her hair fanned by his fluttering wings. Amy was struck again by how deep his eyes were, yet childlike and innocent. The lavender was the loveliest she had ever seen. She felt her roaring fear quickly dissipate—for that’s what she was truly feeling, a great fear, not anger. Her heart opened to what Lohxnahr had to share with her.

“It must be so because Danielle knows me, as well as the deceits of the imposter. She will not become lost, as I fear Paign has. See, mother of Danielle, that when Danielle joins me in the not here—as you describe her leaving this physical realm with me—she is yet not there. I would not have risked Danielle’s presence in the actual chamber of Zarentil. It was in the in-between place we went. There, great insights may be found by the wise. The hybrid took the mother of Paign to the in-between and, while there, was able to find that which Kahrnahrgx could not: Paign. Yet, it was not the hybrid who knew to seek him in the in-between, but Zarentil. However clever has the hybrid been bred, only Zarentil—a Mystic— would know of the power of the in-between.”

As Amy stared into the calm, limpid eyes, she marveled to see them grow even softer, as if mercy itself came from them.

“As Danielle has plunged deep into the mysteries known to the Ancient Mystics to her benefit, so has Paign been plunged into the other depths, where brokenness, loneliness and despair are found. This is the place of perversions and great suffering.”