"You understand what it will require," one of the others pressed. "If the court learns..."
"The court is killing her." The old elf's voice cracked like dry wood. "Let the court learn whatever it likes."
Victor nodded once, and turned to the door, where Sylviana had been standing guard at the threshold since sundown, keeping her own vigil, and he told her the price plainly, because he had decided she would hear it from him and not from gossip in the halls.
"Feeding a dying spirit means feeding it everything I have. All of it, until she is full. It is not a sip from a cup, princess. It is the sort of thing you cannot unsee, done by a man like me to a woman like her, in her own soul, for hours." He watched her face without flinching, and did not soften it. "If you want your mother back, you will have to watch me give it to her. Can you?"
Sylviana's face went from white to scarlet to white again.
She looked at her mother's closed eyes for a long, long moment.
