Elizabeth IX

Elizabeth knew when Fero's brethren merged with her, but it didn't alleviate the terrible emptiness she felt. They shifted almost as one to the back of her mind and stayed so still she couldn't feel them in her. She didn't want to feel them there. They weren't Fero.

Her heart began to accelerate. She tasted fear in her mouth. Thunder roared in her ears. There was no understanding the passage of time because each second without Fero was like years moving at a snail's pace.

The sound of ugly laughter crept into her mind, one slow note at a time, as if the sender wanted to prolong the agony of suspense. The noise was grating and harsh, scraping deliberately along nerve endings, a vile, sickening sound meant to hurt—and it did.