"As long as you need," she assures him. She supports him like a stone angel in a graveyard, unbending as marble, but without the cold impassiveness.

In fact, he cannot feel any cold any longer, somehow. What an odd sensation. The light chill on the skin that indicates the presence of cold, the knowledge that it is, in fact, cold, all are present still. But the bite is gone. It is as if the core of human warmth and life in Mulcahy's center has expanded outward to warm all but the outermost layer of flesh.

"If our altars feel too much like worship, you are welcome to come to us in our places of power," Mortanne muses. Those forms of contact, she's always rather liked better, she thinks. "For Serranai, in the woods or at beds of flowers. For Kora, at the seaside or river. For Celestine, at any hearth or place of study. And for me, right here."