Sleepy Fox Hollow The ice man cometh.

Few things could have prepared her for it. An unmistakable fear entered her face as she took a step or two to the side, away from him. She stared at Mou like a deer caught in headlights as his words reverberated in her mind.

Sithis brought me — Sithis — Sith--

Cicero.

The name fell with devastating finality amid the chaotic thoughts, her father's smirking face rising up before her. Maegi shook her head, slowly at first, more emphatically with each second. Didn't he know? Had she been remiss in telling him of the horrors of what met her within the labyrinthine bowels of Blackfeather Woods?

No, she breathed, trembling. Not Sithis. It can't be, Mou; the daedra are demons. They revealed themselves to me as evil when I was trapped in the tunnels, when the earth shook.

They hate me. And, by extension, they hated Mou, too. This was a trick, a trap. They needed to leave.

And in her fear (and her writer's forgetfulness) she hadn't even noticed that his voice had returned once more.