Dragoncrest Cliffs from grueling anxiety

"i do," she said after a moment, though the searchlight of his seablue eyes invoked some need to defense in the harlot. yet she laid it low; he meant nothing more than what he had said, the pledge of a youth to a queen. she rocked back upon her wiry hips. 
"change is somet'ing you come to accept, wid age, but — maybe never so much of it at once." mind's eye flashing to the way that raleska and kaertok had looked as they were buried, torn and tormented until the end. rosencrantz, burning to death with fever in the days to follow. 
and regin — though erzulie refused to consider that the girl too had been lost completely. 
"sadness be a bitter cup for us bot'. i am sorry we must swallow it."