Shadow Mountain i had walked my entire life as a dead man

and he held lestan in thrall, as if he were pressed against a longing that had no end to the windowpane which separated he and winter's wake. a rain of diamonds were those words, and the scintillation of fullblack eyes provoked deep stirrings within the mayfair.
the shepherd provided. the lamb came willing.
hierophant. fourthborn of four points. lestan marveled that here tonight there were only two. and in that voice, some hint of velveteen derision maybe, another oddity which he longed to unravel.
snow filled the air in soft coursing as winter spoke of a mother who was not. lestan was unsure how to answer and so said nothing at all, mulling across these spoken parts of a just-opened tome, awed by the minutiae of his companion.
"we had similar mothers," was what he said next; "angelique may have nursed us, but she did not l-love us." and his father; there were too many dark stories of shared blood and ghosts who cloaked themselves in the ardent flesh of living men before lying down with witches in the night.
"your old l-laws," lestan murmured next. "do you believe in them?" did wake cling to what he knew when he was alone, when he shared solitude with the anxieties of tradition and subsequently their comforts.