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I cried out again. I heard it but never meant to do it. I heard it.

Then the light flashed as if to blind me forever, and I saw the ceiling above me, and I saw the circle of the chandelier--the flashing prismatic colors of that chandelier. The room came down around me as if descending from Heaven and I was not on the floor at all. I was standing on my feet.

Never in all my existence had I felt so powerful. Not even ascending with the Cloud Gift had I ever known such fearlessness, such buoyancy, such limitless and utterly sublime strength. I was climbing to the stars yet I had not left the room.

I stared down at Mekare. She was dead. She had sunk to her knees and then fallen on her right side, her blighted eye socket hidden, her left profile perfect as she lay there staring forward with one half-lidded blue eye as if she were asleep. How beautiful she looked, how complete, how like a flower fallen there on the gravel path of a garden, how destined for this fragile moment.

The sound of wind filled my ears, wind and singing as if I'd passed into realms of angels, and then voices assailed me, voices from everywhere, rising and falling in waves, relentless voices, voices in splashes, as if someone were splashing the very walls of my entire universe with great splashes of molten gold paint.

"Are you with me?" I whispered.

"I am with you," he said clearly, distinctly in my brain.

"Do you see what I see?"

"It's magnificent."

"Do you hear what I hear?"

"It's magnificent."

"I see as never before," I said.

&nb

sp; "As do I."

We were wrapped in a cloud of sound together, immense, unending, and symphonic sound.

I looked down at my hands. They were throbbing as was all my body, as was the whole brilliant world. Never had they seemed such a miracle of texture and perfection.

"Are these your hands?" I asked.

"They are mine," he said calmly.

I turned to the mirror.

"Are these your eyes?" I asked, staring into my own.

"They are mine."

I gave a long low sigh.

"We are beautiful, you and I," he said.

Behind me in the glass, behind my still awestruck face, I saw them all. They had all come into the room.

I turned to face them. Every single one of them was gathered here now from right to left. They were astonished. They looked at me, not a single one speaking, not a single one looking with surprise or horror at the body of Mekare on the floor.

They had seen it! They had seen it in their minds. They'd seen it, and they knew. I had not shed her precious blood. I had not done her violence. I had accepted her invitation. All of them knew what had happened. They'd felt it, inescapably, just as I'd felt it on that long-ago day when Mekare took the Core from Akasha.

Never had they or any gathering of persons looked so very distinct to me, each individual there radiant with a subtle power, each stamped with a signature of distinct and defining energy, each marked with a unique gift.

I couldn't stop looking at them, marveling at the details of their faces, at their delicate flashing expressions playing over eyes and lips.

"Well, Prince Lestat," cried Benji. "It is done."

"You are our prince," said Seth.