What confronted you was Ortus the First, his back bare to you, in a pair of soft flannel sleeping trousers and nothing else, so that you could see the protruding, tumorous knobbles of his spine and the wads of muscle atop his shoulders. Cytherea’s limp corpse was propped upright, her fingers dangling over his forearm, the dead-dove whiteness of her face, half-covered by his own, rosebuds crushed to deep yellow shadows at his feet. His palm supported the exhausted lily stem of her neck; the press of his fingers on that faded skin was so gentle that it left no mark. You, who had been so familiar
...more
