The air inside the secure chamber of the Gildreath Palace was cool and thick with the scent of sterile alchemical herbs and burning incense. From the corner of the stone mattress, a fragile, trembling voice broke the silence of the room, singing a soft, desperate nursery rhyme.
"Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are..."
Julia Vance cradled her child, her fingers desperately tracing the fine, silver-furred ridges beginning to form along the baby's head. To her, he was 'Julio,' a human child who belonged to Earth, to shopping malls, and to the comfortable, lost life of Miami. She desperately tried to anchor him to those memories.
But the baby ignored her completely. He didn't want to look at her, and he certainly didn't care about her earthly songs. Solid pools of shifting, dark cosmos swirled inside his pupilless eyes—eyes that mirrored the absolute, empty void of the Sovereign's sanctuary.
