The sounds were still there — the water, the rhythm, her voice, arriving in full clarity through the intact sensory function of a nervous system that had had only its motor function suspended — and the last thing he saw before the dark arrived fully was Cang's eye, from above the woman on the bank, from above the water, from above the light, looking at him with the flat assessor's expression of a man who had won something that was never a competition.
The smirk was gone.
What remained was just the eye.
And the flat, assessor's expression that said: you were never in this category.
The dark arrived.
His wife's voice — the last thing he heard:
"—AAAHNNNN~~~~~!!!—"
She did not know he was there.
She had not known all night. Cang had not told her. The telekinetic hold had kept the mortal man silent at the tree, and the sounds she had been making had been sufficient to prevent her from hearing anything as quiet as a man falling into grass twelve meters away.
She did not know.
