If anyone looked closely enough, they’d see that her psyche swung dangerously to and fro, her heart suspended on a pendulum. She went from extreme to perilous extreme, and the range in which she wavered seemed to grow until her heart could soar in the sky and crash on the rocks within the same instant. In her mind, there was nobody to command control. So simply she had none.

            “When Bella and Rodolphus get here, you had better become smarter fast,” Rabastan stated darkly, the anger in his eyes swiftly fading though he fought to keep the bulk of his disdain from his voice. “They will have no tolerance for your ignorance.”

            It began as a light tinkling noise, a spattering of bare sounds that barely rose above the din of the pub’s drunken chatter. Her breath caught in her throat as a long-estranged emotion tickled her subconscious memory.
 

           Rabastan rose to his feet, his heart pounding. For years he had kept nearly silent at these meetings, speaking only when spoken to and saying nothing that was not pre-rehearsed in his mind time and time again, just in case. “If I may speak, my Lord?”