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Prologue

He opened his eyes to chanting. Smoke eddied around his head as the voice rose above him, carrying it to the heavens and beyond. Light, golden and fluttering surrounded him. His head ached and thumped as though he'd been out drinking. But he hadn't, had he? He turned his head and his neck screamed in agony. Or was the scream from his lips and lungs?

Blackness cavorted with the wavering light around him, shadow and light fighting each other for dominance as the voice continued to rise in a language that he didn't recognize. He tried to move more then his head, but his entire body seemed to be weighted down. His arms were pulled over his head. He could move his hands, but not the rest of his upper extremities.

Music slid into part of his mind in and around the chanting voice. The heavy drumbeat drilled into his skull so that he couldn't think past the agony in his skull. He couldn't think how he got to this place or why he couldn't move.

He turned his head toward the chanting voice and the smoke, which he realized, held a sweet and cloying smell he recognized. Incense, his overtaxed brain told him. Why?

The hazy quality of his eyes confused him. He thought he had his contacts in, but everything was so indistinct. What's happening to me?

The chanting voice came closer to where he lay. He yanked on his bonds with arms that were fast losing their feeling.

"W-who are y-you?"

"Don'cha worry," A sweet and familiar voice answered. "Your sacrifice will be for a good cause. You will be rewarded."

"W-what?"

Her face finally moved into his line of vision. "You!" He shouted against the sharp pain in his head that accompanied his response.

"I've looked everywhere for you." She said her long, black hair, heavy with red, white and blue beads.

The beads in her braids clicked together as her head brew in closer to his face. She smiled the same charming smile that had drawn him in the first time he'd seen her face.

"Why are you doing this?"

"You're the only one that can fix it." She answered.

"I don't understand." He yanked on the bindings keeping his legs in place. He choked on the sickening sweet scent of the incense that swirled around them. "Please let me go."

"I can't do that." She said.

He screamed when her hand rose with a long, sharp knife that glinted in the smoke filled candlelight. It was all that he could see as she began to chant again in a language he didn't understand.

"No! Stop! Please…"

She closed her eyes and began to sway back and forth like a snake in front of a charmer. Her chanting almost over shadowed his screams as the knife descended through the smoky air to his chest.

CMCMCMCM

The heart, lauded in song and poetry as the gateway to love, is a fragile and precious thing. She lifted this new heart from the chest of her sacrifice. His pain had surely made the magic of the medicine strong enough to work her miracle. The heart would be strong enough to make her most precious hopes come true. It had to be!