Page 129 of Moon Craving

She knew too well what it was like not to have a secure place to call home, one in

which she belonged without question.

However, as much as that possibility distressed her, Abigail could not regret

having the privacy to face a more personally terrifying prospect--the risk she was going

mad. Perhaps the Church was right in teaching her deafness meant she had an affliction

of the mind, that her fever had robbed her of her reason as well as her ability to hear.

Though why such an infirmity should take so many years to show itself, she could

not begin to comprehend.

Abigail refused to believe she was possessed by a demon, as the priest taught

such impediments indicated, but she could not deny something was amiss.

The night before, Abigail had once again been certain that she heard Talorc's

voice. It was a wonderful, masculine voice, one that made her giddy with warmth and filled

with joy. Even the memory of it caused her to lament her perpetual silence more intensely

than she had for many years. Only the voice could not be real, for just as in the hot springs

cave, she heard nothing else.

The voice had to be completely conjured by her imagination, which was a

disquieting enough thought. She refused to entertain the other possibility that the voice

was that of some demon that supposedly caused her deafness. The fever had stolen her

ability to hear and that was that.

According to Emily's friend the abbess, priests were too quick to point to a demon

when faced with the inexplicable. The learned woman had said so in one of her first letters

to Abigail. They had continued a correspondence with each other that Emily's move north

had forced Emily to drop.

Now, Abigail had no more notion of how to maintain the friendship than her sister

had done. It was the single relationship she truly regretted leaving behind. The abbess

had known of Abigail's deafness and never thought less of her for it. Other than Emily, the

abbess was the only person who had ever been so accepting.

However, for the first time since losing her hearing, Abigail felt a niggling worry that

the priests might actually be right. Because in addition to imagining she heard Talorc

once again shouting her name during climax, Abigail had also heard the howling of a wolf.