She lashed out with her free hand and struck the cup from his grasp. It clattered on the stone, its contents spraying. Defiance still shone in her eyes, and her voice, when she answered, had the ring of a woman whose soul still lived untouched and longed to be free. “I will never take it of my own will. You know that.”
A smile crossed his face, but a
deadly smile. “Then drink!” he shouted, and with a swift, sharp kick to her
ankles he hurled her to the ground. He gripped a tuft of her hair and plunged
her face into the channel. “Drink!” he cried again.
On this I shall have less to say, since it is still in progress. Whatever the guesses, vocalized or not, concerning the secrets in this book, I will say that no one has figured everything out. Part of that may be because I have not entirely figured everything out myself.