She looked at the table behind the speaker and shivered a bit with a mix of excitement and fear of what going forward would mean.

She had started this journey to find this place after reading veiled hints and stories in some of the old books found in the back of the convent library. The books were in a storage room for disused and unwanted items buried under age’s worth of dust. One clue had lead to another in the old musty books and she felt compelled to seek out the truth if it existed to be found. Now here she was and the only choice left to make was to go forward and discover what it meant or leave and never know what the mystery was.

She closed her eyes and shivered as the words the man spoke slowly trickled into her ear on the hot breath of his voice. She never had been able to let go and just allow herself to be completely feminine, soft, and vulnerable. That demand to her was the one thing she had not expected to face and it frightened her more that seeking the unknown had. There was a deep buried part of her that longed to be safe enough to do just that but it had been denied for so long she did not know how to begin.

She opened her eyes again and looked at the ceiling that seemed to morph into an alien sky, another world under the streets of Venice. Off in the far distance she could what almost appeared to be a dark shore line of purple sand and uncharted sea.

She took a deep breath, tasting the scents in the air and feeling the slight breeze on her face and chose without allowing any further thought. She had never backed down from a challenge yet so without looking at the hooded man before her she dropped her cloak on the ground and stepped forward to find out what lay before her.