The sea was single-mindedly blue. If it had had its way, it would have consumed the land. The wall prevented that, but didn’t tame it. Farther out she could see ships, big freighters that were on their way to or from the port, sleek sailing boats with their canvas taut. She thought her hands had known the feel of rope, her body the sway of the sea. Perhaps soon she’d test it.

“Some things are comfortable right away. Familiar, I mean. This is one of them.”

“You couldn’t grow up near the sea and not find spots like this.” The wind whipped her hair back, tossing it up and away from her face. Its color was nearly gold in this light, with small flames licking through it. He sat beside her, but not too close.

“I think I’d come to a place like this, just to breathe when the protocol became too tedious to stand.” She sighed, closing her eyes as she lifted her face to the wind. “I wonder if I always felt that way.”

“You could ask your father.”

She lowered her head. When their eyes met, he saw the weariness she’d been so careful to hide. She wasn’t back on full power yet, he reflected. And he wasn’t immune to vulnerability.

“It’s difficult.” Anger and annoyance, strain and tension were forgotten as she felt herself drawn to him again. She could talk to him, say whatever was on her mind, without consequences. “I don’t want to hurt him. I feel such intense love, such fierce protection from him it disturbs me. I know he’s waiting for me to remember everything.”

“Aren’t you?”

She looked back out to sea, silent.

“Brie, don’t you want to remember?”

It was the sea she continued to look at, not him. “Part of me does—desperately. And then another part pushes away, as if it’s all just too much. If I remember the good, won’t I remember the bad?”

“You’re not a coward.”

“I wonder. Reeve, I remember running. The rain, the wind. I remember running until I thought I’d die from it. Most of all, I remember the fear, a fear so great that I would have preferred dying to stopping. I’m not sure that part of me will allow the memory to come back.”

He understood what she described. The knowledge ate at him, something he couldn’t allow. Something he couldn’t prevent. “When you’re strong enough, you won’t give yourself a choice.”

“Something inside of me is afraid of that, too. At a time like this”—she shook her hair back and enjoyed the feel of it lifting off her neck—“it would be so easy to relax and let it go, to just allow things to happen. If I weren’t what I am I could do that. No one would care.”

“You are what you are.”

“You don’t dream?” she asked with a half smile. “You don’t ever ask yourself, what if? I could sit here now and pretend I had a cottage in the hills and a garden. Perhaps my husband’s a farmer and I’m carrying our first child. Life is simple and very sweet.”