Finally Dirva spoke, and his voice when he spoke was utterly vulnerable. He was a man who built walls at every turn, who did so as instinctually as I tore them down. It was conscious, this decision to stay so open. “There were only ever two things back there that kept me sane, and it was you, and it was him. And he’s gone. And you know I love you, but you can’t be the only thing. You can’t be all of it, my entire life. I can’t just be yours. I’m sorry. It’s a weakness, and I’m sorry for it. I would have written when I sent it back, but Liro, how does a man say that in a letter?”

“I knew,” Liro said.

“I thought you would.”

“When I saw the damn thing, I knew.” There was a caught breath. There was the ghost of a sob. “Damn it, Dirva. Fucking hell, Dirva. Damn it.”

“You’ll be all right.”

“I know. We’ll both be fine. I don’t know, that…fuck, I don’t know, that makes it worse somehow, you know what I mean?”

Dirva laughed, and Liro laughed with him. The bed within creaked. “Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean, Ro. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for before, I’m sorry for coming back, I’m sorry for all of it. I am sorry for all of it, and I am grateful for all of it.”

“But you’re still sending me packing, eh?”

“You’ll be all right.”

“Will you?”

“I’ll be all right.”

* * *

He wasn’t all right. Not for a long time, but he pretended to be. I wasn’t all right, either. Our relationship was still fragile, and there was something about that day that splintered it a little more. I waited until Liro left. I gave Dirva a few hours to himself. I went to the markets and listened to the gossip traded by the gold slaves. When I came back, I came back burdened. Dirva sat by the window, near my cot, in the shadow of where The Reader once hung. He asked me if I was hungry.

“You shaped me,” I said. He could not meet my gaze. “You pulled me all the way here. You knew I couldn’t handle that.”

He said nothing to me. His frame seemed diminished. He seemed not so much larger than myself, like really the breadth of his shoulders was half shadow. He looked to be slipping away.

“Did you know you did it when you did it? Or did it just happen?”

“I knew,” he said. “I was well trained.”

“Then why haven’t you trained me? Why?

The anger surprised him. The force of it—my voice raised, my posture—caught him off guard. “I…Ariah, you…I can’t train a thing you won’t admit to having.”