Her clutch transferred to his sleeve and tightened. “No,” she muttered. She briefly raised her face, mottled white and flushed where it was not dark with bruises. “’M too hot now.”

“All right.”

She ducked back down, gaining control of her breathing, but the tight stress in her body didn’t ease.

He wondered if her abandonment of her family without a word was as appallingly ruthless as it seemed, or if there was more to the tale. But then, he came from a group that watched out for each other systematically, from partnered pairs through linkers to patrols to companies and right on up in a tested web. I sure would be looking for you, Spark, if I were your— and then his tongue had tangled between two choices, each differently disturbing: father or lover. Leave it alone. You are neither, old patroller. But he was the only thing she had for a partner here. So.

He lowered his lips toward her ear, nestled in the black curls, and murmured, “Think of something beautifully useless.”

Her face came up, and she sniffed in confusion. “What?”

“There are a lot of senseless things in the world, but not all of them are sorrows. Sometimes—I find—it helps to remember the other kind. Everybody knows some light, even if they forget when they’re down in the dark. Something”—he groped for a term that would work for her—“everyone else thinks is stupid, but you know is wonderful.”

She lay still against him for a long time, and he started to muster another explanation, or perhaps abandon the attempt as, well, stupid, but then she said, “Milkweed.”

“Mm?” He gave her another encouraging hug, lest she mistake his query for objection.