Jerd lifted one shoulder. “I guess that I’d decided I was going to live my own life just as soon as I left Trehaug. It was like keeping a promise to myself. And”—she smiled wryly—“he was the first. It was flattering, I guess, that someone as soft-skinned as him would, well, want me. I don’t have to explain that to you. After a lifetime of being told that no one should touch you, that no one would or could touch you because you were born too much of a monster? Then a soft-skinned boy with a gentle manner doesn’t seem to think it matters…that just made me feel free. So I decided to be free.”

“So.” Thymara swallowed and tried to think how to phrase her next question. She was the one who had sought Jerd out. And she’d been surprised that the other girl hadn’t rebuffed her attempts at conversation. Neither of them had brought up Thymara’s spying on her and Greft. With a bit of luck, neither of them would. Perhaps Jerd was as uncomfortable about that as she was. She considered her question one last time. Did she really want to know?

“So, then, he came to you. Not you to him.”

Jerd glanced across at her and made a disparaging face. “I followed him into the woods. Is that what you’re asking? Or are you asking who touched whom first? Because I’m not sure I remember…” She sat up straighter, put her hand on her slight belly, and asked, “Why do you care, anyway?”

Thymara was suddenly sure that Jerd did remember, perfectly well. And she saw that she had just handed the other girl a little knife that she could use to dig at her anytime she wanted. “I don’t know,” she lied. “I just wondered.”

“If you want him, you can have him,” Jerd offered magnanimously. “I mean, I’ve got Greft, you know. And it isn’t like I wanted Tats permanently. I wouldn’t take him away from you.”

So she thought she could. Could she? “And you didn’t want Rapskal permanently?” Thymara countered. “Nor any of them?”

If she’d thought to pierce the other girl, she’d missed. Jerd gave a laugh. “No, not Rapskal! Though he was sweet, so boyish, and so handsome. But once with him was enough for me! He laughed in such a silly way; very annoying. Oh! I’m sorry he’s gone, though. I know you were close, and I’m sure you didn’t find his silly ways annoying at all. It must be very hard for you to lose him.”

The bitch. Thymara willed her throat not to close, her eyes not to tear, and failed. It wasn’t that she’d been in love with him. He was just too strange. But he’d been Rapskal and her friend; his absence left a hole in her life.