“Now, send Asha back in.”

“Yes, thank you, Madam Anka.”

* * *

Torija never moved from her bunk, her arms holding Daisy close, all night. Last night Byron and Amelia came down to check on them. They tried to get Daisy to go upstairs and have dinner with them, but she said she’d only leave if Torija could get out of the cell, too.

She had told Daisy to leave it, but of course she didn’t listen. Byron denied Daisy’s request, which was exactly right. Byron was giving her chance enough to try to redeem herself, when so many wouldn’t.

Torija admitted to herself that she would have done the same in Byron’s position, and in fact she probably would have killed her on sight as soon as she saw her. But when Daisy stubbornly declined to join the Debreks at dinner, Amelia had two trays of food sent down.

It had been their last night together, and all Torija wanted to do was hold Daisy close. Daisy was emotional at various times in the night, and so Torija stroked her hair and soothed her any way she could. Now she felt Daisy start to waken.

She stretched and then turned around into Torija’s arms. “Hi,” Daisy said.

“Hello, cherie.”

“I’m going to lose you today,” Daisy said.

“No, you’re not. You saved me, cherie.”

Daisy caressed Torija’s cheek. She remembered when Torija used cherie as a way to annoy her, but at some point, and Daisy couldn’t remember when, it changed to a proper term of endearment. “I saved you so you could die.”

“No, you saved me so I could save one of my family and walk into death, so I can come face to face with those I have wronged. If I didn’t sacrifice myself, I wouldn’t be Torija. I would still be Victorija.”

“Why do you have to be so noble just as I’ve fallen in love with you?”

“Because I was waiting for someone to die for, and you’re it, Daisy MacDougall.”

Tears started to roll down Daisy’s face. “It’s not fair.”

Torija cupped Daisy’s face and wiped her tears away with her thumbs. “Cherie, I have been treated more fairly than anyone else who has done the things I’ve done would have been. I’ve been given the chance to love again, if only briefly, and a chance to say sorry to all the ones I have injured. Angele said she was my beginning, and you would be my end, and you are. This is what she meant.”

Daisy gave her the deepest, sweetest kiss imaginable and said, “I’m never going to love again.”

* * *