Somehow, that was exactly the right thing for Selenay to hear; it let loose another torrent of weeping, but this time, it seemed as if she was weeping herself out, until at last she lay there, curled in her bed, her nose stuffed and her eyes sore, her pillow soggy—

:Turn your pillow over, love.:

She sniffed hard and obeyed without thinking, and closed her aching eyes. She was exhausted now, limp with crying, and if the ache in her heart didn’t hurt any less, at least she was too tired to cry any more.

:I keep thinking, if only I’d gone after him—:

:If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world,: Caryo sighed. :The best thing that I can tell you is that there is nothing that could have happened that would have allowed you to follow him. And there was not one scrap, one hint of knowledge or even ForeSight that any of us had that would have let us guess what he was going to do, or enabled us to prevent it. If there was ever a moment in history where a man took his own fate in his own two hands, that was it.:

:Then I wish I could go back—: But there was no use in pursuing that line of thought. She couldn’t. No one, not even in the tales of before the Founding, had ever said anything about being able to go back into the past and change things.

:I don’t want to get up, Caryo.: And she didn’t. She didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to leave her bed. Ever. The weight of depression pressed down on her and filled her with lethargy. She wanted to close her eyes, and fall into oblivion, and never come out again. She didn’t exactly want to die—but if only there was a way to not live—

And Caryo didn’t say any of the stupid things that other people might, about how she “had” to live for Valdemar, or how she was being hysterical, or overreacting. :If you don’t get up, I’ll miss our morning ride,: she said instead, wistfully, as if she was deliberately misunderstanding the “I don’t want to get up” as merely meaning “this morning,” and not “forever.” Maybe she was.