The hitting and punching stopped. Eluik rolled off his brother and they both lay on the floor against the wall, their bodies touching at many points, but their inself and outself completely distinct for the first time in years.

“Good choice, Enopp,” said Pat. “Eluik, you were the reason he stayed. You saved your brother again.”

A single great sob convulsed Eluik’s body. And then he lay there, weeping desperately, like a heartbroken toddler.

Enopp half-rolled so he could reach his hand to touch his brother’s face. “I’m sorry,” he said in English. “I didn’t know.”

Eluik answered him in another language, but this time Leslie saw that Pat didn’t understand, and murmured a translation. “He’s saying that it’s all right, he didn’t mind. Neither of them had to be lonely in the caves, and that was good.”

Not for the first time, Pat thought, Loki has much to answer for. Imprisoning these boys, almost forcing them into the tortuous intertwining they had lived with all this time.

Then she remembered: Loki had been commanded by his queen, by his lover, to kill them. And yet he decided he owed more to his conscience than to Queen Bexoi. He kept them alive. And now here they were, tormented and suffering … but alive. Still able to choose, to act, to live their lives. All the entanglement was now untangled. They were themselves again.

Danny had trusted her to do this, and even though she hadn’t known what she was doing, she muddled through, and what she couldn’t control, the boys had settled for themselves, between themselves.

“I’m just wondering,” said Leslie, “when people are going to start thinking about lunch. Now that we’ve all decided to stay alive.”

Enopp rose easily to his feet, but Eluik was out of practice controlling his body. Marion had to lift him up, and then Eluik leaned on his little brother and on Marion to make his way to the kitchen table, where Leslie had stacked plates and was now setting out slabs of homemade bread and various sliced meats and cheeses, vegetables and spreads.

Once the boys were seated at the table, and Eluik had proven that he could put together a sandwich and bring it to his mouth, Marion came to Pat in the kitchen doorway. “Well done,” he said softly. “You did things I didn’t imagine were possible. I saw things—well, understood things in a way I never did before. You were brave and patient and wise. Danny’s a lucky boy. I hope he’s smart enough to know what you are.”

“If he isn’t,” said Leslie, “I’ll tell him in a way he can’t mistake.”

Pat smiled in relief, feeling tears coming to her eyes. She didn’t like to cry in front of other people, but she also didn’t want to leave.