“You’re a stubborn woman.” Blaise glanced away. “I don’t know why I came, Lilias. I suppose … I feel a responsibility for you. After all, I kept you from taking your life.” He smiled bitterly. “You did try to warn me that I would regret it.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.” He met her eyes, unflinching. “Perhaps not entirely for the reasons you believe.”

Lilias tilted her head, considering him. “Will you not sit and tell me why?”

He sat in one of the parlor’s four chairs, which were wrought of a pale, gleaming wood that seemed not to have been carved so much as woven, the slender branches wrought into an elegant form with arms like the curled ends of a scroll. The chair, made for an Ellyl’s slighter weight, creaked beneath him. Blaise ignored it, waiting for her.

She took her seat by the window. “Well?”

“It was something you said.” He cleared his throat. “That you had the right to seek death in defeat. That I wouldn’t have denied you a clean death on the battlefield if you had been a man.”

“Nor would you,” Lilias murmured.

“No.” Blaise picked restlessly at a loose thread on the knee of his breeches. “There was a man I wanted to kill,” he said abruptly. “A Staccian, Carfax, one of the Sunderer’s minions. His men attacked us outside Vedasia. Malthus … Malthus handled the others. Him, we took prisoner. I thought he was too dangerous to live, especially …”

“In company with the Bearer?” Lilias suggested. She laughed tiredly at his wary glance. “Ah, Blaise! Did you think I didn’t know?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“So you let him live.”

He nodded. “On Malthus’ orders. And in the end … do you know that, too?”

“Yes.” Lilias swallowed against the sudden swelling in her throat. Brightness, falling. All the brightness in the world. “I know all that Calandor knew, Blaise. I know it all, even unto the cruel end.” She rubbed the tears from her eyes, contempt shading her voice. “Will you tell me now what lesson lies within your tale? How even I am not so far gone that Arahila’s mercy cannot redeem me?”

“No.” He shook his head. “That wasn’t my purpose.”

“What, then?”

Blaise shrugged. “To say … what? Although I maintain poison is an unclean death, I do regret depriving you of the dignity of your choice. It was unfairly done; perhaps, even, at cross-purposes with Haomane’s will. Who can say?” He smiled crookedly. “If Malthus had not maintained that Carfax of Staccia had the right to choose, we would not be having this conversation.”

“No,” Lilias said quietly. “We wouldn’t.”