Kitrini. He had not even said her name aloud this whole time.

“Kitrini,” he said now, almost without volition. He was still staring out the window, his face turned away from her, but she heard him anyway. She stirred, as if shaking herself awake, and looked his way.

“Yes?” she said.

He shook his head. “I was just wondering if you were awake. How’s your foot? Still hurt?”

“A little. It’s getting better, though.”

“You want another painkiller?”

“Before we sleep for the night, maybe.”

He turned to look at her, slowly, knowing (from his experiences the past day and a half) what a fresh shock it would be to see her face. Two eyes, a small nose, high cheeks, that familiar indigo skin—what was there about this collection of features to make his heart pause, actually shut down for three beats, and then gallop forward again at a clumsy, frantic pace? “You never told me,” he said in a casual voice, “how you injured yourself.”

An indescribable expression crossed her face. Nolan tried to catalog the swift emotions: pain, embarrassment, a lingering anxiety. “I was caught in the blast that shut down the Centrifuge,” she said shortly.

Nolan’s eyes widened. “You were? I thought nobody survived that.”

“A handful of us only. No reason to it—the survivors were scattered over the whole area, our cars interspersed with the cars of the dead ones. Luck—fate—who knows? But it makes me feel very strange to have lived through something almost no one else survived.”

“And most of them were indigo, weren’t they? The ones who died?”

“Why would you say that?” she shot at him angrily, taking him completely by surprise. “Gulden ride the Centrifuge!”

“I know—I just—since the explosion happened at South Zero—”

“They haven’t discovered what caused it yet. Or at least, they hadn’t by the time we left the city. There’s no reason to think it was a bomb.”

“I didn’t think—did I say—”

“You implied that someone had set a bomb at South Zero to kill a bunch of blueskins,” she said furiously.

Ah. Of course. The terrorist lover in jail. No wonder she was touchy on this subject. “I didn’t mean to imply that,” he said gently. “Frankly, I don’t have a clue what started the explosion, and I haven’t given it much thought. I do know that it disrupted my life most inconveniently.”

“Well, Jex had nothing to do with it.”

“I’m sure he didn’t.”

Now she gave him a look of renewed hostility. “And why are you so sure of that?” she demanded illogically. “He set off a blast in the medical center, after all.”

Nolan spread his hands. She baffled him. “I just assumed he wouldn’t be capable of something so—so horrifying.”

“And why would you assume that?”