“Because,” she said, and now she seemed to startle into life, now she wrung her shaking hands and began to pace through the room. Nolan turned to follow her motion. “Because a world without Chay is a world impossible to contemplate. He loves me more than he loves his own daughters, you know. He has told me that many times. And when I was a child at night, I used to lie awake asking myself, ‘Who do you love more? Your father or Chay Zanlan?’ And sometimes I answered the question one way and sometimes I answered it another. When my father died, I remembered all those midnight conversations, and I hated myself for having doubted, even for a moment, even as a child, that my father was the most important person in creation. But now when I think of Chay dying I think—I think—if I had the choice of bringing my father back or allowing Chay to live, I would keep my father in his grave. And Chay will die anyway.”

“We all die,” Nolan said. “What matters is not having that life taken away from us a second sooner than absolutely necessary.”

“What matters is that we do not lose the love of those we cherish,” Kit said, still kneading her hands. “That we remind them every day that we love them. That we do not quarrel, and part in anger, and never have a chance to reconcile.”

“Are you thinking of Jex?” Nolan asked stupidly, and she rounded on him in a weeping fury.

“No! I am thinking of Chay! Who loved me once, but sent me from his home more than six months ago, and has not told me again to my face that he loves me! And now he may be dying, and he does not trust me, and how can I go forward in the world with that burden on my heart? That Chay Zanlan did not forgive me? How can I survive?”

There were no words to assuage such a heartache. Without conscious volition, Nolan crossed the room and took her in his arms. She shook so dreadfully that he tightened his embrace, trying to placate the traumatized nerves, trying to squeeze the flailing muscles into submission. She did not resist him, but she could not be comforted. She rested her face against the front of his shirt and sobbed with all the abandon of a child.

*   *   *

After that outburst, Kit slept for ten solid hours. Nolan had guided her at random to one of the bedrooms and laid her on the bed, and she had followed the promptings of his hands as if she had no will of her own. He wished he had a sedative with him, but stress was its own tranquillizer. She closed her eyes and slept, and did not emerge for the rest of the night.