It was as if buildings crashed, bells clamored, sirens rose like demonic voices, and yet the room was absolutely silent. Kit could hear water playing from the other chamber. She could hear Nolan breathing. She could hear her own heartbeat.

“What?” she said faintly.

His feet were still nailed to the floor but he made one cautious movement, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “You. How can you think I am so wonderful when you are—you are—this incredible, complex, passionate, loyal—ideal—woman? I can’t think when you’re in the room. When you’re not in the room, I can’t think of anything but you. I marvel that you could exist, that such a world as ours could produce you. You have changed me in ways I can’t even describe.”

She backed away with every phrase he uttered, shaking her head, holding her hands before her in a protective, warning gesture. “Don’t say things like that,” she said. “You’ll regret them. You’ll be sorry.”

“How could I be sorry? For you to know how I feel? Oh, I know you can’t love me back. I know your heart is given elsewhere. I’m not asking for anything from you. But I wanted you to know. I love you, and I can’t unlove you, and when the world ends, I will love you still.”

Now she stood half a room away, still shaking her head, but she had folded her arms high across her chest so that her hands clung to their opposite shoulders. “You wouldn’t love me if you knew,” she whispered. “There are things about me that would turn you away—”

“Nothing,” he said.

“Everything!” she cried. “Do you forget? You hate the gulden so much, and yet half my life has been among them. They have been my lovers, they have been my closest friends—”

“I don’t care,” he said. “Do you think I’m afraid that you have been tainted—corrupted? You? One look at your face and anyone could see how pure your heart is.”

“One look at my face, and you would think I was a highcaste indigo heiress,” she said tensely. “But that is exactly what I am not.”

“I have known my share of the Higher Hundred,” he said quietly. “And what I love about you is that you are nothing like them at all. You’re unique.”

“I’m alien,” she said.

“Exotic,” he amended.