Again she raised her eyebrows; this time she was truly surprised. “I would have thought that a man who could behave as you did would not care who hated him and who did not,” she said bluntly.

“It is one thing to behave a certain way. It is another to disregard the consequences.”

“At first,” she said, “when you bargained with Nolan Adelpho for my life, I was hurt to the core of my being. I thought, ‘He would never have betrayed his own son and daughters this way.’ And then I realized that—had it been expedient—you would have treated them just as badly, or even worse. What bargain did you make with Ariana Bayless when you sojourned in the city? Once I realized that any of us—all of us—are choifer soldiers on your game board, I stopped being hurt. I realized it was not that you loved me any less. It was that I had always been wrong in believing you were someone who deserved my affection to begin with.”

“I understand that you are angry, but I am surprised as well,” he replied smoothly. “Did you learn nothing from your father? He abandoned a family, a history, an entire culture, on principle. To prove a point. He made you a misfit in your natural environment as a sociological experiment. To see what the result would be. How is that any different from what I did, which was to use you as a shield to protect my own life?”

Kit came to her feet, not caring if he was ready to dismiss her or not. “My father believed indigo society was truly evil and that the only way to protect me was to raise me outside its boundaries. The difference is, he was trying to save me, and you were trying to kill me.”

“Not trying to kill you, Kit,” Chay murmured.

“Willing to,” she amended. “Just as bad.”

“I always thought you had a large and generous heart, Kit,” Chay said, now returning to the delicate, nuanced goldtongue. “But today it seems to have grown hard and knotty.”

“Perhaps I do have a small heart, Chay. It is too full of other things to have room for forgiveness.”

“Perhaps, when you eradicate the anger, there will be a space yet for such a sweet thing.”

“When I dig up the anger and toss it from my heart, I will plant other flowers in that garden,” she said. “And they will blossom, and they will be beautiful, but they will not be for you.”

He had not risen when she did, and now he seemed to slump backward in his chair. But he raised his hand in a ceremonial benediction and spoke still in that same calm, affectionate voice.

“Then take your small heart, and leave me,” he said. “Travel in safety, live in health, rejoice in happiness. If I do not see you again, remember these as my last words to you.”