“Okay. You?”

“I’m okay.”

He didn’t look okay. He looked sick. Cordus was keeping him nearly drained. I didn’t know how you drain someone against their will. Maybe it felt like what Williams had done to me. At any rate, the effects were clear. Graham looked too weak to stand, much less cause trouble.

We sat there in silence.

“Beth,” he finally said, “why are you here?”

I searched for an answer. “I’m not sure.”

I’d come planning to demand an explanation.

The more I’d thought about what Graham had done to me, the angrier it had made me. A lot of what had happened to me could be categorized as “my fault” or “just the way things are.” Even the many cruelties I’d experienced and observed were the result of individuals acting according to their overt natures. Graham stood out from that. What he’d done — sending me to that place and leaving me there — seemed different. It felt like a betrayal.

But sitting across from him, that distinction seemed silly. He too had been acting according to his nature. I’d just been too naive to recognize his nature for what it was.

“Were you hoping I’d confess my sins?” he said, his voice taking on an edge. “Do you think you’ll get ‘closure,’ or something?” He made sarcastic air quotes.

I stood and walked to the door.

“Wait,” he said. “Wait.”

I stopped.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m just tired.”

He cleared his throat. “Hey, I haven’t had any visitors. Why don’t you stay a bit? You can tell me about where the strait took you.”

“Would that be entertaining? Hearing the story of how you almost killed me?”

He flushed and dropped his eyes.

I waited for a few seconds, then realized I was standing there hoping he’d produce a sincere apology. God, when was I going to learn? I turned to go.

“Beth, wait,” he said, sounding upset.

Against my better judgment, I stopped again.

“I’m sorry I did that to you. It wasn’t supposed to happen, and I just panicked. I should’ve come after you.”

“Yeah, you should’ve. It would only have taken you a couple seconds.”

“But I didn’t know where you’d gone. I mean, the companion could’ve been inside a volcano. It could’ve been in outer space.”

“Nonsense,” I snapped. “Limu wants Justine alive. You wouldn’t have done something that stupid.”

He stared at me, and I saw that expression on his face again, the one I’d seen at the mill — the trapped-animal look. At last he looked away, his expression bleak.

“There’s a death sentence on my head. Limu figured that out and gave me a choice: be his man in Cordus’s organization or face the music.”

“Why were you sentenced to death?”

He shook his head and didn’t answer.