“I’m glad to see you, Dineas,” she says. There’s some strain around her eyes when she speaks.

“And I, you.”

She leads me wordlessly down the hall to the back room. A cloud of silence surrounds us, thick enough to touch. There are things I could say, but the cloud muffles it all.

We know what to do by now. I fetch a pallet for myself while she mixes her herbs. As I put everything into place, I’m aware of every one of her movements, the grind of her mortar and pestle, the clink of the bowls.

She seems to take extra care as she carries the bowl to me—the water inside doesn’t sway at all. For a brief moment, we’re both holding the bowl, though our fingers don’t touch. And I know she’s already put up a wall between us.

“I would still like to be friends,” I say. “If we can.”

“I would like that,” she says.

Her words bring some relief, but the tension she carries doesn’t go away. I don’t understand, but over the past months, there’s been many things I don’t understand. I take the bowl from her and drink.

There’s no pain, but it still feels like a splitting headache. The images chisel at my brain, and my world expands. The night of the festival still sits foremost in my mind—I can feel Zivah’s lips, smell the scent of herbs in her hair. But now, other details come back, filling out the picture and making it so much more than the simple kiss it had been before. She’s not who I think she is. I’m not who I thought I was. I understand now, why she pushed me away.

More memories come flooding back—an argument, a promise that she would keep her distance. I look up at her, see the guilt written on her face, and I’m angry.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

The torrent doesn’t stop. I see her again, her eyes as she broke away from our embrace, the hunger in them. And I understand the flicker of loneliness, and the desperation that haunts her. I see her life through her eyes—being cut off from her family, gaining the chance to heal again, to matter again, but paying a grievous price for it.

“I should have listened to you,” Zivah says. Her back is rigid, her shoulders tight. She expects me to explode. “I shouldn’t have gone to the festival. Forgive me.”

I still want to be angry, but the anger feels hollow now. The words on my tongue drain away. Anything I say would be like twisting a knife that has already gone too deep. I stir on the pallet, lift my head like a man stepping out of a quagmire. “What’s done is done. Let’s not dwell on it.”