Focus blurry, I stared at the canopy of bare branches above me to the pale blue of an autumn morning. Though Quen had suffered and won, I was still feeling an inner pain, made worse by my utter exhaustion, both physical and mental. My dad had died the same way when I had been thirteen, and I recognized an ugly ember of anger growing in me that my dad had given up while Quen hadn’t. But then the anger shifted to guilt. I had tried to keep my dad alive and failed; what kind of a daughter can keep a stranger alive and not be able to save her own dad?

Watching Quen struggle had brought back every little detail of holding my dad’s hand as he died. The same pain, the same labored breathing…the same everything.

I blinked, and my focus on the trees cleared in a sudden crystalline thought. My dad had died exactly the same way. I was there. I saw it.

Socks catching on the rough stone, I turned to the dark room past the open door. Quen had said it didn’t matter if he lived or died, but to find the truth, I had to see him through it. He wouldn’t break his word by telling me why my dad had died, but he had showed me the connection by forcing me to endure his struggle with him.

The blood drained from my face, and I went colder still. Dr. Anders hadn’t concocted whatever Quen had taken, but I’d be willing to wager she’d been modifying it so it would work better. And my dad had died from an earlier version of it.

As if in a dream, I walked from the luminous morning and slipped back into the cocooning warmth of shadow. I left the door open so Quen’s unconscious would hear the birds and know he was alive. He didn’t need me anymore, and he had shown me what he intended to. What Trent had forbade him to say.

“Thank you, Quen,” I whispered as I passed the bed, my pace never slowing. Trent. Where was Trent? He had to know. Trent’s father had died first, so whatever had killed my dad, it had been Trent who made the decision to administer it.

Tense, I opened the door and heard the murmur of distant voices. The common area was empty but for the intern on the couch, his mouth hanging open as he snored. Silent in my socks, I went to the walkway and looked down on the great room.