She and Aunt Cord ate a simple, silent evening meal—bread and soup—and when it was done, Susan rode Felicia out to the Drop and watched the sun go down. She would not be meeting him this evening, no. She already owed too much sorrow to impulsive, unthinking behavior. But tomorrow?

Why Citgo?

Has to do with what we discussed before.

Yes, probably. She did not doubt his honor, although she had much come to wonder if he and his friends were who they said they were. He probably did want to see her for some reason which bore on his mission (although how the oilpatch could have anything to do with too many horses on the Drop she did not know), but there was something between them now, something sweet and dangerous. They might start off talking but would likely end up kissing... and kissing would just be the start. Knowing didn’t change feeling, though; she wanted to see him. Needed to see him.

So she sat astride her new horse—another of Hart Thorin’s payments-in-advance on her virginity—and watched the sun swell and turn red in the west. She listened to the faint grumble of the thinny, and for the first time in her sixteen years was truly torn by indecision. All she wanted stood against all she believed of honor, and her mind roared with conflict. Around all, like a rising wind around an unstable house, she felt the idea of ka growing. Yet to give over one’s honor for that reason was so easy, wasn’t it? To excuse the fall of virtue by invoking all-powerful ka. It was soft thinking.

Susan felt as blind as she’d been when leaving the darkness of Brian Hookey’s barn for the brightness of the street. At one point she cried silently in frustration without even being aware of it, and pervading her every effort to think clearly and rationally was her desire to kiss him again, and to feel his hand cupping her breast.

She had never been a religious girl, had little faith in the dim gods of Mid-World, so at the last of it, with the sun gone and the sky above its point of exit going from red to purple, she tried to pray to her father. And an answer came, although whether from him or from her own heart she didn’t know.

Let ka mind itself, the voice in her mind said. It will, anyway; it always does. If ka should overrule your honor, so it will be; in the meantime, Susan, there’s no one to mind it but yourself. Let ka go and mind the virtue of your promise, hard as that may be.

“All right,” she said. In her current state she discovered that any decision—even one that would cost her another chance to see Will—was a relief. “I’ll honor my promise. Ka can take care of itself.”