"Dear spirits, don't do this to her," he whispered. "Please," he added with a choking sob, "don't take her."

He looked over at Nicci. "She wanted to die as a Mord-Sith, fighting for our cause, not in bed."

Nicci offered the smallest of smiles. "She had her wish."

The words, making it sound as if Cara was already dead, hit him like a blow. He couldn't allow this to happen. He just couldn't. Kahlan was gone, and now this. He just couldn't let it happen.

He cupped a hand to Cara's icy face. It felt like touching the dead. Richard swallowed back the tears.

"Nicci, you're a sorceress. You saved me when I was near death. No one else but you would have ever been able to come up with a solution. No one but you could have saved me. Isn't there anything at all that you can think of to do for Cara?"

Nicci slipped forward off the chair to kneel beside him. She took up his hand and held it to her lips. He felt a tear fall onto the back of the hand she so tenderly held, as if she were a humble subject beseeching her king's forgiveness.

"I'm so sorry, Richard, but there isn't. I hope you know that I would do anything it took if I could save her, but I can't. This is beyond my ability. A time comes when we all have to die. Her time has come and I can't change it."

Richard blinked at the watery sight of the death scene, the room barely lit by the weak light of two small flames. The bed holding Cara seemed lo float by itself in that light, with darkness waiting all around her.

He nodded. "Nicci, please, could you leave me alone with her? I want to be alone with her when the times comes that — It's nothing against you. It's just that I think I should be alone with her."

"I understand, Richard." Nicci's fingers touched his back as she stood and then, as if reluctant to break that contact with the living, trailed along his shoulder as she moved past. "I'll be close by if you need me," she said as her living touch ended.

The door softly shut behind her, leaving the room in silence. Even though the heavy drapes were closed over the window, Richard could hear the ceaseless chorus of the cicadas outside.

He could no longer hold back the tears. He laid his head on Cara's middle as he sobbed, clutching her limp hand.

"Cara, I'm so sorry. It's my fault. It was after me, not you. I'm so sorry. Please, Cara, don't leave me. I need you so much."

Cara was the only one who followed him because she believed in him. She might have agreed with Nicci that he was dreaming up Kahlan, but she still believed in him. With Cara, that wasn't a contradiction. More and more lately, it seemed that her faith in him was all that was holding him together and keeping him focused on what he had to do. There were frightening moments when he no longer knew if he believed in himself. It was so hard to face an entire world that thought he was delusional. It was so hard to do what he believed in when almost no one believed in him. But Cara believed in him even if she didn't believe in Kahlan's existence. There was something unique about that sentiment, something unlike even Nicci or Victor's respect for him.

He held Cara's face in both hands as he kissed her forehead.

He hoped she wasn't suffering. He hoped it was a peaceful end to a life I hat had been anything but peaceful.

She was so pale, her breathing so shallow.

Her flesh felt as cold as death.

Hating that she was so cold, Richard pulled the bedcover aside as he leaned over and slipped his arms around her, hoping that his warmth would help her.

"Take my warmth," he whispered in her ear. "Take all you need. Please, Cara, take warmth from me."

Lying there holding her, Richard descended into a fog of agony. He knew how much this woman had suffered. He knew what her life had been like, he knew how much she had been hurt, he had endured some of the things she had endured under the mad rule of his father, Darken Rahl. He had suffered some of the same pain and hopelessness. Perhaps more than anyone else, he could truly empathize with her. He knew how strangers had taken her into a world of pain and madness. Richard knew because he had been there, too. He had so wanted to bring her back from that dark and terrible place.

"Take my warmth, Cara. I'm here for you."

He opened himself to her, opened his need to her, opened himself to her need.

He clutched her tightly in his arms as he wept against her shoulder. He almost felt that if he were to hold her tight enough, she couldn't slip away into death.

Richard could feel as he held her in his arms that she was still alive and I he couldn't bear for that to end. He wished so much that Nicci could have' done something. If anyone deserved to be healed, it was Cara. At that moment, more than anything, he wanted her to be healed.

Richard opened himself, his very soul, to that purpose.

He released himself into his empathy for this woman who had given him so much. More than once she had risked her life to follow his orders. She had often risked her life for him in open defiance of his orders. She had followed him across the world. Countless times she had placed herself between danger and his and Kahlan's lives. Cara deserved life, deserved all the goodness in life. He wanted nothing but to make her whole again. He gave all of himself over to that desire. He held back nothing in his focused need to have Cara stay among the living.

To that end, to that desperate desire, he consciously sought the life within her as he descended into the swirling current of her agony. As fast as that thought, he found his mind with hers, with her agonizing pain. He held her tight in his arms as he wept with her desolate suffering.

He gritted his teeth, held his breath, and pulled her pain into himself. He wanted nothing more than to draw that pain away from her. He spared nothing to protect himself from the onslaught that suddenly inundated him. He felt everything she felt. He suffered everything she suffered. He pressed his open mouth against her shoulder, muffling his scream as the pain lanced through him.

They were in an empty, dark, and hopeless place — a lifeless place.

He shook with her suffering as he lifted some of her burden. She held tight to the pain, loath to release it, especially to him. But as weak as she was, he was able lo draw it anyway, and then he drew yet more.

Lifting and uncovering the layers of suffering, he felt the icy touch of death within her.

The raw fear at such an encounter was as arresting as anything he had ever confronted. Cara was saturated in that dark and icy sensation. He shook with the suffering he shared with her, with the dread they together fell. His mind twisted with the wrenching pain until it was a terrible and seemingly insurmountable struggle just to maintain his own will to go on.

Richard was swept into a coursing, cold current of hopeless misery that consumed him. It seemed more than he could bear, and yet he endured it and took on more. He wanted her to take on his strength, his living warmth. But to do that, he would first have to survive pulling that dark poison into himself while at the same time giving over to her his strength.

Time lost all meaning. The pain itself was the embodiment of forever.

"Death will come often, offering to take you — wanting to take you," he whispered against her ear. "Don't accept the offer, Cara. Stay. Don't accept death."

I want to die.

That single thought came spiraling up through the agonizing desolation. It shocked and terrified him. What if trying to hold on to life was more than she could endure? What if it was more than he could endure? What if he was asking more of her than she could abide? — more than he had had a right to ask?

"Cara," he whispered into her ear, "I need you to live. Please, I need you to live."

I can't.