Let me go first. Despite knowing who it was, I was still wary as I approached my own door. This was no accident. She'd tracked me down. Why? What did she want of me?

"Starling," I said as opened the door. She spun to confront me, teapot in hand. Her eyes traveled me swiftly, then met my eyes and, "Fitz!" she exclaimed happily, and lunged at me. She embraced me, and after a moment, I put my arms around her as well. She hugged me hard. Like most Buck women, she was small and dark, but I felt her wiry strength in her embrace.

"Hello," I said uncertainly, looking down at the top of her head.

She tilted her face up at me. "Hello?" she said incredulously. She laughed aloud at my expression. "Hello?" She leaned away from me to set the teapot on the table. Then she reached up, seized my face between her hands, and pulled me down to be kissed. I had just come in from the damp and the cold. The contrast between that and her warm mouth on mine was astonishing, as amazing as having a woman in my arms. She held me close and it was as if life itself embraced me again. Her scent intoxicated me. Heat rushed through me and my heart raced. took my mouth from hers. "Starling," I began.

"No," she said firmly. She glanced over my shoulder, then took both my hands and tugged me toward the sleeping alcove off the main room. I lurched after her, drunken with surprise. She halted by my bed and unbuttoned her shirt. When I just stared at her dumbly, she laughed and reached up to untie the laces of mine. "Don't talk yet," she warned me. And she lifted my chilled hand and set it on one of her bared breasts.

At that moment, Nighteyes shouldered the door open and came into the cabin. Cold billowed into the warm room as fog. For an instant, he just looked at us. Then he shook the moisture from his coat. It was Starling's turn to freeze. "The wolf. I'd almost forgotten… you still have him?"

"We are still together. Of course." I started to lift my hand from her breast, but she caught my hand and held it there.

JOK "I don't mind. I suppose." She looked uncomfortable. "But does he have to… be here?"

Nighteyas gave another shake. He looked at Starling and away. The chill in the room was not just from the door standing open. The meat will be cold and stiff if wait for you.

Then don't wait, I suggested, stung.

He drifted back outside into the fog. I sensed him closing his mind to us. Jealousy, or courtesy, I wondered. I crossed the room and shut the door. I stood by it, troubled by Nighteyes' reaction. Starling's arms came around me from behind and when I turned to her embrace, she was naked and waiting. I made no decision. That joining had happened between us in much the same way as night falls upon the land.

Thinking back on it, I wondered if she had planned it that way. Probably not. Starling had taken that part of my life with no more thought than she would give to picking a berry by the roadside. It was there, it was sweet, why not have it? We had become lovers with no declaration of love, as if our bedding were inevitable. Did I love her, even now, after all the years of her coming and going from my life?

Thinking such thoughts was as eerie as handling the artifacts Chade had brought from my old life. Once, such thoughts had seemed so important to me. Questions of love and honor and duty… I loved Molly, did Molly love me? Did I love her more than I loved my King, was she more important to me than my duty? As a youth, I had agonized over those questions, but with Starling, I had never even asked them until now.

Yet as ever, the answers were elusive. I loved her, not as a person carefully chosen to share my life, but as a familiar part of my existence. To lose her would be like losing the hearth from the room. I had come to rely on her intermittent warmth. I knew that I had to tell her that I could not continue as before. The dread I felt reminded me of how time had dragged and how I had clenched my soul against the healer digging the arrowhead from my back. I felt the same stiff apprehension of great pain to come.

I heard the rustling of my bedding as she awoke. Her footfall was light on the floor behind me. I did not turn to her as I poured the water over the tea. I suddenly could not look at her. Yet she did not come to me or touch me. After a pause, she spoke.

"So. Hap told you."

"Yes," I replied evenly.

"And you're determined to let it ruin everything between us."

There seemed no answer to that.

Anger surged into her voice. "You've changed your name, but after all these years, you've not changed your ways. Tom Badgerlock is just as straitlaced a prude as FitzChivalry Farseer was."

"Don't," I warned her, not of her tone but of that name. We had always taken great pains that Hap knew me only as Tom. I knew it was no accident that she spoke that name aloud now, but a reminder that she held my secrets.

"I won't," she assured me, but it was a knife sheathed. "I but remind you that you lead two lives, and you lead them very well. Why begrudge that to me?"

"I don't think of it that way. This is the only life I have now. And I but try to do by your husband as I would wish another man to do by me. Or will you tell me that he knows of me, and does not care?"

"Exactly the opposite. He does not know, and therefore does not care. And if you look at it carefully, you will see it comes out to exactly the same thing."

"Not for me."

"Well, for a time it was the same for you. Until Hap saw fit to ruin it. You've inflicted your stiff standards on yet another young man. I hope you take great pride in knowing you've raised another moralistic, judgmental prig like yourself." Her words slapped me as she began to slam about the room, throwing her things together. I finally turned to look at her. Her color was very high, her hair tousled from sleep. She wore only my shirt. The hem of it grazed her thighs. She halted when I turned to look at her and stared back at me. She drew herself up, as if to be sure I must see all I was refusing. "What does it hurt?" she demanded.

"Your husband, if he ever gets word of it," I said quietly. "Hap gave me to understand he's a noble of some kind. Gossip can do more damage to that kind of man than a knife. Consider his dignity, the dignity of his house. Don't make him some old fool taken with a lively youngerwoman" Old fool?" She looked perplexed. "I don't… Hap told you he was old?"

I felt off balance. "He said he was a grand man…"

"Grand, yes, but scarcely old. Quite the opposite." She smiled oddly, caught between pride and embarrassment. "He's twenty-four, Fitz. A fine dancer and strong as a young bull. What did you think, that I'd pastured myself out to warm some elderly lord's bed?"

I had. "I thought»

She was suddenly almost defiant, as if I had belittled her. "He's handsome and he's charming, and he could have had his pick of any number of women. He chose me. And in my own way, I do, truly, love him. He makes me feel young and desirable and capable of real passion."

"What did I make you feel?" I asked unwillingly, my voice low. I knew I was inviting more pain but I couldn't stop myself.

That puzzled her for a moment. "Comfortable," she said at last, with no thought for my feelings. "Accepted and valued." She smiled suddenly, and her expression cut me. "Generous, giving you what no one else would. And more. Worldly and adventurous. Like a bright songbird come to visit a wren."

"You were that," I conceded. I looked away from her, toward the window. "But no more, Starling. Never again. Perhaps you think my life a poor thing, but it is mine. I — , won't steal the crumbs from another man's table. I have that much pride."

"You can't afford that kind of pride," she said bluntly. She pushed her hair back from her face. "Look around you, Fitz. A dozen years on your own, and what do you have? A cottage in the forest, and a handful of chickens. What do you have for brightness or warmth or sweetness? Only me. Perhaps it's only a day or two of my life, here and there, but I'm the only real person in your life." Her voice grew harder. "Crumbs from another man's table are better than starving. You need me."