“He . . . he asked me to find him, to Dreamwalk with him, and I did. My sister and mother were there, and we talked, and then there was another woman . . . she was waiting for him . . . and he said he had to go . . .”

She stopped speaking because she realized she was babbling, and also because Nola’s face had bleached to the color of bone. She released Grandfather’s hand and slowly stood, her eyes as wide open as they would go.

“What woman?” she whispered.

“I-I don’t know. She had dark hair. She was young, pretty, wearing a long flowered dress and a lot of silver bangles on one wrist. And she had a child with her . . .”

From Nola’s throat came a strangled sound. Her expression was tortured. “A child?”

Lu whispered, “A boy. About seven, eight years old.”

Nola’s throat worked, but no sound came out, and Lu felt the compulsion to keep speaking, to try and explain the unexplainable. To do something to ease that terrible look on Nola’s face.

“They were waiting for him. They were happy, smiling. And he was happy to go . . . to go be with them . . . he’d only been waiting for me, and now that we’d met he could . . . he could . . .”

She couldn’t get it out. Her own throat was closing; tears began to slide down her cheeks. Then Nola broke down and sobbed into James’s chest. He held her, looking over her head at Lu with an expression she couldn’t decipher.

“Nola’s grandmother was killed in a car accident many years ago,” he said. “Her son James was in the car with her; he was eight at the time. I was named after him.”

There was a winch tightening in degrees around her chest. Her heart began to pound like it was trying to claw its way out of her chest. “I’m sorry,” Lu whispered, her voice cracking. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. You’ve done nothing wrong.” Magnus stepped closer to her, gazing down at her with his own indecipherable expression. She looked up, pleading at him with her eyes. She needed his arms around her, needed the comfort she knew he could give, needed to hear him say it again, that it wasn’t her fault. She just needed . . . him.

So she closed the small distance between them, wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, and buried her face in his neck.

He stiffened, but didn’t pull away. There was a breathless moment she was certain he would, but then—oh miracle—his arms came up hard to encircle her. He lowered his mouth to her ear. “It’s all right,” he whispered, his deep voice the softest, gentlest stroke of sound. “It’s all right: I’ve got you.”

I’ve got you. It broke the final shred of her restraint. She sobbed, her body wracked with a shudder. Both sobs and shudders kept coming, and soon Magnus was stroking her hair, murmuring comforting words she followed the shape but not the substance of, letting his voice wash over her, his heat warm her, his strength support her, until she was crying in earnest, letting everything out. He picked her up in his arms and carried her back to their bedroom. He closed the door behind them with his foot, and gently laid her on the bed.

He went to the bathroom and ran a washcloth under cold water, and brought it back to her with a box of tissues that he set on the little table beside the bed. Then he wiped her face with the cloth and dried it with the tissues, and made her blow her nose.

“Who knew you’d be such an ugly crier?” he whispered, brushing the hair from her forehead. He gazed down at her with such tenderness it almost made her break out in a fresh round of tears.

“I don’t ugly cry,” she sniffled, not believing it for a minute because she could feel the way her face had distorted, but not insulted because she knew he was teasing. Hoped he was teasing.

“You’re right. You don’t ugly anything. You couldn’t be ugly if you tried.”

The way he said it was so sweet, such softness from such a hard man, that Lu forgot for a moment all her hesitations and the walls he’d erected between them, and reached out to touch his face.

He snatched her hand with lightning speed, curling his fingers around her wrist. He held it suspended in the air between them, the look of softness in his eyes from seconds before replaced by an icy, furious look that might have made Honor proud.

“Don’t.”

It was all he said, but Lu felt the pathos behind it, the years and years of suffering and self-hatred. She felt it, and her heart wept for him, for whatever burden he carried, and wouldn’t share.

“Please let me touch you,” she begged.

The fury in his eyes was matched in his voice, though he kept it low. “You’ve touched me more than any other living thing in the last twenty years. That should be enough.”

Was he talking about physically touching, or something else? She couldn’t tell. She didn’t care. “It’s not enough, Magnus. I want more. I want more of you.”

Her words affected him. His eyes flashed, the hand around her wrist began to shake. He said hoarsely, “Why would you want me? I’ve got half a face!”

“That doesn’t make you half a man!”

He loomed over her, pressing her back against the bed, capturing her other wrist now and pinning both over her head against the pillow. He was angry and his anger was shaking him, sending tremors through his chest and arms, flooding his face and neck with color.

“You don’t know what you’re saying! You have no idea what kind of man I am, or the things I’ve done, or the things I’m capable of! You don’t know anything about me at all!”

He made a sound that was part growl, part wretched cry, his teeth bared, his eyes wild. He looked for a moment like an animal, and Lu remembered that Morgan had wisely advised her how to treat a wild animal: gently.

So as gently as she could, Lu told him the truth.

She looked deep into his eyes and said, “I know that underneath all your sharp bristles, you’re kind, loyal, and honorable. You’re smart, and capable, and there’s nothing you wouldn’t do to protect the colony, including sacrificing your own life. So that makes you selfless, and the most courageous person I’ve ever known. And I know that even though you’re all these wonderful things, you don’t think you deserve even the smallest happiness. You punish yourself as much as you can, you deny yourself any kind of pleasure, even smiling, and whatever it was that happened to make you that way, you can’t forgive yourself. Or you won’t. Either way, you hate yourself, Magnus. And knowing that breaks my heart.”

His expression was stunned; his eyes registered the depth of his anguish. He turned his face away and moved as if to withdraw, his grip loosening on her wrists, but Lu reached out and gently placed her hands on either side of his face, turning him back to her and holding him there.

“I won’t bring it up again. Not because I don’t want to know, but because it’s obvious you don’t want to talk about it, and I don’t want to have anything to do with giving you more pain than you already have.” Her voice grew smaller. “And I won’t say this again either, but you should know that I think you’re beautiful, Magnus. I’ve always thought you were the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Look at me! I’m not beautiful!” he hissed, his voice strangled, his body frozen above her.

“You are to me.”

He made a sound low in his throat and closed his eyes. Because he wasn’t moving away and he’d allowed her to keep her hands on his face, Lu took a chance and did the thing she’d been wanting to do since she’d first done it in Beckett’s lab, in front of everyone.

She kissed him.

But she didn’t start with his mouth; she wanted to show him with her actions what she’d said to him in words. So—slowly, gently, easing forward—she stretched toward him, brushing her lips against his scarred cheek.

He sucked in a breath. Lu froze, expecting him to bolt. When he didn’t, she closed her eyes, inhaling his scent deep into her lungs. Then she lightly rubbed her cheek against his, and leaned in farther to nuzzle her nose into the soft, warm spot just beneath his earlobe. There she pressed another kiss. A tremor ran through him at the touch of her lips against his skin.