Damon caught the overtone in the words: You and Ellemir would rather be alone. In his worn, raw-edged state it was painful, a rebuff. His words were sharp with exhaustion.

“She won’t know whether you’re there or not. But do as you damn please!” and the unspoken part of his words were as plain as what he said aloud: If you just can’t wait to get away from us.

He still doesn’t understand …

Damon, how could he? Ellemir hardly understood herself. She only knew that when Damon was like this it was painful, exhausting. His need was so much greater than she could meet or comfort in any way. Her own inadequacy tormented her. It was not sexual — that she could have understood and eased — but what she sensed in Damon left her exhausted and helpless because it was not any recognizable need which she could understand. Some of her desperation came through to Andrew, though all she said was, “Please stay. I think he wants us both with him now.”

Damon, clinging to them both with a desperate, sinking need for physical contact which was not, though it simulated, the real need he felt, thought, No, they don’t understand. And, more rationally, I don’t understand it either. For the moment it was enough that they were there. It wasn’t complete, it wasn’t what he needed, but for the moment he could make it do, and Ellemir, holding him close in despair, thought that they could calm him a little, like this. But what was it he really needed? Would she ever know? She wondered. How could she know when he didn’t know himself?

Callista woke and lay with her eyes closed, feeling the sun on her eyelids. In the night, through her sleep, she had felt the storm cease, the snow stop, and the clouds disappear. This morning the sun was out. She stretched her body, savoring the luxury of being wholly without pain. She still felt weak, drained, though it now seemed to her that she had slept for two or three whole days without intermission, after that dreadful ordeal. Afterward she had remained abed for a few days, recovering her strength, although she felt quite well. She knew that the first thing necessary was to recover her health, which, always before, had been excellent, and it would take time.

And when she was well, what then? But she caught herself. If she began to fret about that, she would have no peace.

She was alone in the room. That was luxury too. She had spent so many years alone that she had come to crave solitude as much as she had once dreaded it during the difficult years of her training. And while she was sick she had never been alone for an instant. She knew the reason — she would unhesitatingly have ordered the same treatment for anyone in her condition — and she had welcomed their care and unceasing love. Now, however, it was good to wake again and know herself once more left alone.

She opened her eyes and sat up in bed. Andrew’s bed was empty. Dimly she remembered, through her sleep, hearing him moving around, dressing, going out. With the storm over, there would be all manner of things to be attended to around the estate. Around the house too. Ellemir had spent so much time at her side during the days of her illness that she had neglected the running of the household.

Callista decided that she would go downstairs this morning.

Last night Andrew had been with Ellemir again. She had sensed it dimly, by the old discipline turning her mind away from it. He had come in softly, near midnight, moving quietly so as not to disturb her, and she had pretended sleep.

I am a fool and unkind, she told herself. I wanted this to happen, and I am honestly glad, yet I could not speak to him and say so. But that line of thought led nowhere, either. There was only one thing she could do, and she must summon up the strength to do it: to live every day as best she could, recovering her health, trusting Damon’s promise. Andrew still loved and wanted her, though, she thought with a detachment so clinical she did not even know it was bitter, she could not imagine why he should. Again, why dwell on the one thing they could not yet share? Resolutely she got out of bed and went to bathe.

She dressed herself in a blue woolen skirt and a white knitted tunic with a long collar which could be wound about her like a shawl. For the first time since she could remember she actually felt hungry. Downstairs, the maids had cleared away the morning meal. Her father’s chair had been rolled to the window and he was looking out into the heavily drifted courtyard, where a group of serving men, heavily bundled, were clearing away some of the snow. She went and brushed his forehead with a dutiful kiss.

“Are you well again, daughter?”

“Much better, I think,” she said, and he motioned her to sit beside him, scanning her face carefully, narrowing his eyes.

“You’re thinner. Zandru’s hells, girl, you look as if you’d been gnawed by Alar’s wolf! What ailed you, or shouldn’t I ask?”

She had no idea what, if anything, Andrew or Damon might have told him. “Nothing very much. A woman’s trouble.”

“Don’t give me that,” her father said bluntly, “you’re no sickling. Marriage doesn’t seem to agree with you, my girl.”

She recoiled, saw in his face that he had picked up the recoil. He backed off quickly. “Well, well, child, I have known it a long time, the Towers do not easily let go their hold on those they have taken. I remember well how Damon went for more than a year like a lost soul blundering in the outer hells.” Clumsily he patted her arm. “I won’t ask questions, chiya. But if that husband of yours is no good to you…”

Quickly she put out her hand to him. “No, no. It has nothing to do with Andrew, Father.”

He said, his frown skeptical, “When a bride of a few moons looks as you do, her husband is seldom blameless.”

Under his concentrated study she flushed, but her voice was firm. “On my word, Father, there has been no quarrel, and Andrew is no way to blame.” It was the truth, but not the whole truth. There was no way to tell the whole truth to anyone outside their closed circle, and she was not sure she knew it herself. He sensed that she was evading him, but he accepted the barrier between them. “Well, well, the world will go as it will, daughter, not as you or I would have it Have you breakfasted?”

“No, I waited to keep you company.”

She let him call servants and order them to bring her food, more than she wanted, but she knew he had been shocked by her thinness and pallor. Like an obedient child, she forced herself to eat a little more than she really wanted. His eyes dwelt on her face as she ate, and he said at last, more gently than was his custom, “There are times, child, when I feel that you daughters of Comyn who go into the Towers take risks no less than those of our sons who go into the Guard, and fight along our borders… and it’s just as inevitable, I suppose, that some of you should be wounded.”

How much did he know? How much did he understand? She knew he had said just about as much as he could say without breaking one of the strongest taboos in a telepathic family. She felt obscurely comforted, even through her embarrassment. It could not have been easy for him to go this far.

He passed her a jar of honey for her bread. She refused it, laughing. “Would you have me fat as a fowl for roasting?”

“As fat, maybe, as an embroidery needle,” he scoffed. Her eyes on his face, she saw that he too was thinner, drawn and worn, and his eyes seemed set deeper behind cheekbones and brow.

“Is there none here to keep you company, Father?”

“Oh, Ellemir is in and out, about the kitchens. Damon has gone to the village, to see to the families of the men who were frostbitten during the great storm, and Andrew is in the greenhouse, seeing what the frost has done there. Why not join him there, child? I am sure there is work enough for two.”