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"So, yes But I don’t think they’re near the truth"

"They better not get near it"

"I’ame that I just haven’t shared with the that will hold I was never in his inner circle What if he told the to them? As for this problem…" He lifted his hands to his head and drew in a sharp breath at the contact of injury to injury "What would the Wolf do? He would do nothing He would give the seraphiht" The ie came to Karou easily, of the conte his foes "Of course, he really would be orchestrating a slaughter"

"Yes But this is our tactic, in all of this: to begin believably, where he would, but not follohere he would take it I’y It’s a chimaera ain?" Karou asked

"I’ll see that it doesn’t" Siret

Karou knew that Ziri wanted no such responsibility, but she reht for our world to the last echo of our souls"--and the way he’d stood between two blooded armies and held them apart, and she didn’t doubt that he could rise to any occasion "Okay," she said, and that was the end of it

A silence unspooled between theed They were two tired people standing in the flickering dark, a tangle of feelings and fears--love, trust, hesitation, sorrow

"We should get back," Karou said, though she wished she could give Ziri his peace for a while longer "The seraphi"

He nodded, and followed her to the door "Your hair is wet," he said

"There are baths," she told hi that he wouldn’t know that

"I can’t say that doesn’t sound good" He indicated the blood-caked fur of his feet, his raw-meat hands There was the wound where his head had smashed the cave floor, too She stepped closer to hi had risen under the dark, crusted blood

"Ouch," she said "Are you having any dizziness?"

"No Just throbbing It’s fine" He was scrutinizing her face in return "You’re looking a lot better"

She touched her cheek, realizing the pain had gone The swelling, too She touched her torn earlobe and found that the flesh had knit itself together What?

With a little gasp, she remembered "The water," she said It ca properties"

"Really?" Ziri looked down at his raw hands again "Can you show me the way?"

"Um" Karou paused aardly "I would, but Zuzana and Mik are in there" She blushed It was possible that Zuzana and Mik were too tired to act like Zuzana and Mik, but with the restorative waters, it was likely that her friends would beuse of their hour of solitude, in, um, Zuzana-and-Mik fashion

Ziri was not slow to take herHe blushed, too, and the humanity that flooded his cold, perfect features was extraordinary Ziri wore this body so o had

"I’ll wait," he said with a low, ehed, too

And there they were, in the doorway, blushing, laughing their e too close--her hand drawn back from his brow but her body still curved toward his--when soe and stopped dead

Dear gods and stardust, Karou wanted to yell Are you kidding me?

Because of course, of course, it was Akiva The wind music had drowned out his footsteps He was not ten feet away, and as skilled as he was at concealing those flares of sudden feeling, he did not entirely succeed in concealing this one

A jerk of disbelief in his halt, a creep of color across his cheeks Even, Karou was sure, an unguarded intake of breath On stoic Akiva, these s from a slap

Karou stepped away from the Wolf, but she couldn’t undo the picture they hadat the sight of Akiva, but doubted that he could have detected it in her laughing, blushing face, and now, to uilt of discovery, as if she had been caught in so with the White Wolf? As far as he knew, it was betrayal

Akiva The pull to fly to hiravity, but it was only her heart that uilty

Akiva’s voice was cold and quick "We’ve selected a representative council You ht do the same" He paused, and on his face played the reverse process as that on the Wolf’s As he stood looking at the pair of them, his humanity retreated, and he was as Karou had first seen him in Marrakesh: soul-dead "We’re ready when you are"

Whenever you’re done blushing by torchlight with the White Wolf

And he turned on his heel and was gone before they could reply

"Wait," said Karou, but her voice came out weak, and if he heard her over the wind ht We could have told hih he took the air with hi second, she couldn’t breathe, and when she did, she tried her best to make it sound measured and normal

"I’m sorry," said Ziri

"For what?" she asked with poor false lightness, as if he hadn’t seen and understood everything But of course he had

"I’s can’t be different For you" For her and Akiva, Karou understood that he meant, and--dear Ziri--he was sincere The Wolf’s face was vivid with his compassion